part iii

. 47.

[38] _OEuvres_, iv. 494.

[39] Ib. ix. 426.

[40] Ib. x. 204.

[41] Ib. vi. 339.

[42] Ib. x. 208.

[43] Ib. iv. 452 and 454.

[44] _OEuvres_, ix. 166.

[45] _Passions de l'âme_, 36.

[46] Ib. 48.

[47] _OEuvres_, ix. 170.

DESCHAMPS, ÉMILE (1791-1871), French poet and man of letters, was born at Bourges on the 20th of February 1791. The son of a civil servant, he adopted his father's career, but as early as 1812 he distinguished himself by an ode, _La Paix conquise_, which won the praise of Napoleon. In 1818 he collaborated with Henri de Latouche in two verse comedies, _Selmours de Florian_ and _Le Tour de faveur_. He and his brother were among the most enthusiastic disciples of the _cénacle_ gathered round Victor Hugo, and in July 1823 Émile founded with his master the _Muse française_, which during the year of its existence was the special organ of the romantic party. His _Études françaises et étrangères_ (1828) were preceded by a preface which may be regarded as one of the manifestos of the romanticists. The versions of Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ (1839) and of _Macbeth_ (1844), important as they were in the history of the romantic movement, were never staged. He was the author of several libretti, among which may be mentioned the _Roméo et Juliette_ of Berlioz. The list of his more important works is completed by his two volumes of stories, _Contes physiologiques_ (1854) and _Réalités fantastiques_ (1854). He died at Versailles in April 1871. His _OEuvres complètes_ were published in 1872-1874 (6 vols.).

His brother, Antoine François Marie, known as ANTONY DESCHAMPS, was born in Paris on the 12th of March 1800 and died at Passy on the 29th of October 1869. Like his brother, he was an ardent romanticist, but his production was limited by a nervous disorder, which has left its mark on his melancholy work. He translated the _Divina Commedia_ in 1829, and his poems, _Dernières Paroles_ and _Résignation_, were republished with his brother's in 1841.

DESCHAMPS, EUSTACHE, called MOREL (1346?-1406?), French poet, was born at Vertus in Champagne about 1346. He studied at Reims, where he is said to have received some lessons in the art of versification from Guillaume de Machaut, who is stated to have been his uncle. From Reims he proceeded about 1360 to the university of Orleans to study law and the seven liberal arts. He entered the king's service as royal messenger about 1367, and was sent on missions to Bohemia, Hungary and Moravia. In 1372 he was made _huissier d'armes_ to Charles V. He received many other important offices, was _bailli_ of Valois, and afterwards of Senlis, squire to the Dauphin, and governor of Fismes. In 1380 his patron, Charles V., died, and in the same year the English burnt down his house at Vertus. In his childhood he had been an eye-witness of the English invasion of 1358; he had been present at the siege of Reims and seen the march on Chartres; he had witnessed the signing of the treaty of Bretigny; he was now himself a victim of the English fury. His violent hatred of the English found vent in numerous appeals to carry the war into England, and in the famous prophecy[1] that England would be destroyed so thoroughly that no one should be able to point to her ruins. His own misfortunes and the miseries of France embittered his temper. He complained continually of poverty, railed against women and lamented the woes of his country. His last years were spent on his _Miroir de mariage_, a satire of 13,000 lines against women, which contains some real comedy. The mother-in-law of French farce has her prototype in the _Miroir_.

The historical and patriotic poems of Deschamps are of much greater value. He does not, like Froissart, cast a glamour over the miserable wars of the time but gives a faithful picture of the anarchy of France, and inveighs ceaselessly against the heavy taxes, the vices of the clergy and especially against those who enrich themselves at the expense of the people. The terrible ballad with the refrain "_Sà, de l'argent; sà, de l'argent_" is typical of his work. Deschamps excelled in the use of the ballade and the chant royal. In each of these forms he was the greatest master of his time. In ballade form he expressed his regret for the death of Du Guesclin, who seems to have been the only man except his patron, Charles V., for whom he ever felt any admiration. One of his ballades (No. 285) was sent with a copy of his works to Geoffrey Chaucer, whom he addresses with the words:--

"Tu es d'amours mondains dieux en Albie Et de la Rose en la terre Angélique."

Deschamps was the author of an _Art poétique_, with the title of _L'Art de dictier et de fere chancons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx_. Besides giving rules for the composition of the kinds of verse mentioned in the title he enunciates some curious theories on poetry. He divides music into music proper and poetry. Music proper he calls artificial on the ground that everyone could by dint of study become a musician; poetry he calls natural because he says it is not an art that can be acquired but a gift. He lays immense stress on the harmony of verse, because, as was the fashion of his day, he practically took it for granted that all poetry was to be sung.

The work of Deschamps marks an important stage in the history of French poetry. With him and his contemporaries the long, formless narrations of the _trouvères_ give place to complicated and exacting kinds of verse. He was perhaps by nature a moralist and satirist rather than a poet, and the force and truth of his historical pictures gives him a unique place in 14th-century poetry. M. Raynaud fixes the date of his death in 1406, or at latest, 1407. Two years earlier he had been relieved of his charge as _bailli_ of Senlis, his plain-spoken satires having made him many enemies at court.

His _OEuvres complètes_ were edited (10 vols., 1878-1901) for the _Société des anciens textes français_ by Queux de Saint-Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud. A supplementary volume consists of an Introduction by G. Raynaud. See also Dr E. Hoeppner, _Eustache Deschamps_ (Strassburg, 1904).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] "_De la prophécie Merlin sur la destruction d'Angleterre qui doit brief advenir_" (_OEuvres_, No. 211).

DESCHANEL, PAUL EUGÈNE LOUIS (1856- ), French statesman, son of Émile Deschanel (1819-1904), professor at the Collège de France and senator, was born at Brussels, where his father was living in exile (1851-1859), owing to his opposition to Napoleon III. Paul Deschanel studied law, and began his career as secretary to Deshayes de Marcère (1876), and to Jules Simon (1876-1877). In October 1885 he was elected deputy for Eure and Loire. From the first he took an important place in the chamber, as one of the most notable orators of the Progressist Republican group. In January 1896 he was elected vice-president of the chamber, and henceforth devoted himself to the struggle against the Left, not only in parliament, but also in public meetings throughout France. His addresses at Marseilles on the 26th of October 1896, at Carmaux on the 27th of December 1896, and at Roubaix on the 10th of April 1897, were triumphs of clear and eloquent exposition of the political and social aims of the Progressist party. In June 1898 he was elected president of the chamber, and was re-elected in 1901, but rejected in 1902. Nevertheless he came forward brilliantly in 1904 and 1905 as a supporter of the law on the separation of church and state. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1899, his most notable works being _Orateurs et hommes d'état_ (1888), _Figures de femmes_ (1889), _La Décentralization_ (1895), _La Question sociale_ (1898).

DES CLOIZEAUX, ALFRED LOUIS OLIVIER LEGRAND (1817-1897), French mineralogist, was born at Beauvais, in the department of Oise, on the 17th of October 1817. He became professor of mineralogy at the École Normale Supérieure and afterwards at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He studied the geysers of Iceland, and wrote also on the classification of some of the eruptive rocks; but his main work consisted in the systematic examination of the crystals of numerous minerals, in researches on their optical properties and on the subject of polarization. He wrote specially on the means of determining the different felspars. He was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London in 1886. He died in May 1897. His best-known books are _Leçons de cristallographie_ (1861); _Manuel de minéralogie_ (2 vols., Paris, 1862, 1874 and 1893).

DESCLOIZITE, a rare mineral species consisting of basic lead and zinc vanadate, (Pb, Zn)_2(OH)V0_4, crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with olivenite. It was discovered by A. Damour in 1854, and named by him in honour of the French mineralogist Des Cloizeaux. It occurs as small prismatic or pyramidal crystals, usually forming drusy crusts and stalactitic aggregates; also as fibrous encrusting masses with a mammillary surface. The colour is deep cherry-red to brown or black, and the crystals are transparent or translucent with a greasy lustre; the streak is orange-yellow to brown; specific gravity 5.9 to 6.2; hardness 3½. A variety known as cuprodescloizite is dull green in colour; it contains a considerable amount of copper replacing zinc and some arsenic replacing vanadium. Descloizite occurs in veins of lead ores in association with pyromorphite, vanadinite, wulfenite, &c. Localities are the Sierra de Cordoba in Argentina, Lake Valley in Sierra county, New Mexico, Arizona, Phoenixville in Pennsylvania, and Kappel (Eisen-Kappel) near Klagenfurt in Carinthia.

Other names which have been applied to this species are vanadite, tritochorite and ramirite; the uncertain vanadates eusynchite, araeoxene and dechenite are possibly identical with it.

DESCRIPTIVE POETRY, the name given to a class of literature, which may be defined as belonging mainly to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. From the earliest times, all poetry which was not subjectively lyrical was apt to indulge in ornament which might be named descriptive. But the critics of the 17th century formed a distinction between the representations of the ancients and those of the moderns. We find Boileau emphasizing the statement that, while Virgil _paints_, Tasso _describes_. This may be a useful indication for us in defining not what should, but what in practice has been called "descriptive poetry." It is poetry in which it is not imaginative passion which prevails, but a didactic purpose, or even something of the instinct of a sublimated auctioneer. In other words, the landscape, or architecture, or still life, or whatever may be the object of the poet's attention, is not used as an accessory, but is itself the centre of interest. It is, in this sense, not correct to call poetry in which description is only the occasional ornament of a poem, and not its central subject, descriptive poetry. The landscape or still life must fill the canvas, or, if human interest is introduced, that must be treated as an accessory. Thus, in the _Hero and Leander_ of Marlowe and in the _Alastor_ of Shelley, description of a very brilliant kind is largely introduced, yet these are not examples of what is technically called "descriptive poetry," because it is not the strait between Sestos and Abydos, and it is not the flora of a tropical glen, which concentrates the attention of the one poet or of the other, but it is an example of physical passion in the one case and of intellectual passion in the other, which is diagnosed and dilated on. On the other hand Thomson's _Seasons_, in which landscape takes the central place, and Drayton's _Polyolbion_, where everything is sacrificed to a topographical progress through Britain, are strictly descriptive.

It will be obvious from this definition that the danger ahead of all purely descriptive poetry is that it will lack intensity, that it will be frigid, if not dead. Description for description's sake, especially in studied verse, is rarely a vitalized form of literature. It is threatened, from its very conception, with languor and coldness; it must exercise an extreme art or be condemned to immediate sterility. Boileau, with his customary intelligence, was the first to see this, and he thought that the danger might be avoided by care in technical execution. His advice to the poets of his time was:--

"Soyez riches et pompeux dans vos descriptions; C'est-là qu'il faut des vers étaler l'élégance,"

and:--

"De figure sans nombre égayez votre ouvrage; Que toute y fasse aux yeux une riante image,"

and in verses of brilliant humour he mocked the writer who, too full of his subject, and describing for description's sake, will never quit his theme until he has exhausted it:--

"Fuyez de ces auteurs l'abondance stérile Et ne vous chargez point d'un détail inutile."

This is excellent advice, but Boileau's humorous sallies do not quite meet the question whether such purely descriptive poetry as he criticizes is legitimate at all.

In England had appeared the famous translation (1592-1611), by Josuah Sylvester, of the _Divine Weeks and Works_ of Du Bartas, containing such lines as those which the juvenile Dryden admired so much:--

"But when winter's keener breath began To crystallize the Baltic ocëan, To glaze the lakes, and bridle up the floods, And perriwig with wool the bald-pate woods."

