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national relief, did not the establishment of a certain number of settlers, in the first instance, justify the hope of a subsequent and more extensive colonization at the charge of individuals.

It would be no difficult task to point out errors in this little publication; such as the notion (p. 98.) that our distress would be lessened by a renewal of war; or (p. 76.) that our navy can be made an instrument for commanding foreign trade; or, lastly, that it is of no use to restore to the class that is devoid of property a share in the national representation, as if their interests were at present sufficiently protected by law. A comparison of the price of provisions and of the wages of labour, in England and the Continent, would soon shew that the seeds of injustice exist somewhere. We like this writer better when he urges that all party-divisions should be forgotten in a sense of the general pressure, and in zeal for the common relief; that compulsory treatment of the lower orders should be avoided; that farther restrictive acts are unnecessary; and that Government needs not fear to weaken its hands by the abolition of sinecures, since it holds the support of men of property by a far stronger tie. He is right, moreover, in asserting that a triumph of the aristocracy over their humble countrymen would afford no relief: the blood would circulate more languidly in the political body; and the result would shew that the only effectual cure is to restore the lower orders to active and productive labour.

On the whole, this tract, ill arranged and imperfect as it is, claims the notice which we have taken of it for its connection with topics of great present interest, and for its incidental elucidation of points more or less connected with them. Among these may be cited, by way of example, the material difference between the situation of this country at present, and that of France in 1789: in the latter, government had no support but the army and the nobility; while in England it is backed by a very powerful portion of the untitled class, and enabled to combat the people with their own weapons.

ART. XII. Biographie Universelle, &c.; i. e. Universal Biography, Antient and Modern. By a Society of Men of Letters and Science. Vols. XI.-XX. 8vo. Paris.

OF the first ten volumes of this increasing work, we have already taken due notice, in Rev. vols, lxvi., lxxii., and lxxxvi.: we have now received farther portions of it; and APP. REV. VOL. XCII.

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we shall endeavour, as before, to extract from each volume some one life which has escaped the record of our more prominent native biographers.

'DOTTORI, Count Carlo dei, was born at Padua, in 1624, excelled early in Greek and Latin literature, and produced in his nineteenth year the tragedy of Aristodemo, which succeeded in representation. It was printed in 1643, and, though incumbered with passages that were too lyrical, maintained a rather high rank on the Italian stage, until the Abbé Monti treated the same subject with greater felicity, Dottori also published, in 1643, Rime e Canzoni, which attained a second edition in 1689; and in 1652 he published the Asino, an heroi-comic epopea, which was not lastingly successful. He corresponded with Angelico Aprosio, and probably assisted in his Bibliotheca; he also interchanged with Redi some letters on topics of science. The Parnassus and the Galatea, which have been ascribed to him, remain anonymous works. He died at Padua in 1686.'

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EINARSON, Halfdan, was a native of Sweden, but in 1755 became rector of the high school at Hola in Iceland, and in 1779 a prebendary of the chapter there. He died in 1784, with the reputation of being learned in northern antiquities. edited some Sagas; translated into Latin various national works; furnished several articles to the collections of Giessing and of Worm; and composed in Icelandic a short ecclesiastical history: but his most important production is unquestionably the Sciagraphia Historiæ literaria Islandica, printed in octavo at Copenhagen, in 1777. This truly curious work contrives to enumerate four hundred and five Icelandic authors. Liturgic books, chronicles, and antient poems, are the prominent objects of attention : but books of science occur, and many translations. One of the singular literary articles of this catalogue is a gram. mar of the Hebrew language in Icelandic verse: another is a tragedy of Susanna, in twenty scenes. Many of these writings are still manuscript. The first printing-press in Iceland was introduced at the expence and instigation of the last Catholic bishop of Hola, Johannes Arner, in 1531. From an inedited manuscript of Torfæus, the Sciagraphia gives a catalogue of 164 Scandinavian poets, from Stark-odder to the union of Denmark and Norway. This author is descended from Einari, the first Lutheran bishop of Skalholt.'