There was also the curious physiological epic of Phineas Fletcher, _The Purple Island_ (1633). But on the whole it was not until French influences had made themselves felt on English poetry, that description, as Boileau conceived it, was cultivated as a distinct art. The _Cooper's Hill_ (1642) of Sir John Denham may be contrasted with the less ambitious _Penshurst_ of Ben Jonson, and the one represents the new no less completely than the other does the old generation. If, however, we examine _Cooper's Hill_ carefully, we perceive that its aim is after all rather philosophical than topographical. The Thames is described indeed, but not very minutely, and the poet is mainly absorbed in moral reflections. Marvell's long poem on the beauties of Nunappleton comes nearer to the type. But it is hardly until we reach the 18th century that we arrive, in English literature, at what is properly known as descriptive poetry. This was the age in which poets, often of no mean capacity, began to take such definite themes as a small country estate (Pomfret's _Choice_, 1700), the cultivation of the grape (Gay's _Wine_, 1708), a landscape (Pope's _Windsor Forest_, 1713), a military manoeuvre (Addison's _Campaign_, 1704), the industry of an apple-orchard (Philip's _Cyder_, 1708) or a piece of topography (Tickell's _Kensington Gardens_, 1722), as the sole subject of a lengthy poem, generally written in heroic or blank verse. These _tours de force_ were supported by minute efforts in miniature-painting, by touch applied to touch, and were often monuments of industry, but they were apt to lack personal interest, and to suffer from a general and deplorable frigidity. They were infected with the faults which accompany an artificial style; they were monotonous, rhetorical and symmetrical, while the uniformity of treatment which was inevitable to their plan rendered them hopelessly tedious, if they were prolonged to any great extent.

This species of writing had been cultivated to a considerable degree through the preceding century, in Italy and (as the remarks of Boileau testify) in France, but it was in England that it reached its highest importance. The classic of descriptive poetry, in fact, the specimen which the literature of the world presents which must be considered as the most important and the most successful, is _The Seasons_ (1726-1730) of James Thomson (q.v.). In Thomson, for the first time, a poet of considerable eminence appeared, to whom external nature was all sufficient, and who succeeded in conducting a long poem to its close by a single appeal to landscape, and to the emotions which it directly evokes. Coleridge, somewhat severely, described _The Seasons_ as the work of a good rather than of a great poet, and it is an indisputable fact that, at its very best, descriptive poetry fails to awaken the highest powers of the imagination. A great part of Thomson's poem is nothing more nor less than a skilfully varied catalogue of natural phenomena. The famous description of twilight in "the fading many-coloured woods" of autumn may be taken as an example of the highest art to which purely descriptive poetry has ever attained. It is obvious, even here, that the effect of these rich and sonorous lines, in spite of the splendid effort of the artist, is monotonous, and leads us up to no final crisis of passion or rapture. Yet Thomson succeeds, as few other poets of his class have succeeded, in producing nobly-massed effects and comprehensive beauties such as were utterly unknown to his predecessors. He was widely imitated in England, especially by Armstrong, by Akenside, by Shenstone (in _The Schoolmistress_, 1742), by the anonymous author of _Albania_, 1737, and by Goldsmith (in _The Deserted Village_, 1770). No better example of the more pedestrian class of descriptive poetry could be found than the last-mentioned poem, with its minute and Dutch-like painting:--

"How often have I paused on every charm: The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm; The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill: The hawthorn-bush, with seats beneath the shade. For talking age and whispering lovers made."

On the continent of Europe the example of Thomson was almost immediately fruitful. Four several translations of _The Seasons_ into French contended for the suffrages of the public, and J. F. de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803) imitated Thomson in _Les Saisons_ (1769), a poem which enjoyed popularity for half a century, and of which Voltaire said that it was the only one of its generation which would reach posterity. Nevertheless, as Madame du Deffand told Walpole, Saint-Lambert is "_froid, fade et faux,_" and the same may be said of J. A. Roucher (1745-1794), who wrote _Les Mois_ in 1779, a descriptive poem famous in its day. The Abbé Jacques Delille (1738-1813), perhaps the most ambitious descriptive poet who has ever lived, was treated as a Virgil by his contemporaries; he published _Les Géorgiques_ in 1769, _Les Jardins_ in 1782, and _L'Homme des champs_ in 1803, but he went furthest in his brilliant, though artificial, _Trois règnes de la nature_ (1809), which French critics have called the masterpiece of this whole school of descriptive poetry. Delille, however, like Thomson before him, was unable to avoid monotony and want of coherency. Picture follows picture, and no progress is made. The satire of Marie Joseph Chénier, in his famous and witty _Discours sur les poèmes descriptifs_, brought the vogue of this species of poetry to an end.

In England, again, Wordsworth, who treated the genius of Thomson with unmerited severity, revived descriptive poetry in a form which owed more than Wordsworth realized to the model of _The Seasons_. In _The Excursion_ and _The Prelude_, as well as in many of his minor pieces, Wordsworth's philosophical and moral intentions cannot prevent us from perceiving the large part which pure description takes; and the same may be said of much of the early blank verse of S. T. Coleridge. Since their day, however, purely descriptive poetry has gone more and more completely out of fashion, and its place has been taken by the richer and directer effects of such prose as that of Ruskin in English, or of Fromentin and Pierre Loti in French. It is almost impossible in descriptive verse to obtain those vivid and impassioned appeals to the imagination which are of the very essence of genuine poetry, and it is unlikely that descriptive poetry, as such, will again take a prominent place in living literature. (E. G.)

DESERT, a term somewhat loosely employed to describe those parts of the land surface of the earth which do not produce sufficient vegetation to support a human population. Few areas of large extent in any part of the world are absolutely devoid of vegetation, and the transition from typical desert conditions is often very gradual and ill-defined. ("Desert" comes from Lat. _deserere_, to abandon; distinguish "desert," merit, and "dessert," fruit eaten after dinner, from _de_ and _servier_, to serve.)

Deserts are conveniently divided into two classes according to the causes which give rise to the desert conditions. In "cold deserts" the want of vegetation is wholly due to the prevailing low temperature, while in "hot deserts" the surface is unproductive because, on account of high temperature and deficient rainfall, evaporation is largely in excess of precipitation. Cold deserts accordingly occur in high latitudes (see TUNDRA and POLAR REGIONS). Hot desert conditions are primarily found along the tropical belts of high atmospheric pressure in which the conditions of warmth and dryness are most fully realized, and on their equatorial sides, but the zonal arrangement is considerably modified in some regions by the monsoonal influence of elevated land. Thus we have in the northern hemisphere the Sahara desert, the deserts of Arabia, Iran, Turan, Takla Makan and Gobi, and the desert regions of the Great Basin in North America; and in the southern hemisphere the Kalahari desert in Africa, the desert of Australia, and the desert of Atacama in South America. Where the line of elevated land runs east and west, as in Asia, the desert belt tends to be displaced into higher latitudes, and where the line runs north and south, as in Africa, America and Australia, the desert zone is cut through on the windward side of the elevation and the arid conditions intensified on the lee side. Desert conditions also arise from local causes, as in the case of the Indian desert situated in a region inaccessible to either of the two main branches of the south-west monsoon.

Although rivers rising in more favoured regions may traverse deserts on their way to the sea, as in the case of the Nile and the Colorado, the fundamental physical condition of an arid area is that it contributes nothing to the waters of the ocean. The rainfall chiefly occurs in violent cloud-bursts, and the soluble matter in the soil is carried down by intermittent streams to salt lakes around which deposits are formed as evaporation takes place. The land forms of a desert are exceedingly characteristic. Surface erosion is chiefly due to rapid changes of temperature through a wide range, and to the action of wind transferring sand and dust, often in the form of "dunes" resembling the waves of the sea. Dry valleys, narrow and of great depth, with precipitous sides, and ending in "cirques," are probably formed by the intense action of the occasional cloud-bursts.

When water can be obtained and distributed over an arid region by irrigation, the surface as a rule becomes extremely productive. Natural springs give rise to oases at intervals and make the crossing of large deserts possible. Where a river crosses a desert at a level near that of the general surface, irrigation can be carried on with extremely profitable results, as has been done in the valley of the Nile and in parts of the Great Basin of North America; in cases, however, where the river has cut deeply and flows far below the general surface, irrigation is too expensive. Much has been done in parts of Australia by means of artesian wells.

For a general account of deserts see Professor Johannes Walther, _Das Gesetz der Wüstenbildung_ (Berlin, 1900), in which many references to other original authorities will be found. (H. N. D.)

DESERTION, the act of forsaking or abandoning; more particularly, the wilful abandonment of an employment or of duty, in violation of a legal or moral obligation.

The offence of naval or military desertion is constituted when a man absents himself with the intention either of not returning or of escaping some important service, such as embarkation for foreign service, or service in aid of the civil power. In the United Kingdom desertion has always been recognized by the civil law, and until 1827 (7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 28) was a felony punishable by death. It was subsequently dealt with by the various Mutiny Acts, which were replaced by the Army Act 1881, renewed annually by the Army (Annual) Act. By § 12 of the act every person subject to military law who deserts or attempts to desert, or who persuades or procures any person to desert, shall, on conviction by court martial, if he committed the offence when on active service or under orders for active service, be liable to suffer death, or such less punishment as is mentioned in the act. When the offence is committed under any other circumstances, the punishment for the first offence is imprisonment, and for the second or any subsequent offence penal servitude or such less punishment as is mentioned in the act. § 44 contains a scale of punishments, and §§ 175-184 an enumeration of persons subject to military law. By § 153 any person who persuades a soldier to desert or aids or assists him or conceals him is liable, on conviction, to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for not more than six months. § 154 makes provision for the apprehension of deserters. § 161 lays down that where a soldier has served continuously in an exemplary manner for not less than three years in any corps of regular forces he is not to be tried or punished for desertion which has occurred before the commencement of the three years. Desertion from the regular forces can only be tried by a military court, but in the case of the militia and reserve forces desertion can be tried by a civil court. The Army Act of 1881 made a welcome distinction between actual desertion, as defined at the commencement of this article, and the quitting one regiment in order to enlist in another. This offence is now separately dealt with as fraudulent enlistment; formerly, it was termed "desertion and fraudulent enlistment," and the statistics of desertion proper were consequently and erroneously magnified. The gross total of desertions in the British Army in an average year (1903-1904) was nearly 4000, or 1.4% of the average strength of the army, but owing to men rejoining from desertion, fraudulent enlistment, &c., the net loss was no more than 1286, i.e. less than .5%. The army of the United States suffers very severely from desertion, and very few deserters rejoin or are recaptured (see _Journal of the Roy. United Service Inst._, December 1905, p. 1469). In the year 1900-1901, 3110 men deserted (4.3% of average strength); in 1901-1902, 4667 (or 5.9%); in 1904-1905, 6553 (or 6.8%); and in 1905-1906, 6258 out of less than 60,000 men, or 7.4%.

In all armies desertion while on active service is punishable by death; on the continent of Europe, owing to the system of compulsory service, desertion is infrequent, and takes place usually when the deserter wishes to leave his country altogether. It was formerly the practice in the English army to punish a man convicted of desertion by tattooing on him the letter "D" to prevent his re-enlistment, but this has been long abandoned in deference to public opinion, which erroneously adopted the idea that the "marking" was effected by red-hot irons or in some other manner involving torture. The Navy Discipline Act 1866, and the Naval Deserters Act 1847, contain similar provisions to the Army Act of 1881 for dealing with desertions from the navy. In the United States navy the term "straggling" is applied to absence without leave, where the probability is that the person does not intend to desert. The United States government offers a monetary reward of between $20 and $30 for the arrest and delivery of deserters from the army and navy.