‹ÉZENKANTZI, John, was a famous Armenian vertabied, who flourished at the beginning of the fourteenth century. He was born in the city of Ezenka, whence he is named, and studied at a monastery near Erzeroum, situated on Mount Sebouh. He afterward taught grammar and rhetoric in the monastery of Dzordzor, was distinguished by the patriarch of Cilicia, and by King Leon II., who convened him in 1307 to an ecclesiastical council held at Adana. He died in 1323, leaving the following works: (1) An Armenian Grammar; (2.) A Treatise of Astronomy, which was printed in 8vo. in 1792, at Nakhtshevan, on

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the banks of the Don; (3.) A Commentary on Matthew; (4.) Poems of Piety; and (5.) Sermons and Moral Discourses. The last three articles remain in manuscript, but occur in the library of Paris.'

FIXMILNER, Placidus, was born in 1721 at the village of Achtleuthen, in Upper Austria. He studied at Salzburg, attended much to mathematics, and would have preferred that career had not the Benedictines, into whose order he entered in 1737, claimed from him much attention to theology, canon-law, oriental languages, and sacred antiquities. His first work, intitled Reipublicæ Sacra Origines Divina, was published in 1756, and caused him to be rewarded with the title of Doctor. The transit of Venus over the sun's disk in 1761 rekindled his early taste for astronomical studies; and his uncle, the abbot of Kremsmunster, to whose convent an observatory was attached, annexed him to the establishment. In 1765, the fruits of his application became apparent in a work named Meridianus Specula Astronomica Cremifanensis, printed at Steyer. Eleven years afterward, he again printed there, in quarto, his Decennium astronomicum. He is one of the first who calculated the orbit of Uranus ; and he made many observations on Mercury, which were useful to Lalande. It is surprizing how much laborious calculation he accomplished, considering that he had other active duties to perform in superintending the noble pupils who were received at his college; where he professed the canon-law. He had obtained from the court of Rome the dignity of notary apostolic. This astronomer, formed alone in the obscurity of a province little connected with academies, has given celebrity to the observatory of Kremsmunster, by the observations which he continued to record there until his death, 27th August, 1791. His posthumous Acta Astronomica Cremifanensia were edited in that same year at Steyer, by Father Derflinger, who prefixed some notices of the author's industrious and venerable life.'

• FRATTA, Giovanni, was born at Verona in the sixteenth cen tury, of a genteel family, and was in his early years much acquainted with the great Tasso; who encouraged his poetical ardour, and possibly corrected his principal poem, La Malteide, quarto, which was printed at Venice in 1596, and which ought next to illustrate the printing-press of Malta. His other works are Eclogues, to which Fairfax was probably indebted, and some dialogues in prose. He translated the Edipus of Sophocles and the Treasure of Plautus.'

GAVIROL, Soliman ben, one of the most famous rabbis who wrote in Arabic, was a native of Malaga, flourished at Zaragossa in the eleventh century, and died at Valentia, according to Zacut and Yachia, in the year 1070. He successfully cultivated grammar, philosophy, astronomy, and music, but principally delighted in ethics and poetry. Charizi praises his versification, and also his method of writing on moral philosophy. His first production, written in Arabic, Tikkun Middot, or Correction of Manners, is divided into five sections, which treat of the five senses, and of the

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virtues and vices relating to them. This work is in the Bodleian Library, No. 358., and a note occurs in the manuscript, of which Rossi has corrected the chronology in his Catalogue raisonné. The second composition of Gavirol is intitled Mivchat Appennim, or Choice of Pearls. This book has indeed been ascribed to a later writer, named Bedrachi, and is perhaps an anthology: but Rossi has shewn that it was translated into Hebrew before Bedrachi's time, and must therefore be the work of Gavirol.'

'GJOERANSON, John, a learned Swede of the eighteenth century, entered early the ecclesiastical career, and became an archdeacon. He is chiefly remarkable for his labours about northern antiquities. From a manuscript in the Upsal library, it appears that he edited a principal part of the Edda, though not with so much fidelity and care as Resenius. He also published Katlinga, a dissertation on the literature and religion of the Goths in Sweden, dated Stockholm, 1747; and Bantil, a collection of Runic inscriptions, dated 1750. This last work is the fullest catalogue of the kind.'