In the British merchant service the offence of desertion is defined as the abandonment of duty by quitting the ship before the termination of the engagement, without justification, and with the intention of not returning.

Desertion is also the term applied to the act by which a man abandons his wife and children, or either of them. Desertion of a wife is a matrimonial offence; under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, a decree of judicial separation may be obtained in England by either husband or wife on the ground of desertion, without cause, for two years and upwards (see also DIVORCE).

For the desertion of children see CHILDREN, LAW RELATING TO; INFANT. (T. A. I.)

DES ESSARTS, EMMANUEL ADOLPHE (1839- ), French poet and man of letters, was born at Paris on the 5th of February 1839. His father, Alfred Stanislas Langlois des Essarts (d. 1893), was a poet and novelist of considerable reputation. The son was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, and became a teacher of rhetoric and finally professor of literature at Dijon and at Clermont. His works are: _Poésies parisiennes_ (1862), a volume of light verse on trifling subjects; _Les Élévations_ (1864), philosophical poems; _Origines de la poésie lyrique en France au XVI^e siècle_ (1873); _Du génie de Chateaubriand_ (1876); _Poèmes de la Révolution_ (1879); _Pallas Athéné_ (1887); _Portraits de maîtres_ (1888), &c.

DESFONTAINES, RENÉ LOUICHE (1750-1833), French botanist, was born at Tremblay (Île-et-Vilaine) on the 14th of February 1750. After graduating in medicine at Paris, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1783. In the same year he set out for North Africa, on a scientific exploring expedition, and on his return two years afterwards brought with him a large collection of plants, animals, &c., comprising, it is said, 1600 species of plants, of which about 300 were described for the first time. In 1786 he was nominated to the post of professor at the Jardin des Plantes, vacated in his favour by his friend, L. G. Lemonnier. His great work, _Flora Atlantica sive historia plantarum quae in Atlante, agro Tunetano el Algeriensi crescunt_, was published in 2 vols. 4to in 1798, and he produced in 1804 a _Tableau de l'école botanique du muséum d'histoire naturelle de Paris_, of which a third edition appeared in 1831, under the new title _Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis_. He was also the author of many memoirs on vegetable anatomy and physiology, descriptions of new genera and species, &c., one of the most important being a "Memoir on the Organization of the Monocotyledons." He died at Paris on the 16th of November 1833. His Barbary collection was bequeathed to the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, and his general collection passed into the hands of the English botanist, Philip Barker Webb.

DESFORGES, PIERRE JEAN BAPTISTE CHOUDARD (1746-1806), French dramatist and man of letters, natural son of Dr Antoine Petit, was born in Paris on the 15th of September 1746. He was educated at the Collège Mazarin and the Collège de Beauvais, and at his father's desire began the study of medicine. Dr Petit's death left him dependent on his own resources, and after appearing on the stage of the Comédie Italienne in Paris he joined a troupe of wandering actors, whom he served in the capacity of playwright. He married an actress, and the two spent three years in St Petersburg, where they were well received. In 1782 he produced at the Comédie Italienne an adaptation of Fielding's novel with the title _Tom Jones à Londres_. His first great success was achieved with _L'Épreuve villageoise_ (1785) to the music of Grétry. _La Femme jalouse_, a five-act comedy in verse (1785), _Joconde_ (1790) for the music of Louis Jaden, _Les Époux divorcés_ (1799), a comedy, and other pieces followed. Desforges was one of the first to avail himself of the new facilities afforded under the Revolution for divorce and re-marriage. The curious record of his own early indiscretions in _Le Poète, ou mémoires d'un homme de lettres écrits par lui-même_ (4 vols., 1798) is said to have been undertaken at the request of Madame Desforges. He died in Paris on the 13th of August 1806.

DESGARCINS, MAGDELEINE MARIE [LOUISE] (1769-1797), French actress, was born at Mont Dauphin (Hautes Alpes). In her short career she became one of the greatest of French tragédiennes, the associate of Talma, with whom she nearly always played. Her début at the Comédie Française occurred on the 24th of May 1788, in _Bajazet_, with such success that she was at once made _sociétaire_. She was one of the actresses who left the Comédie Française in 1791 for the house in the rue Richelieu, soon to become the Théâtre de la République, and there her triumphs were no less--in _King Lear_, _Othello_, La Harpe's _Mélanie et Virginie_, &c. Her health, however, failed, and she died insane, in Paris, on the 27th of October 1797.

DESHAYES, GÉRARD PAUL (1795-1875), French geologist and conchologist, was born at Nancy on the 13th of May 1797, his father at that time being professor of experimental physics in the École Centrale of the department of la Meurthe. He studied medicine at Strassburg, and afterwards took the degree of _bachelier ès lettres_ in Paris in 1821; but he abandoned the medical profession in order to devote himself to natural history. For some time he gave private lessons on geology, and subsequently became professor of natural history in the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. He was distinguished for his researches on the fossil mollusca of the Paris Basin and of other Tertiary areas. His studies on the relations of the fossil to the recent species led him as early as 1829 to conclusions somewhat similar to those arrived at by Lyell, to whom Deshayes rendered much assistance in connexion with the classification of the Tertiary system into Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene. He was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France. In 1839 he began the publication of his _Traité élémentaire de conchyliologie_, the last part of which was not issued until 1858. In the same year (1839) he went to Algeria for the French Government, and spent three years in explorations in that country. His principal work, which resulted from the collections he made, _Mollusques de l'Algérie_, was issued (incomplete) in 1848. In 1870 the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society of London was awarded to him. He died at Boran on the 9th of June 1875. His publications included _Description des coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris_ (2 vols. and atlas, 1824-1837); _Description des animaux sans vertèbres découverts dans le bassin de Paris_ (3 vols. and atlas, 1856-1866); _Catalogue des mollusques de l'île la Réunion_ (1863).

DESHOULIÈRES, ANTOINETTE DU LIGIER DE LA GARDE (1638-1694), French poet, was born in Paris on the 1st of January 1638. She was the daughter of Melchior du Ligier, sieur de la Garde, _maître d'hôtel_ to the queens Marie de' Medici and Anne of Austria. She received a careful and very complete education, acquiring a knowledge of Latin, Spanish and Italian, and studying prosody under the direction of the poet Jean Hesnault. At the age of thirteen she married Guillaume de Boisguerin, seigneur Deshoulières, who followed the prince of Condé as lieutenant-colonel of one of his regiments to Flanders about a year after the marriage. Madame Deshoulières returned for a time to the house of her parents, where she gave herself to writing poetry and studying the philosophy of Gassendi. She rejoined her husband at Rocroi, near Brussels, where, being distinguished for her personal beauty, she became the object of embarrassing attentions on the part of the prince of Condé. Having made herself obnoxious to the government by her urgent demand for the arrears of her husband's pay, she was imprisoned in the château of Wilworden. After a few months she was freed by her husband, who attacked the château at the head of a small band of soldiers. An amnesty having been proclaimed, they returned to France, where Madame Deshoulières soon became a conspicuous personage at the court of Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age--some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others being entirely forgotten. She wrote several dramatic works, the best of which do not rise to mediocrity. Her friendship for Corneille made her take sides for the _Phèdre_ of Pradon against that of Racine. Voltaire pronounced her the best of women French poets; and her reputation with her contemporaries is indicated by her election as a member of the Academy of the Ricovrati of Padua and of the Academy of Arles. In 1688 a pension of 2000 livres was bestowed upon her by the king, and she was thus relieved from the poverty in which she had long lived. She died in Paris on the 17th February 1694. Complete editions of her works were published at Paris in 1695, 1747, &c. These include a few poems by her daughter, Antoine Thérèse Deshoulières (1656-1718), who inherited her talent.

DESICCATION (from the Lat. _desiccare_, to dry up), the operation of drying or removing water from a substance. It is of particular importance in practical chemistry. If a substance admits of being heated to say 100°, the drying may be effected by means of an air-bath, which is simply an oven heated by gas or by steam. Otherwise a _desiccator_ must be employed; this is essentially a closed vessel in which a hygroscopic substance is placed together with the substance to be dried. The process may be accelerated by exhausting the desiccator; this so-called vacuum desiccation is especially suitable for the concentration of aqueous solutions of readily decomposable substances. Of the hygroscopic substances in common use, phosphoric anhydride, concentrated sulphuric acid, and dry potassium hydrate are almost equal in power; sodium hydrate and calcium chloride are not much behind.

Two common types of desiccator are in use. In one the absorbent is placed at the bottom, and the substance to be dried above. Hempel pointed out that the efficiency would be increased by inverting this arrangement, since water vapour is lighter than air and consequently rises. Liquids are dried either by means of the desiccator, or, as is more usual, by shaking with a substance which removes the water. Fused calcium chloride is the commonest absorbent; but it must not be used with alcohols and several other compounds, since it forms compounds with these substances. Quicklime, barium oxide, and dehydrated copper sulphate are especially applicable to alcohol and ether; the last traces of water may be removed by adding metallic sodium and distilling. Gases are dried by leading them through towers or tubes containing an appropriate drying material. The experiments of H. B. Baker on the influence of moisture on chemical combination have shown the difficulty of removing the last traces of water.

In chemical technology, apparatus on the principle of the laboratory air-bath are mainly used. Crystals and precipitates, deprived of as much water as possible by centrifugal machines or filter-presses, are transported by means of a belt, screw, or other form of conveyer, on to trays staged in brick chambers heated directly by flue gases or steam pipes; the latter are easily controlled, and if the steam be superheated a temperature of 300° and over may be maintained. In some cases the material traverses the chamber from the coolest to the hottest part on a conveyer or in wagons. Rotating cylinders are also used; the material to be dried being placed inside, and the cylinder heated by a steam jacket or otherwise.

DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO (1428-1464), Italian sculptor, was born at Settignano, a village on the southern slope of the hill of Fiesole, still surrounded by the quarries of sandstone of which the hill is formed, and inhabited by a race of "stone-cutters." Desiderio was for a short time a pupil of Donatello, whom, according to Vasari, he assisted in the work on the pedestal of David, and he seems to have worked also with Mino da Fiesole, with the delicate and refined style of whose works those of Desiderio seem to have a closer affinity than with the perhaps more masculine tone of Donatello. Vasari particularly extols the sculptor's treatment of the figures of women and children. It does not appear that Desiderio ever worked elsewhere than at Florence; and it is there that those who are interested in the Italian sculpture of the Renaissance must seek his few surviving decorative and monumental works, though a number of his delicately carved marble busts of women and children are to be found in the museums and private collections of Germany and France. The most prominent of his works are the tomb of the secretary of state, Marsuppini, in Santa Croce, and the great marble tabernacle of the Annunciation in San Lorenzo, both of which belong to the latter period of Desiderio's activity; and the cherubs' heads which form the exterior frieze of the Pazzi Chapel. Vasari mentions a marble bust by Desiderio of Marietta degli Strozzi, which for many years was held to be identical with a very beautiful bust bought in 1878 from the Strozzi family for the Berlin Museum. This bust is now, however, generally acknowledged to be the work of Francesco Laurana; whilst Desiderio's bust of Marietta has been recognized in another marble portrait acquired by the Berlin Museum in 1842. The Berlin Museum also owns a coloured plaster bust of an Urbino lady by Desiderio, the model for which is in the possession of the earl of Wemyss. Other important busts by the master are in the Bargello, Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the collections of M. Figdor and M. Benda in Vienna, and of M. Dreyfus in Paris. Like most of Donatello's pupils, Desiderio worked chiefly in marble, and not a single work in bronze has been traced to his hand.

See Wilhelm Bode, _Die italienische Plastik_ (Berlin, 1893).

DESIDERIUS, the last king of the Lombards, is chiefly known through his connexion with Charlemagne. He was duke of Tuscany and became king of the Lombards after the death of Aistulf in 756. Seeking, like his predecessors, to extend the Lombard power in Italy, he came into collision with the papacy, and about 772 the new pope, Adrian I., implored the aid of Charlemagne against him. Other causes of quarrel already existed between the Frankish and the Lombard kings. In 770 Charlemagne had married a daughter of Desiderius; but he soon put this lady away, and sent her back to her father. Moreover, Gerberga, the widow of Charlemagne's brother Carloman, had sought the protection of the Lombard king after her husband's death in 771; and in return for the slight cast upon his daughter, Desiderius had recognized Gerberga's sons as the lawful Frankish kings, and had attacked Adrian for refusing to crown them. Such was the position when Charlemagne led his troops across the Alps in 773, took the Lombard capital, Ticinum, the modern Pavia, in June 774, and added the kingdom of Lombardy to his own dominions. Desiderius was carried to France, where he died, and his son, Adalgis, spent his life in futile attempts to recover his father's kingdom. The name of Desiderius appears in the romances of the Carolingian period.

See S. Abel, _Untergang des Langobardenreichs_ (Göttingen, 1859); and _Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reiches unter Karl dem Grossen_ (Leipzig, 1865); L. M. Hartmann, _Geschichte Italiens im Mittelalter_ (Gotha, 1903); and Paulus Diaconus, _Historia Langobardorum_, edited by L. Bethmann and G. Waitz (Hanover, 1878).

DESIGN (Fr. _dessin_, drawing; Lat. _designare_, to mark out), in the arts, a drawing, more especially when made as a guide for the execution of work; that side of drawing which deals with arrangement rather than representation; and generally, by analogy, a deliberate planning, scheming or purpose. Modern use has tended to associate design with the word "original" in the sense of new or abnormal. The end of design, however, is properly utility, fitness and delight. If a discovery, it should be a discovery of what seems inevitable, an inspiration arising out of the conditions, and parallel to invention in the sciences. The faculty of design has best flourished when an almost spontaneous development was taking place in the arts, and while certain classes of arts, more or less noble, were generally demanded and the demand copiously satisfied, as in the production of Greek vases, Byzantine mosaics, Gothic cathedrals, and Renaissance paintings. Thus where a "school of design" arises there is much general likeness in the products but also a general progress. The common experience--"tradition"--is a part of each artist's stock in trade; and all are carried along in a stream of continuous exploration. Some of the arts, writing, for instance, have been little touched by conscious originality in design, all has been progress, or, at least, change, in response to conditions. Under such a system, in a time of progress, the proper limitations react as intensity; when limitations are removed the designer has less and less upon which to react, and unconditioned liberty gives him nothing at all to lean on. Design is response to needs, conditions and aspirations. The Greeks so well understood this that they appear to have consciously restrained themselves to the development of selected types, not only in architecture and literature, but in domestic arts, like pottery. Design with them was less the new than the true.

For the production of a school of design it is necessary that there should be a considerable body of artists working together, and a large demand from a sympathetic public. A process of continuous development is thus brought into being which sustains the individual effort. It is necessary for the designer to know familiarly the processes, the materials and the skilful use of the tools involved in the productions of a given art, and properly only one who practises a craft can design for it. It is necessary to enter into the traditions of the art, that is, to know past achievements. It is necessary, further, to be in relation with nature, the great reservoir of ideas, for it is from it that fresh thought will flow into all forms of art. These conditions being granted, the best and most useful meaning we can give to the word design is exploration, experiment, consideration of possibilities. Putting too high a value on originality other than this is to restrict natural growth from vital roots, in which true originality consists. To take design in architecture as an example, we have rested too much on definite precedent (a different thing from living tradition) and, on the other hand, hoped too much from newness. Exploration of the possibilities in arches, vaults, domes and the like, as a chemist or a mathematician explores, is little accepted as a method in architecture at this time, although in antiquity it was by such means that the great master-works were produced: the Pantheon, Santa Sophia, Durham and Amiens cathedrals. The same is true of all forms of design. Of course the genius and inspiration of the individual artist is not here ignored, but assumed. What we are concerned with is a mode of thought which shall make it most fruitful. (W. R. L.)

DESIRE, in popular usage, a term for a wishing or longing for something which one has not got. For its technical use see PSYCHOLOGY. The word is derived through the French from Lat. _desiderare_, to long or wish for, to miss. The substantive _desiderium_ has the special meaning of desire for something one has once possessed but lost, hence regret or grief. The usual explanation of the word is to connect it with _sidus_, star, as in _considerare_, to examine the stars with attention, hence, to look closely at. If this is so, the history of the transition in meaning is unknown. J. B. Greenough (_Harvard Studies in Classical Philology_, i. 96) has suggested that the word is a military slang term. According to this theory _desiderare_ meant originally to miss a soldier from the ranks at roll-call, the root being that seen in _sedere_, to sit, _sedes_, seat, place, &c.

DESK (from Lat. _discus_, quoit, in med. sense of "table," cf. "dish" and Ger. _Tisch_, table, from same source), any kind of flat or sloping table for writing or reading. Its earliest shape was probably that with which we are familiar in pictures of the monastic _scriptorium_--rather high and narrow with a sloping slab. The primitive desk had little accommodation for writing materials, and no storage room for papers; drawers, cupboards and pigeon-holes were the evolution of periods when writing grew common, and when letters and other documents requiring preservation became numerous. It was long the custom to secure papers in chests or cabinets, whereas the modern desk serves the double purpose of a writing-table and a storehouse for documents. The first development from the early stall-like desk consisted of the addition of a drawer; then the table came to be supported upon legs or columns, which, as in the many beautiful examples constructed by Boulle and his school, were often of elaborate grace. Eventually the legs were replaced by a series of superimposed drawers forming pedestals--hence the familiar pedestal writing-table.

For a long period there were two distinct contemporary forms of desk--the table and the bureau or escritoire. The latter shape attained a popularity so great that, especially in England and America, it was found even in houses in which there was little occasion for writing. The English-speaking people of the 18th century were amazingly fond of pieces of furniture which served a double or triple purpose. The bureau--the word is the French generic appellation for a desk--derives its name from the material with which it was originally covered (Fr. _bure_, woollen cloth). It consists of an upright carcass sloping inward at the top, and provided with long drawers below. The upper part is fitted with small drawers and pigeon-holes, and often with secret places, and the writing space is formed by a hinged slab supported on runners; when not in use this slab closes up the sloping top. During the 18th century innumerable thousands of these bureaux were made on both sides of the Atlantic--indeed, if we except tables and chairs, no piece of old furniture is more common. In the first part of that period they were usually of oak, but when mahogany was introduced into Europe it speedily ousted the heavier-looking wood. Its deep rich colour and the high polish of which it was capable added appreciably to its ornamental appearance. While the pigeon-holes and small drawers were used for papers, the long drawers were often employed for purposes other than literary. In time the bureau-secretaire became a bureau-bookcase, the glazed shelves, which were often a separate erection, resting upon the top of the bureau. The cabinetmakers of the second half of the 18th century, the period of the greatest _floraison_ of this combination, competed with each other in devising elegant frets for the glass fronts. Solid and satisfying to the eye, if somewhat severe in form, the mahogany bureau was usually an exceedingly presentable piece of furniture. Occasionally it had a _bombé_ front which mitigated its severity; this was especially the case in the Dutch varieties, which were in a measure free adaptations of the French Louis Quinze _commode_. These Dutch bureaux, and the English ones made in imitation of them, were usually elaborately inlaid with floral designs in coloured woods; but whereas the Batavian marquetry was often rough and crude, the English work was usually of considerable excellence. Side by side with this form of writing apparatus was one variety or another of the writing-table proper. In so far as it is possible to generalize upon such a detail it would appear that the bureau was the desk of the yeoman and what we now call the lower middle class, and that the slighter and more table-like forms were preferred by those higher in the social scale. This probably means no more than that while the one class preserved the old English affection for the solid and heavy furniture which would last for generations, those who were more free to follow the fashions and fancies of their time were, as the pecuniarily easy classes always have been, ready to abandon the old for the new.

Just about the time when the flat table with its drawers in a single row, or in nests serving as pedestals, was finally assuming its familiar modern shape, an invention was introduced which was destined eventually, so far as numbers and convenience go, to supersede all other forms of desk. This was the cylinder-top writing-table. Nothing is known of the originator of this device, but it is certain that if not French himself he worked in France. The historians of French furniture agree in fixing its introduction about the year 1750, and we know that a desk worked on this principle was in the possession of the French crown in the year 1760. Even in its early days the cylinder took more than one form. It sometimes consisted of a solid piece of curved wood, and sometimes of a tambour frame--that is to say, of a series of narrow jointed strips of wood mounted on canvas; the revolving shutters of a shop-front are an adaptation of the idea. For a long period, however, the cylinder was most often solid, and remained so until the latter part of the 19th century, when the "American roll-top desk" began to be made in large numbers. This is indeed the old French form with a tambour cylinder, and it is now the desk that is most frequently met with all over the world for commercial purposes. Its popularity is due to its large accommodation, and to the facility with which the closing of the cylinder conceals all papers, and automatically locks every drawer. To France we owe not only the invention of this ubiquitous form, but the construction of many of the finest and most historic desks that have survived--the characteristic marquetry writing-tables of the Boulle period, and the gilded splendours of that of Louis Quinze have never been surpassed in the history of furniture. Indeed, the "Bureau du roi" which was made for Louis XV. is the most famous and magnificent piece of furniture that, so far as we know, was ever constructed. This desk, which is now one of the treasures of the Louvre, was the work of several artist-artificers, chief among whom were Oeben and Riesener--Oeben, it may be added here as a matter of artistic interest, became the grandfather of Eugene Delacroix. The bureau is signed "Riesener fa. 1769 à l'Arsenal de Paris," but it has been established that, however great may have been the share of its construction which fell to him, the conception was that of Oeben. The work was ordered in 1760; it would thus appear that nine years were consumed in perfecting it, which is not surprising when we learn from the detailed account of its construction that the work began with making a perfect miniature model followed by one of full size. The "bureau du roi" is a large cylinder desk elaborately inlaid in marquetry of woods, and decorated with a wonderful and ornate series of mounts consisting of mouldings, plaques, vases and statuettes of gilt bronze cast and chased. These bronzes are the work of Duplessis, Winant and Hervieux. The desk, which shows plainly the transition between the Louis Quinze and Louis Seize styles, is as remarkable for the boldness of its conception as for the magnificent finish of its details. Its lines are large, flowing and harmonious, and although it is no longer exactly as it left the hands of its makers (Oeben died before it was finished) the alterations that have been made have hardly interfered with the general effect. For the head of the king for whom it was made that of Minerva in a helmet was substituted under his successor. The ciphers of Louis XV. have been removed and replaced by Sèvres plaques, and even the key which bore the king's initial crowned with laurels and palm leaves, with his portrait on the one side, and the fleur de lys on the other, has been interfered with by an austere republicanism. Yet no tampering with details can spoil the monumental nobility of this great conception. (J. P.-B.)