GUADET, Margaret-Elias, one of the most distinguished leaders of the Girondist party in France, was born at Saint Emilion in 1760, was bred to the bar, and practised as counsellor before the parliament of Bordeaux. In 1791 he was elected deputy to the legislative assembly. At the period of its convocation, the royal authority was practically suspended, the king was a prisoner in his own palace, and already the idea was entertained of exposing him to the judgment of an extraordinary tribunal. Innovators maintained at Paris, and still more loudly in the provinces, that the throne could not be preserved; and that its remains ought now to be levelled, in order to construct on them a republican constitution. In the seats of maritime commerce especially, these ideas found favour; and almost all the deputies for the department of the Gironde were chosen for their republican sentiments. Before their departure from Bordeaux, they publicly took an oath to subvert the monarchy; and the impetuous Guadet was the first to propose and to pronounce it. When they arrived at Paris, they attached themselves to the Jacobin society, which was supposed to be in its wane, although Brissot, Laclos, Sieyes, Petion, and Robespierre still adhered to it, after the desertion of the more constitutional Feuillans. This accession of eloquent strength soon restored to the Jacobins their former popularity, and infused among them a novel and fanatical zeal. Guadet was one of those whose vehement speeches most contributed to this effect. With some appearance of deference for the constitution, he attacked all that lent an indirect support to the crown; thundered against the clergy, the emigrants, the court, and the ministers; and familiarized the combination of liberty and equality. He moved, October 28. 1791, the proclamation which enjoined the King's brother to return into France within two months, under penalty of being deprived of all his rights. He also moved the confiscation of the property of such emigrants as should not return by the ensuing 1st January; and, at Gensonné's instigation, he included the King's brothers in a decree of accusation. About

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the same period, Guadet denounced that concert of European princes against the liberty of nations, of which the holy alliance is a lingering remnant, and proposed to enact that any Frenchman taking part in it should be punished with death, as guilty of high treason against the sovereign people. Until July, 1792, Guadet and his friends pursued their revolutionary course: but at this period the journals of their adherents began to assume a constitutional tone; as it was believed that negotiations, which proved ineffectual, had been undertaken to form a Girondist ministry. The impulse given was no longer to be restrained. With the connivance of Petion, mayor of Paris, and with the aid of the distinct party of Danton and Robespierre, the Girondists decided to espouse the insurrection of the 10th of August, and the throne of France was subverted. Lafayette, faithful to constitutional royalty, attempted timely to interfere: but Guadet denounced him before the Assembly, and paralyzed his exertions. Immediately after the 10th of August, the Girondists proposed to name a governor for the Prince-royal, as if they wished to resume the royalty of a constitutional king: but this suggestion only diminished their own popularity to swell that of Danton and Robespierre, who were able to direct the massacre of September 2., to decree the assembling of the Convention, and to exclude from it the chief adherents of the Girondists. When the Prussian and Austrian armies entered France, Guadet and his party endeavoured to resume an attitude of activity, and contributed not a little by their eloquence to inspire that military ardour which was destined to work so many miracles. He was elected at Bordeaux into the Convention, and in the spirit of his military zeal moved to raze Longwy, which had surrendered to the foreign enemy. This was decreed, but not effected. With greater and more meritorious courage, he endeavoured to procure the impeachment and punishment of the authors of the September massacre: but this step occasioned a re-action, fatal to himself and his colleagues. An apostate priest, called Chales, pretended to have seen the name of Guadet among those which the King had placed on a list of persons to be conciliated; and Robespierre availed himself of this statement to bring his principles into question, and to describe him as the ally of Dumouriez. Guadet proposed an appeal to the people about the death of the King: but, this being rejected, he concurred in its being decreed by the Convention. On the 31st of May, 1793, the party of Danton and Robespierre caused a sort of insurrection to overawe the Convention, and carried a decree of accusation against the Girondists in which Guadet was comprehended. He fled into the department of Calvados, and thence to his father's house at Libourne: where he was seized, dragged to Bordeaux, and executed, July 17. 1794. He attempted to harangue the people from the scaffold: but the noise of drums was employed to silence him: his boldness and intrepidity accompanied him to the last. His speeches have not been edited.'.

HAYM, Nicolas Francis, was born at Rome, and came to London in 1708 as director of the Opera: but, from some jeaM m 3

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