DESLONGCHAMPS, JACQUES AMAND EUDES- (1794-1867), French naturalist and palaeontologist, was born at Caen in Normandy on the 17th of January 1794. His parents, though poor, contrived to give him a good education, and he studied medicine in his native town to such good effect that in 1812 he was appointed assistant-surgeon in the navy, and in 1815 surgeon assistant major to the military hospital of Caen. Soon afterwards he proceeded to Paris to qualify for the degree of doctor of surgery, and there the researches and teachings of Cuvier attracted his attention to subjects of natural history and palaeontology. In 1822 he was elected surgeon to the board of relief at Caen, and while he never ceased to devote his energies to the duties of this post, he sought relaxation in geological studies. Soon he discovered remains of _Teleosaurus_ in one of the Caen quarries, and he became an ardent palaeontologist. He was one of the founders of the museum of natural history at Caen, and acted as honorary curator; he was likewise one of the founders of the _Sociétié linnéenne de Normandie_ (1823), to the transactions of which society he communicated papers on _Teleosaurus_, _Poekilopleuron_ (_Megalosaurus_), on Jurassic mollusca and brachiopoda. In 1825 he became professor of zoology to the faculty of sciences, and in 1847, dean. He died on the 17th of January 1867.

His son EUGÈNE EUDES-DESLONGCHAMPS (1830-1889), French palaeontologist, was born in 1830. He succeeded his father about the year 1856 as professor of zoology at the faculty of sciences at Caen, and in 1861 he became also professor of geology and dean. After the death of his father in 1867, he devoted himself to the completion of a memoir on the Teleosaurs: the joint labours being embodied in his _Prodrome des Téléosauriens du Calvados_. To the Société Linnéenne de Normandie he contributed memoirs on Jurassic brachiopods, on the geology of the department of La Manche (1856), of Calvados (1856-1863), on the _Terrain callovien_ (1859), on _Nouvelle-Calédonie_ (1864), and _Études sur les étages jurassiques inférieurs de la Normandie_ (1864). His work _Le Jura normand_ was issued in 1877-1878 (incomplete). He died at Château Matthieu, Calvados, on the 21st of December 1889.

DESMAISEAUX, PIERRE (1673-1745); French writer, was born at Saillat, probably in 1673. His father, a minister of the reformed church, had to leave France on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and took refuge in Geneva, where Pierre was educated. Bayle gave him an introduction to the 3rd Lord Shaftesbury, with whom, in 1699, he came to England, where he engaged in literary work. He remained in close touch with the religious refugees in England and Holland, and constantly in correspondence with the leading continental savants and writers, who were in the habit of employing him to conduct such business as they might have in England. In 1720 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Among his works are _Vie de St Evremond_ (1711), _Vie de Boileau-Despréaux_ (1712), _Vie de Bayle_ (1730). He also took an active

## part in preparing the _Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages de l'Europe_

(1728-1753), and the _Bibliothèque britannique_ (1733-1747), and edited a selection of St Evremond's writings (1706). Part of Desmaiseaux's correspondence is preserved in the British Museum, and other letters are in the royal library at Copenhagen. He died on the 11th of July 1745.

DESMAREST, NICOLAS (1725-1815), French geologist, was born at Soulaines, in the department of Aube, on the 16th of September 1725. Of humble parentage, he was educated at the college of the Oratorians of Troyes and Paris. Taking full advantage of the instruction he received, he was able to support himself by teaching, and to continue his studies independently. Buffon's _Theory of the Earth_ interested him, and in 1753 he successfully competed for a prize by writing an essay on the ancient connexion between England and France. This attracted much attention, and ultimately led to his being employed in studying and reporting on manufactures in different countries, and in 1788 to his appointment as inspector-general of the manufactures of France. He utilized his journeys, travelling on foot, so as to add to his knowledge of the earth's structure. In 1763 he made observations in Auvergne, recognizing that the prismatic basalts were old lava streams, comparing them with the columns of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and referring them to the operations of extinct volcanoes. It was not, however, until 1774 that he published an essay on the subject, accompanied by a geological map, having meanwhile on several occasions revisited the district. He then pointed out the succession of volcanic outbursts and the changes the rocks had undergone through weathering and erosion. As remarked by Sir A. Geikie, the doctrine of the origin of valleys by the erosive action of the streams which flow through them was first clearly taught by Desmarest. An enlarged and improved edition of his map of the volcanic region of Auvergne was published after his death, in 1823, by his son ANSELME GAËTAN DESMAREST (1784-1838), who was distinguished as a zoologist, and author of memoirs on recent and fossil crustacea. He died in Paris on the 20th of September 1815.

See _The Founders of Geology_, by Sir A. Geikie (1897), pp. 48-78. (H. B. Wo.)

DESMARETS (or DESMARETZ), JEAN, SIEUR DE SAINT-SORLIN (1595-1676), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris in 1595. When he was about thirty he was introduced to Richelieu, and became one of the band of writers who carried out the cardinal's literary ideas. Desmarets's own inclination was to novel-writing, and the success of his romance _Ariane_ in 1631 led to his formal admission to the circle that met at the house of Valentine Conrart and later developed into the Académie Française. Desmarets was its first chancellor. It was at Richelieu's request that he began to write for the theatre. In this kind he produced a comedy long regarded as a masterpiece, _Les Visionnaires_ (1637); a prose-tragedy, _Érigone_ (1638); and _Scipion_ (1639), a tragedy in verse. His success led to official preferment, and he was made _conseiller du roi_, _contrôleur-général de l'extraordinaire des guerres_, and secretary-general of the fleet of the Levant. His long epic _Clovis_ (1657) is noteworthy because Desmarets rejected the traditional pagan background, and maintained that Christian imagery should supplant it. With this standpoint he contributed several works in defence of the moderns in the famous quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns. In his later years Desmarets devoted himself chiefly to producing a quantity of religious poems, of which the best-known is perhaps his verse translation of the _Office de la Vierge_ (1645). He was a violent opponent of the Jansenists, against whom he wrote a _Réponse à l'insolente apologie de Port-Royal ..._ (1666). He died in Paris on the 28th of October 1676.

See also H. Rigault, _Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes_ (1856), pp. 80-103.

DESMARETS, NICOLAS, SIEUR DE MAILLEBOIS (1648-1721), French statesman, was born in Paris on the 10th of September 1648. His mother was the sister of J. B. Colbert, who took him into his offices as a clerk. He became counsellor to the parlement in 1672, master of requests in 1674 and intendant of finances in 1678. In these last functions he had to treat with the financiers for the coinage of new silver pieces of four sous. After Colbert's death he was involved in the legal proceedings taken against those financiers who had manufactured coins of bad alloy. The prosecution, conducted by the members of the family of Le Tellier, rivals of the Colberts, presented no proof against Desmarets. Nevertheless he was stripped of his offices and exiled to his estates by the king, on the 23rd of December 1683. In March 1686 he was authorized to return to Paris, and again entered into relations with the controllers-general of finance, to whom he furnished for more than ten years remarkable memoirs on the economic situation in France. As early as 1687 he showed the necessity for radical reforms in the system of taxation, insisting on the ruin of the people and the excessive expenses of the king. By these memoirs he established his claim to a place among the great economists of the time, Vauban, Boisguilbert and the comte de Boulainvilliers. When in September 1699 Chamillart was named controller-general of finances, he took Desmarets for counsellor; and when he created the two offices of directors of finances, he gave one to Desmarets (October 22, 1703). Henceforth Desmarets was veritable minister of finance. Louis XIV. had long conversations with him. Madame de Maintenon protected him. The economists Vauban and Boisguilbert exchanged long conversations with him. When Chamillart found his double functions too heavy, and retaining the ministry of war resigned that of finance in 1708, Desmarets succeeded him. The situation was exceedingly grave. The ordinary revenues of the year 1708 amounted to 81,977,007 livres, of which 57,833,233 livres had already been spent by anticipation, and the expenses to meet were 200,251,447 livres. In 1709 a famine reduced still more the returns from taxes. Yet Desmarets's reputation renewed the credit of the state, and financiers consented to advance money they had refused to the king. The emission of paper money, and a reform in the collection of taxes, enabled him to tide over the years 1709 and 1710. Then Desmarets decided upon an "extreme and violent remedy," to use his own expression,--an income tax. His "tenth" was based on Vauban's plan; but the privileged classes managed to avoid it, and it proved no better than other expedients. Nevertheless Louis XIV. managed to meet the most urgent expenses, and the deficit of 1715, about 350,000,000 livres, was much less than it would have been had it not been for Desmarets's reforms. The honourable peace which Louis was enabled to conclude at Utrecht with his enemies was certainly due to the resources which Desmarets procured for him.

After the death of Louis XIV. Desmarets was dismissed by the regent along with all the other ministers. He withdrew to his estates. To justify his ministry he addressed to the regent a _Compte rendu_, which showed clearly the difficulties he had to meet. His enemies even, like Saint Simon, had to recognize his honesty and his talent. He was certainly, after Colbert, the greatest finance minister of Louis XIV.

See Forbonnais, _Recherches et considérations sur les finances de la France_ (2 vols., Basel, 1758); Montyon, _Particularités et observations sur les ministres des finances de la France_ (Paris, 1812); De Boislisle, _Correspondance des contrôleurs-généraux des finances_ (3 vols., Paris, 1873-1897); and the same author's "Desmarets et l'affaire des pièces de quatre sols" in the appendix to the seventh volume of his edition of the _Mémoires de Saint-Simon_. (E. Es.)

DES MOINES, the capital and the largest city of Iowa, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Polk county, in the south central part of the state, at the confluence of the Raccoon with the Des Moines river. Pop. (1890) 50,093; (1900) 62,139, of whom 7946 were foreign-born, including 1907 from Sweden and 1432 from Germany; (1910 census) 86,368. Des Moines is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago Great Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Wabash, the Minneapolis & St Louis, and the Des Moines, Iowa Falls & Northern railways; also by several interurban electric lines. The chief building in Des Moines is the State Capitol, erected at a cost of about $3,000,000; other important buildings are the public library (containing, in 1908, 40,415 volumes), the court house, the post office, the Iowa State Historical building, a large auditorium and two hospitals. As a manufacturing centre the city has considerable importance. Among the leading products are those of the furnaces, foundries and machine shops, flour and grist mills, planing mills, creameries, bridge and iron works, publishing houses and a packing house; and brick, tile, pottery, patent medicines, furniture, caskets, tombstones, carriages, farm machinery, Portland cement, glue, gloves and hosiery. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $15,084,958, an increase of 79.7% in five years. The city is in one of the most productive coal regions of the state, has a large jobbing trade, and is an important centre for the insurance business. The Iowa state fair is held here annually. In 1908 this city had a park system of 750 acres. Des Moines is the seat of Des Moines College, a Baptist institution, co-educational, founded in 1865 (enrolment, 1907-1908, 214); of Drake University (co-educational; founded in 1881 by the Disciples of Christ; now non-sectarian), with colleges of liberal arts, law, medicine, dental surgery and of the Bible, a conservatory of music, and a normal school, in which are departments of oratory and commercial training, and having in 1907-1908 1764 students, of whom 520 were in the summer school only; of the Highland Park College, founded in 1890; of Grand View College (Danish Lutheran), founded in 1895; and of the Capital City commercial college (founded 1884). A new city charter, embodying what has become known as the "Des Moines Plan" of municipal government, was adopted in 1907. It centralizes power in a council of five (mayor and four councilmen), nominated at a non-partisan primary and voted for on a non-partisan ticket by the electors of the entire city, ward divisions having been abolished. Elections are biennial. Other city officers are chosen by the council, and city employees are selected by a civil service commission of three members, appointed by the council. The mayor is superintendent of the department of public affairs, and each of the other administrative departments (accounts and finances, public safety, streets and public improvements, and parks and public property) is under the charge of one of the councilmen. After petition signed by a number of voters not less than 25% of the number voting at the preceding municipal election, any member of the council may be removed by popular vote, to which all public franchises must be submitted, and by which the council may be compelled to pass any law or ordinance.

A fort called Fort Des Moines was established on the site of the city in 1843 to protect the rights of the Sacs and Foxes. In 1843 the site was opened to settlement by the whites; in 1851 Des Moines was incorporated as a town; in 1857 it was first chartered as a city, and, for the purpose of a more central location, the seat of government was removed hither from Iowa City. A fort was re-established here by act of Congress in 1900 and named Fort Des Moines. It is occupied by a full regiment of cavalry. The name of the city was taken from that of the river, which in turn is supposed to represent a corruption by the French of the original Indian name, _Moingona_,--the French at first using the abbreviation "moin," and calling the river "_la rivière des moins_" and then, the name having become associated with the Trappist monks, changing it into "_la rivière des moines_."

DESMOND, GERALD FITZGERALD, 15TH EARL OF (d. 1583), Irish leader, was son of James, 14th earl, by his second wife More O'Carroll. His father had agreed in January 1541, as one of the terms of his submission to Henry VIII., to send young Gerald to be educated in England. At the accession of Edward VI. proposals to this effect were renewed; Gerald was to be the companion of the young king. Unfortunately for the subsequent peace of Munster these projects were not carried out. The Desmond estates were held by a doubtful title, and claims on them were made by the Butlers, the hereditary enemies of the Geraldines, the 9th earl of Ormonde having married Lady Joan Fitzgerald, daughter and heiress-general of the 11th earl of Desmond. On Ormonde's death she proposed to marry Gerald Fitzgerald, and eventually did so, after the death of her second husband, Sir Francis Bryan. The effect of this marriage was a temporary cessation of open hostility between the Desmonds and her son, Thomas Butler, 10th earl of Ormonde.

Gerald succeeded to the earldom in 1558; he was knighted by the lord deputy Sussex, and did homage at Waterford. He soon established close relations with his namesake Gerald Fitzgerald, 11th earl of Kildare (1525-1585), and with Shane O'Neill. In spite of an award made by Sussex in August 1560 regulating the matters in dispute between Ormonde and the Fitzgeralds, the Geraldine outlaws were still plundering their neighbours. Desmond neglected a summons to appear at Elizabeth's court for some time on the plea that he was at war with his uncle Maurice. When he did appear in London in May 1562 his insolent conduct before the privy council resulted in a short imprisonment in the Tower. He was detained in England until 1564, and soon after his return his wife's death set him free from such restraint as was provided by her Butler connexion. He now raided Thomond, and in Waterford he sought to enforce his feudal rights on Sir Maurice Fitzgerald of Decies, who invoked the help of Ormonde. The two nobles thereupon resorted to open war, fighting a battle at Affane on the Blackwater, where Desmond was defeated and taken prisoner. Ormonde and Desmond were bound over in London to keep the peace, being allowed to return early in 1566 to Ireland, where a royal commission was appointed to settle the matters in dispute between them. Desmond and his brother Sir John of Desmond were sent over to England, where they surrendered their lands to the queen after a short experience of the Tower. In the meanwhile Desmond's cousin, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, caused himself to be acclaimed captain of Desmond in defiance of Sidney, and in the evident expectation of usurping the earldom. He sought to give the movement an ultra-Catholic character, with the idea of gaining foreign assistance, and allied himself with John Burke, son of the earl of Clanricarde, with Connor O'Brien, earl of Thomond, and even secured Ormonde's brother, Sir Edmund Butler, whom Sidney had offended. Piers and Edward Butler also joined the rebellion, but the appearance of Sidney and Ormonde in the south-west was rapidly followed by the submission of the Butlers. Most of the Geraldines were subjugated by Humphrey Gilbert, but Fitzmaurice remained in arms, and in 1571 Sir John Perrot undertook to reduce him. Perrot hunted him down, and at last on the 23rd of February 1573 he made formal submission at Kilmallock, lying prostrate on the floor of the church by way of proving his sincerity.

Against the advice of the queen's Irish counsellors Desmond was allowed to return to Ireland in 1573, the earl promising not to exercise palatinate jurisdiction in Kerry until his rights to it were proved. He was detained for six months in Dublin, but in November slipped through the hands of the government, and within a very short time had reduced to a state of anarchy the province which Perrot thought to have pacified by his severities. Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the earl of Kildare, and lieutenant of the queen's pensioners in London, was sent to remonstrate with Desmond, but accomplished nothing. Desmond asserted that none but Brehon law should be observed between Geraldines; and Fitzmaurice seized Captain George Bourchier, one of Elizabeth's officers in the west. Essex met the earl near Waterford in July, and Bourchier was surrendered, but Desmond refused the other demands made in the queen's name. A document offering £500 for his head, and £1000 to any one who would take him alive, was drawn up but was vetoed by two members of the council. On the 18th of July 1574 the Geraldine chiefs signed the "Combination" promising to support the earl unconditionally; shortly afterwards Ormonde and the lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, marched on Munster, and put Desmond's garrison at Derrinlaur Castle to the sword. Desmond submitted at Cork on the 2nd of September, handing over his estates to trustees. Sir Henry Sidney visited Munster in 1575, and affairs seemed to promise an early restoration of order. But Fitzmaurice had fled to Brittany in company with other leading Geraldines, John Fitzgerald, seneschal of Imokilly, who had held Ballymartyr against Sidney in 1567, and Edmund Fitzgibbon, the son of the White Knight who had been attainted in 1571. He intrigued at the French and Spanish courts for a foreign invasion of Ireland, and at Rome met the adventurer Stucley, with whom he projected an expedition which was to make a nephew of Gregory XIII. king of Ireland. In 1579 he landed in Smerwick Bay, where he was joined later by some Spanish soldiers at the Fort del Ore. His ships were captured on the 29th of July and he himself was slain in a skirmish while on his way to Tipperary. Nicholas Sanders, the papal legate who had accompanied Fitzmaurice, worked on Desmond's weakness, and sought to draw him into open rebellion. Desmond had perhaps been restrained before by jealousy of Fitzmaurice; his indecisions ceased when on the 1st of November Sir William Pelham proclaimed him a traitor. The sack of Youghal and Kinsale by the Geraldines was speedily followed by the successes of Ormonde and Pelham acting in concert with Admiral Winter. In June 1581 Desmond had to take to the woods, but he maintained a considerable following for some time, which, however, in June 1583, when Ormonde set a price on his head, was reduced to four persons. Five months later, on the 11th of November, he was seized and murdered by a small party of soldiers. His brother Sir John of Desmond had been caught and killed in December 1581, and the seneschal of Imokilly had surrendered on the 14th of June 1583. After his submission the seneschal acted loyally, but his lands excited envy; he was arrested in 1587, and died in Dublin Castle two days later.

By his second marriage with Eleanor Butler, the 15th earl left two sons, the elder of whom, James, 16th earl (1570-1601), spent most of his life in prison. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1600-1601 to recover his inheritance he returned to England, where he died, the title becoming extinct.

See G. E. C(okayne,) _Complete Peerage_; R. Bagwell, _Ireland under the Tudors_ (1885-1890); _Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters_ (ed. J. O'Donovan, 1851); and the article FITZGERALD.

DESMOND (_Des-Mumha_), an ancient territorial division of Ireland, covering the eastern part of the modern Co. Kerry and the western part of Co. Cork. Its creation as a kingdom is placed in the year 248, when Oliol Olum, king of Munster, divided his territory between his two sons, giving Desmond to Eoghan, and Thomond or North Munster to Cormac. In 1329 Maurice Fitzthomas or Fitzgerald (d. 1356), lord of Decies and Desmond, was created 1st earl of Desmond by Edward III.; like other earls created about that time he ruled his territory as a palatinate, and his family acquired enormous powers and a large measure of independence. Meanwhile native kings continued to reign in a restricted territory until 1596. In 1583 came the attainder of Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th earl of Desmond (q.v.), and in 1586 an act of parliament declared the forfeiture of the Desmond estates to the crown. In 1571 a commission provided for the formation of Desmond into a county, and it was regarded as such for a few years, but by the beginning of the 17th century it was joined to Co. Kerry.

In 1619 the title of earl of Desmond was conferred on Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall, at whose death in 1628 it again became extinct. It was then bestowed on George Feilding, second son of William, earl of Denbigh, who had held the reversion of the earldom from 1622. His son William Feilding succeeded as earl of Denbigh in 1675, and thenceforward the title of Desmond was held in conjunction with that honour.

DESMOSCOLECIDA, a group of minute marine worm-like creatures. The body tapers towards each end and is marked by a number of well-defined ridges. These ridges resemble on a small scale those which surround the body of a _Porocephalus_ (Linguatulida), and like them have no segmental significance. Their number varies in the different species. The head bears four setae, and some of the ridges bear a pair either dorsally or ventrally. The setae are movable. Two pigment spots between the fourth and fifth ridges are regarded as eyes. The Desmoscolecida move by looping their bodies like geometrid caterpillars or leeches, as well as by creeping on their setae. The mouth is terminal, and leads into a muscular oesophagus which opens into a straight intestine terminating in an anus, which is said to be dorsal in position. The sexes are distinct. The testis is single, and its duct opens into the intestine and is provided with two chitinous spicules. The ovary is also single, opening independently and anterior to the anus. The nervous system is as yet unknown.

[Illustration:

From _Cambridge Natural History_, vol. ii., "Worms," &c., by permission of Macmillian & Co. Ltd.

Female _Desmoscolex elongatus_ Panceri, ventral view. a, Ovary. (From Panceri.)]

There are several species. _D. minutus_ Clap. has been met with in the English Channel. Others are _D. nematoides_ Greef, _D. adelphus_ Greef, _D. chaetogaster_ Greef, _D. elongatus_ Panceri, _D. lanuginosa_ Panceri. _Trichoderma oxycaudatum_ Greef is 0.3 mm. long, and is also a "ringed creature with long hair-like bristles." The male has two spicules, and there is some doubt as to whether it should be placed with the Desmoscolecida or with the Nematoda. With regard to the systematic position of the group, it certainly comes nearest--especially in the structure of its reproductive organs--to the Nematoda. We still, however, are very ignorant of the internal anatomy of these forms, and until we know more it is impossible to arrive at a very definite conclusion as to their position in the animal kingdom.

See Panceri, _Atti Acc. Napoli._ vii. (1878); Greef, _Arch. Naturg._ 35 (i.) (1869), p. 112. (A. E. S.)

DESMOULINS, LUCIE SIMPLICE CAMILLE BENOIST (1760-1794), French journalist and politician, who played an important part in the French Revolution, was born at Guise, in Picardy, on the 2nd of March 1760. His father was lieutenant-general of the _bailliage_ of Guise, and through the efforts of a friend obtained a _bourse_ for his son, who at the age of fourteen left home for Paris, and entered the college of Louis le Grand. In this school, in which Robespierre was also a bursar and a distinguished student, Camille Desmoulins laid the solid foundation of his learning. Destined by his father for the law, at the completion of his legal studies he was admitted an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785. His professional success was not great; his manner was violent, his appearance unattractive, and his speech impaired by a painful stammer. He indulged, however, his love for literature, was closely observant of public affairs, and thus gradually prepared himself for the main duties of his life--those of a political _littérateur_.

In March 1789 Desmoulins began his political career. Having been nominated deputy from the _bailliage_ of Guise, he appeared at Laon as one of the commissioners for the election of deputies to the States-General summoned by royal edict of January 24th. Camille heralded its meeting by his _Ode to the States-General_. It is, moreover, highly probable that he was the author of a radical pamphlet entitled _La Philosophie au peuple français_, published in 1788, the text of which is not known. His hopes of professional success were now scattered, and he was living in Paris in extreme poverty. He, however, shared to the full the excitement which attended the meeting of the States-General. As appears from his letters to his father, he watched with exultation the procession of deputies at Versailles, and with violent indignation the events of the latter part of June which followed the closing of the Salle des Menus to the deputies who had named themselves the National Assembly. It is further evident that Desmoulins was already sympathizing, not only with the enthusiasm, but also with the fury and cruelty, of the Parisian crowds.

The sudden dismissal of Necker by Louis XVI. was the event which brought Desmoulins to fame. On the 12th of July 1789 Camille, leaping upon a table outside one of the cafés in the garden of the Palais Royal, announced to the crowd the dismissal of their favourite. Losing, in his violent excitement, his stammer, he inflamed the passions of the mob by his burning words and his call "To arms!" "This dismissal," he said, "is the tocsin of the St Bartholomew of the patriots." Drawing, at last, two pistols from under his coat, he declared that he would not fall alive into the hands of the police who were watching his movements. He descended amid the embraces of the crowd, and his cry "To arms!" resounded on all sides. This scene was the beginning of the actual events of the Revolution. Following Desmoulins the crowd surged through Paris, procuring arms by force; and on the 13th it was partly organized as the Parisian militia which was afterwards to be the National Guard. On the 14th the Bastille was taken.

Desmoulins may be said to have begun on the following day that public literary career which lasted till his death. In May and June 1789 he had written _La France libre_, which, to his chagrin, his publisher refused to print. The taking of the Bastille, however, and the events by which it was preceded, were a sign that the times had changed; and on the 18th of July Desmoulins's work was issued. Considerably in advance of public opinion, it already pronounced in favour of a republic. By its erudite, brilliant and courageous examination of the rights of king, of nobles, of clergy and of people, it attained a wide and sudden popularity; it secured for the author the friendship and protection of Mirabeau, and the studied abuse of numerous royalist pamphleteers. Shortly afterwards, with his vanity and love of popularity inflamed, he pandered to the passions of the lower orders by the publication of his _Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens_ which, with an almost fiendish reference to the excesses of the mob, he headed by a quotation from St John, _Qui male agit odit lucem_. Camille was dubbed "Procureur-général de la lanterne."

In November 1789 Desmoulins began his career as a journalist by the issue of the first number of a weekly publication, _Les Révolutions de France et de Brabant_. The title of the publication changed after the 73rd number. It ceased to appear at the end of July 1791.[1]

Success attended the _Révolutions_ from its first to its last number, Camille was everywhere famous, and his poverty was relieved. These numbers are valuable as an exhibition not so much of events as of the feelings of the Parisian people; they are adorned, moreover, by the erudition, the wit and the genius of the author, but they are disfigured, not only by the most biting personalities and the defence and even advocacy of the excesses of the mob, but by the entire absence of the forgiveness and pity for which the writer was afterwards so eloquently to plead.

Desmoulins was powerfully swayed by the influence of more vigorous minds; and for some time before the death of Mirabeau, in April 1791, he had begun to be led by Danton, with whom he remained associated during the rest of his life. In July 1791 Camille appeared before the municipality of Paris as head of a deputation of petitioners for the deposition of the king. In that month, however, such a request was dangerous; there was excitement in the city over the presentation of the petition, and the private attacks to which Desmoulins had often been subject were now followed by a warrant for the arrest of himself and Danton. Danton left Paris for a little; Desmoulins, however, remained there, appearing occasionally at the Jacobin club. Upon the failure of this attempt of his opponents, Desmoulins published a pamphlet, _Jean Pierre Brissot démasqué_, which abounded in the most violent personalities. This pamphlet, which had its origin in a petty squabble, was followed in 1793 by a _Fragment de l'histoire secrète de la Révolution_, in which the party of the Gironde, and specially Brissot, were most mercilessly attacked. Desmoulins took an active part on the 10th of August and became secretary to Danton, when the latter became minister of justice. On the 8th of September he was elected one of the deputies for Paris to the National Convention, where, however, he was not successful as an orator. He was of the party of the "Mountain," and voted for the abolition of royalty and the death of the king. With Robespierre he was now more than ever associated, and the _Histoire des Brissotins_, the fragment above alluded to, was inspired by the arch-revolutionist. The success of the _brochure_, so terrible as to send the leaders of the Gironde to the guillotine, alarmed Danton and the author. Yet the role of Desmoulins during the Convention was of but secondary importance.

In December 1793 was issued the first number of the _Vieux Cordelier_, which was at first directed against the Hébertists and approved of by Robespierre, but which soon formulated Danton's idea of a committee of clemency. Then Robespierre turned against Desmoulins and took advantage of the popular indignation roused against the Hébertists to send them to death. The time had come, however, when Saint Just and he were to turn their attention not only to _les enragés_, but to _les indulgents_--the powerful faction of the Dantonists. On the 7th of January 1794 Robespierre, who on a former occasion had defended Camille when in danger at the hands of the National Convention, in addressing the Jacobin club counselled not the expulsion of Desmoulins, but the burning of certain numbers of the _Vieux Cordelier_. Camille sharply replied that he would answer with Rousseau,--"burning is not answering," and a bitter quarrel thereupon ensued. By the end of March not only were Hébert and the leaders of the extreme party guillotined, but their opponents, Danton, Desmoulins and the best of the moderates, were arrested. On the 31st the warrant of arrest was signed and executed, and on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of April the trial took place before the Revolutionary Tribunal. It was a scene of terror not only to the accused but to judges and to jury. The retorts of the prisoners were notable. Camille on being asked his age, replied, "I am thirty-three, the age of the _sans-culotte_ Jesus, a critical age for every patriot." This was false; he was thirty-four.[2] The accused were prevented from defending themselves; a decree of the Convention denied them the right of speech. Armed with this and the false report of a spy, who charged the wife of Desmoulins with conspiring for the escape of her husband and the ruin of the republic, Fouquier-Tinville by threats and entreaties obtained from the jury a sentence of death. It was passed in absence of the accused, and their execution was appointed for the same day.

Since his arrest the courage of Camille had miserably failed. He had exhibited in the numbers of the _Vieux Cordelier_ almost a disregard of the death which he must have known hovered over him. He had with consummate ability exposed the terrors of the Revolution, and had adorned his pages with illustrations from Tacitus, the force of which the commonest reader could feel. In his last number, the seventh, which his publisher refused to print, he had dared to attack even Robespierre, but at his trial it was found that he was devoid of physical courage. He had to be torn from his seat ere he was removed to prison, and as he sat next to Danton in the tumbrel which conveyed them to the guillotine, the calmness of the great leader failed to impress him. In his violence, bound as he was, he tore his clothes into shreds, and his bare shoulders and breast were exposed to the gaze of the surging crowd. Of the fifteen guillotined together, including among them Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles, François Joseph Westermann and Pierre Philippeaux, Desmoulins died third; Danton, the greatest, died last.

On the 29th of December 1790 Camille had married Lucile Duplessis, and among the witnesses of the ceremony are observed the names of Brissot, Pétion and Robespierre. The only child of the marriage, Horace Camille, was born on the 6th of July 1792. Two days afterwards Desmoulins brought it into notice by appearing with it before the municipality of Paris to demand "the formal statement of the civil estate of his son." The boy was afterwards pensioned by the French government, and died in Haiti in 1825. Lucile, Desmoulins's accomplished and affectionate wife, was, a few days after her husband, and on a false charge, condemned to the guillotine. She astonished all onlookers by the calmness with which she braved death (April 13, 1794).

See J. Claretie, _OEuvres de Camille Desmoulins avec une étude biographique ..._ &c. (Paris, 1874), and _Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins, étude sur les Dantonistes_ (Paris, 1875; Eng. trans., London, 1876); F. A. Aulard, _Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention_ (Paris, 1905, 2nd ed.): G. Lenôtre, "La Maison de Camille Desmoulins" (_Le Temps_, March 25, 1899).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In April 1792 Desmoulins founded with Stanislas Fréron a new journal, _La Tribune des patriotes_, but only four numbers appeared.

[2] This is borne out by the register of his birth and baptism, and by words in his last letter to his wife,--"I die at thirty-four." The dates (1762-1794) given in so many biographies of Desmoulins are certainly inaccurate.

DESNOYERS, JULES PIERRE FRANÇOIS STANISLAS (1800-1887), French geologist and archaeologist, was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou, in the department of Eure-et-Loir, on the 8th of October 1800. Becoming interested in geology at an early age, he was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France in 1830. In 1834 he was appointed librarian of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. His contributions to geological science comprise memoirs on the Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata of the Paris Basin and of Northern France, and other papers relating to the antiquity of man, and to the question of his co-existence with extinct mammalia. His separate books were _Sur la Craie et sur les terrains tertiaires du Cotentin_ (1825), _Recherches géologiques et historiques sur les cavernes_ (1845). He died in 1887.

DESOR, PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD (1811-1882), Swiss geologist, was born at Friedrichsdorf, near Frankfort-on-Main, on the 13th of February 1811. Associated in early years with Agassiz he studied palaeontology and glacial phenomena, and in company with J. D. Forbes ascended the Jungfrau in 1841. Desor afterwards became professor of geology in the academy at Neuchâtel, continued his studies on the structure of glaciers, but gave special attention to the study of Jurassic Echinoderms. He also investigated the old lake-habitations of Switzerland, and made important observations on the physical features of the Sahara. Having inherited considerable property he retired to Combe Varin in Val Travers. He died at Nizza on the 23rd of February 1882. His chief publications were: _Synopsis des Échinides fossiles_ (1858), _Aus Sahara_ (1865), _Der Gebirgsbau der Alpen_ (1865), _Die Pfahlbauten des Neuenburger Sees_ (1866), _Échinologie helvétique_ (2 vols., 1868-1873, with P. de Loriol).

DE SOTO, a city of Jefferson county, Missouri, U.S.A., on Joachim Creek, 42 m. S.S.W. of St Louis. Pop. (1890) 3960; (1900) 5611 (332 being foreign-born and 364 negroes); (1910) 4721. It is served by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railway, which has extensive repair shops here. About 2½ m. from De Soto is the Bochert mineral spring. In De Soto are Mount St Clement's College (Roman Catholic, 1900), a theological seminary of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer under the charge of the Redemptorist Fathers, and a Young Men's Christian Association building. De Soto is in a good agricultural and fruit-growing region, which produces Indian corn, apples, plums, pears and small fruit. Lead and zinc are mined in the vicinity and shipped from the city in considerable quantities; and among the city's manufactures are shoes, flour and agricultural implements. The municipality owns the water-works, the water supply of which is furnished by artesian wells. De Soto was laid out in 1855 and was incorporated in 1869.

DESPARD, EDWARD MARCUS (1751-1803), Irish conspirator, was born in Queen's Co., Ireland, in 1751. In 1766 he entered the British navy, was promoted lieutenant in 1772, and stationed at Jamaica, where he soon proved himself to have considerable engineering talent. He served in the West Indies with credit, being promoted captain after the San Juan expedition (1779), then made governor of the Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras, and in 1782 commander of a successful expedition against the Spanish possessions on the Black river. In 1784 he took over the administration of Yucatan. Upon frivolous charges he was suspended by Lord Grenville, and recalled to England. From 1790 to 1792 these charges were held over him, and when dismissed no compensation was forthcoming. His complaints caused him to be arrested in 1798; and with a short interval he remained in gaol until 1800. By that time Despard was desperate, and engaged in a plot to seize the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate George III. The whole idea was patently preposterous, but Despard was arrested, tried before a special commission, found guilty of high treason, and, with six of his fellow-conspirators, sentenced in 1803 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These were the last men to be so sentenced in England. Despard was executed on the 21st of February 1803.

His eldest brother, JOHN DESPARD (1745-1829), had a long and distinguished career in the British army; gazetted an ensign in 1760, he was promoted through the various intermediate grades and became general in 1814. His most active service was in the American War of Independence, during which he was twice made prisoner.

DESPENSER, HUGH LE (d. 1265), chief justiciar of England, first plays an important part in 1258, when he was prominent on the baronial side in the Mad Parliament of Oxford. In 1260 the barons chose him to succeed Hugh Bigod as justiciar, and in 1263 the king was further compelled to put the Tower of London in his hands. On the outbreak of civil war he joined the party of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and led the Londoners when they sacked the manor-house of Isleworth, belonging to Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans. Having fought at Lewes (1264) he was made governor of six castles after the battle, and was then appointed one of the four arbitrators to mediate between Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester. He was summoned to Simon de Montfort's parliament in 1264, and acted as justiciar throughout the earl's dictatorship. Despenser was killed at Evesham in August 1265.

See C. Bémont, _Simon de Montfort_ (Paris, 1884); T. F. Tout in _Owens College Historical Essays_, pp. 76 ff. (Manchester, 1902).

DESPENSER, HUGH LE (1262-1326), English courtier, was a son of the English justiciar who died at Evesham. He fought for Edward I. in Wales, France and Scotland, and in 1295 was summoned to parliament as a baron. Ten years later he was sent by the king to Pope Clement V. to secure Edward's release from the oaths he had taken to observe the charters in 1297. Almost alone Hugh spoke out for Edward II.'s favourite, Piers Gaveston, in 1308; but after Gaveston's death in 1312 he himself became the king's chief adviser, holding power and influence until Edward's defeat at Bannockburn in 1314. Then, hated by the barons, and especially by Earl Thomas of Lancaster, as a deserter from their party, he was driven from the council, but was quickly restored to favour and loaded with lands and honours, being made earl of Winchester in 1322. Before this time Hugh's son, the younger Hugh le Despenser, had become associated with his father, and having been appointed the king's chamberlain was enjoying a still larger share of the royal favour. About 1306 this baron had married Eleanor (d. 1337), one of the sisters and heiresses of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, who was slain at Bannockburn; and after a division of the immense Clare lands had been made in 1317 violent quarrels broke out between the Despensers and the husbands of the other heiresses, Roger of Amory and Hugh of Audley. Interwoven with this dispute was another between the younger Despenser and the Mowbrays, who were supported by Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, about some lands in Glamorganshire. Fighting having begun in Wales and on the Welsh borders, the English barons showed themselves decidedly hostile to the Despensers, and in 1321 Edward II. was obliged to consent to their banishment. While the elder Hugh left England the younger one remained; soon the king persuaded the clergy to annul the sentence against them, and father and son were again at court. They fought against the rebellious barons at Boroughbridge, and after Lancaster's death in 1322 they were practically responsible for the government of the country, which they attempted to rule in a moderate and constitutional fashion. But their next enemy, Queen Isabella, was more formidable, or more fortunate, than Lancaster. Returning to England after a sojourn in France in 1326 the queen directed her arms against her husband's favourites. The elder Despenser was seized at Bristol, where he was hanged on the 27th of October 1326, and the younger was taken with the king at Llantrisant and hanged at Hereford on the 24th of November following. The attainder against the Despensers was reversed in 1398. The intense hatred with which the barons regarded the Despensers was due to the enormous wealth which had passed into their hands, and to the arrogance and rapacity of the younger Hugh.

The younger Despenser left two sons, Hugh (1308-1349), and Edward, who was killed at Vannes in 1342.

The latter's son EDWARD LE DESPENSER (d. 1375) fought at the battle of Poitiers, and then in Italy for Pope Urban V.; he was a patron of Froissart, who calls him _le grand sire Despensier_. His son, THOMAS LE DESPENSER (1373-1400), the husband of Constance (d. 1416), daughter of Edmund of Langley, duke of York, supported Richard II. against Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, and the other lords appellant in 1397, when he himself was created earl of Gloucester, but he deserted the king in 1399. Then, degraded from his earldom for participating in Gloucester's death, Despenser joined the conspiracy against Henry IV., but he was seized and was executed by a mob at Bristol in January 1400.

The elder Edward le Despenser left another son, HENRY (c. 1341-1406), who became bishop of Norwich in 1370. In early life Henry had been a soldier, and when the peasants revolted in 1381 he took readily to the field, defeated the insurgents at North Walsham, and suppressed the rising in Norfolk with some severity. More famous, however, was the militant bishop's enterprise on behalf of Pope Urban VI., who in 1382 employed him to lead a crusade in Flanders against the supporters of the anti-pope Clement VII. He was very successful in capturing towns until he came before Ypres, where he was checked, his humiliation being completed when his army was defeated by the French and decimated by a pestilence. Having returned to England the bishop was impeached in parliament and was deprived of his lands; Richard II., however, stood by him, and he soon regained an influential place in the royal council, and was employed to defend his country on the seas. Almost alone among his peers Henry remained true to Richard in 1399; he was then imprisoned, but was quickly released and reconciled with the new king, Henry IV. He died on the 23rd of August 1406. Despenser was an active enemy of the Lollards, whose leader, John Wycliffe, had fiercely denounced his crusade in Flanders.

The barony of Despenser, called out of abeyance in 1604, was held by the Fanes, earls of Westmorland, from 1626 to 1762; by the notorious Sir Francis Dashwood from 1763 to 1781; and by the Stapletons from 1788 to 1891. In 1891 it was inherited, through his mother, by the 7th Viscount Falmouth.

DES PÉRIERS, BONAVENTURE (c. 1500-1544), French author, was born of a noble family at Arnay-le-duc in Burgundy at the end of the 15th century. The circumstances of his education are uncertain, but he became a good classical scholar, and was attached to various noble houses in the capacity of tutor. In 1533 or 1534 Des Périers visited Lyons, then the most enlightened town of France, and a refuge for many liberal scholars who might elsewhere have had to suffer for their opinions. He gave some assistance to Robert Olivetan and Lefèvre d'Étaples in the preparation of the vernacular version of the Old Testament, and to Étienne Dolet in the _Commentarii linguae latinae_. In 1536 he put himself under the protection of Marguerite d'Angoulême, queen of Navarre, who made him her _valet-de-chambre_. He acted as the queen's secretary, and transcribed the _Heptaméron_ for her. It is probable that his duties extended beyond those of a mere copyist, and some writers have gone so far as to say that the _Heptaméron_ was his work. The free discussions permitted at Marguerite's court encouraged a licence of thought as displeasing to the Calvinists as to the Catholics. This free inquiry became scepticism in Bonaventure's _Cymbalum Mundi ..._ (1537), and the queen of Navarre thought it prudent to disavow the author, though she continued to help him privately until 1541. The book consisted of four dialogues in imitation of Lucian. Its allegorical form did not conceal its real meaning, and, when it was printed by Morin, probably early in 1538, the Sorbonne secured the suppression of the edition before it was offered for sale. The dedication provides a key to the author's intention: _Thomas du Clevier (or Clenier) à son ami Pierre Tryocan_ was recognized by 19th-century editors to be an anagram for _Thomas l'Incrédule à son ami Pierre Croyant_. The book was reprinted in Paris in the same year. It made many bitter enemies for the author. Henri Estienne called it _détestable_, and Étienne Pasquier said it deserved to be thrown into the fire with its author if he were still living. Des Périers prudently left Paris, and after some wanderings settled at Lyons, where he lived in poverty, until in 1544 he put an end to his existence by falling on his sword. In 1544 his collected works were printed at Lyons. The volume, _Recueil des oeuvres de feu Bonaventure des Périers_, included his poems, which are of small merit, the _Traité des quatre vertus cardinales après Sénèque_, and a translation of the _Lysis_ of Plato. In 1558 appeared at Lyons the collection of stories and fables entitled the _Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis_. It is on this work that the claim put forward for Des Périers as one of the early masters of French prose rests. Some of the tales are attributed to the editors, Nicholas Denisot and Jacques Pelletier, but their share is certainly limited to the later ones. The book leaves something to be desired on the score of morality, but the stories never lack point and are models of simple, direct narration in the vigorous and picturesque French of the 16th century.

His _OEuvres françaises_ were published by Louis Lacour (Paris, 2 vols., 1856). See also the preface to the _Cymbalum Mundi ..._ (ed. F. Franck, 1874); A. Cheneviere, _Bonaventure Despériers, sa vie, ses poésies_ (1885); and P. Toldo, _Contributo allo studio della novella francese del XV. e XVI. secolo_ (Rome, 1895).

DESPORTES, PHILIPPE (1546-1606), French poet, was born at Chartres in 1546. As secretary to the bishop of Le Puy he visited Italy, where he gained a knowledge of Italian poetry afterwards turned to good account. On his return to France he attached himself to the duke of Anjou, and followed him to Warsaw on his election as king of Poland. Nine months in Poland satisfied the civilized Desportes, but in 1574 his patron became king of France as Henry III. He showered favours on the poet, who received, in reward for the skill with which he wrote occasional poems at the royal request, the abbey of Tiron and four other valuable benefices. A good example of the light and dainty verse in which Desportes excelled is furnished by the well-known _villanelle_ with the refrain "Qui premier s'en repentira," which was on the lips of Henry, duke of Guise, just before his tragic death. Desportes was above all an imitator. He imitated Petrarch, Ariosto, Sannazaro, and still more closely the minor Italian poets, and in 1604 a number of his plagiarisms were exposed in the _Rencontres des Muses de France et d'ltalie_. As a sonneteer he showed much grace and sweetness, and English poets borrowed freely from him. In his old age Desportes acknowledged his ecclesiastical preferment by a translation of the Psalms remembered chiefly for the brutal _mot_ of Malherbe: "Votre potage vaut mieux que vos psaumes." Desportes died on the 5th of October 1606. He had published in 1573 an edition of his works including _Diane_, _Les Amours d'Hippolyte_, _Élégies_, _Bergeries_, _OEuvres chrétiennes_, &c.

An edition of his _OEuvres_, by Alfred Michiels, appeared in 1858.

DESPOT (Gr. [Greek: despotês], lord or master; the origin of the first part of the Gr. word is unknown, the second part is cognate with [Greek: posis], husband, Lat. _potens_, powerful), in Greek usage the master of a household, hence the ruler of slaves. It was also used by the Greeks of their gods, as was the feminine form [Greek: despoina]. It was, however, principally applied by the Greeks to the absolute monarchs of the eastern empires with which they came in contact; and it is in this sense that the word, like its equivalent "tyrant," is in current usage for an absolute sovereign whose rule is not restricted by any constitution. In the Roman empire of the East "despot" was early used as a title of honour or address of the emperor, and was given by Alexius I. (1081-1118) to the sons, brothers and sons-in-law of the emperor (Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ed. Bury, vol. vi. 80). It does not seem that the title was confined to the heir-apparent by Alexius II. (see Selden, _Titles of Honour_,