European population, which, in 1831, consisted of not more than 3000 souls, in September 1842 amounted to 42,675; of whom 25,532 inhabited the capital; 6602, Oran; 4122, Bona; 4210, a new port named Philippeville; 1207, Constantine, and certain posts in the interior; the rest, Boujeiah, Shershell, and some smaller places on the coast. The vessels, which arrived in the course of the year 1841, are stated at 8560, of whom 4262 were French, 2442 Spanish, and 957 English.—The condition of Algeria, in 1843, was, however, far from being a tranquil one. Abd' el Kader still continued to annoy and disturb the French, by means of rapid incursions into the portion of it most accessible to him from his retreat near the western frontier, and by exciting the tribes through its entire extent to revolt. But these attempts were more easily repressed than heretofore; and the restless emir was again forced to seek a refuge in the territory of Morocco. In the mean time, the progress of improvement has been going on at an accelerated rate; emigrants from Europe have been arriving in numbers quite as great as could be provided with the accommodations necessary to enable them to start with advantage in their new career; commerce has been extending; and 200 leagues of carriage roads, as well as seven bridges over the principal rivers, are said to have been constructed in 1843, chiefly by the soldiers of the army. Yet, with all this apparent prosperity, the country is held by France at an immense annual expenditure of her own resources, for the most part incurred to maintain the military force required for the protection of the colonists; a force now amounting to not much less than 120,000 men, fully provided with all the matériel of war, and kept in a constant state of readiness for action. She feels it, too, to be a point of honour with her not to retreat from the position which she has assumed, and will continue to hold it, in despite of this expenditure of men and money. Yet, so far from her deriving additional strength from this, her favourite, and, indeed, only colony claiming to be of much importance to the mother country, there can be no doubt of its becoming a source of weakness to her, by withdrawing a large portion of her means of offence from the field of any future European contest. ALIBERT (Jean Louis); one of the most distinguished of the physicians who flourished in France during the period of the empire and of the restoration. He was born at Villefranche, in the department of the Aveyron, May 12th 1766, and came 66 At to Paris in 1789. The profession of medicine is said to have recommended itself to him, in a measure, because it would enable him, better than almost any other occupation he might select, to avoid mingling in the political storms, which were then beginning to agitate the community. No sooner, however, had he entered upon his medical studies than he pursued them with avidity for their own sake. He became the intimate associate of most of the men who subsequently rose to a high eminence in Paris in the art of healing, and united with them in the formation of the Society for Medical Instruction." this period he sustained a thesis "Sur les fièvres intermittentes pernicieuses," which was the basis of a treatise on the same subject, afterwards published by him. He early gave private courses of instruction in medicine; and this instruction led to the publication of his work, entitled "Traité de thérapeutique et de matière médicale," in two vols. 8vo., a work remarkable at the time it appeared, and which passed through five editions, but has been since superseded by others exhibiting the later discoveries, and more advanced doctrines, on the subject of which it treats. On being appointed physician of the hospital of St. Louis, an institution especially devoted to the cure of diseases of the skin, he commenced, in 1806, the preparation of his large work on these diseases. Some time after this had been before the public, he put forth an abridgment of it, which was afterwards reprinted. Besides the treatises already mentioned, he is the author of various productions, of which we may here specify his "Nosologie naturelle, ou maladies du corps humain, classées par familles;" his “Physiologie des passions, ou nouvelle doctrine des sentiments moraux," said to have been composed at the express desire of Louis XVIII., and his "Précis sur les eaux minérales les plus usitées en médecine." All of these met with a brilliant success in their day, but have already declined from the reputation they enjoyed. Alibert was appointed a professor in the school of medicine, a member of the academy of medicine, and physician in ordinary of Louis XVIII., and afterwards of Charles X. He probably surpassed most of his contemporaries, in the medical profession in France, in his literary attainments and tastes. Hence the faults of his style, which has been severely criticised, and which was, perhaps, more ambitious and rhetorical, than is suited to the simple dignity of science. ALISON-ALLARD. ALISON (Rev. Archibald) was born in Edinburgh, in the year 1757, and went to the university of Glasgow in 1772; where he attended the lectures of Dr. Reid, in company with Dugald Stewart, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. From Glasgow he went with an exhibition to Baliol College, Oxford, where he took the degrees of A.M. and LL.B., the latter in the spring of 1784. In this year he also took orders, and married the daughter of the well-known Dr. John Gregory, of Edinburgh. He was successively preferred to various livings in the Church of England; and, in 1780, he published the work on which his reputation is founded, the "Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste." It is remarkable that it should have attracted the public notice in only a slight degree, until, on the publication of a second edition, with considerable additions, in 1811, it was highly commended in an article of great ability in the Edinburgh Review, from the pen of Mr. Jeffrey. It was the most valuable contribution, without doubt, which had hitherto been made by any individual to the philosophy of the sublime and beautiful. The two leading propositions which he laboured to establish were, first, that "the qualities of matter are not beautiful or sublime in themselves, but as they are by various means the signs or expressions of qualities capable of producing emotions;" and secondly, that "there is no single emotion into which these varied effects can be resolved; that, on the contrary, every simple emotion, and every object which is capable of producing any simple emotion, may be the foundation of beauty or sublimity." Whoever is capable of sympathizing with the genuine feeling of the beautiful which pervades these essays, cannot fail to derive the greatest pleasure from their perusal; but for a most philosophical exposition of the subject to which they relate, far more philosophical indeed than the original work itself, the reader may be referred to the article of Mr. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, above mentioned, or to the article “Beauty" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, by the same writer.—Mr. Alison removed in 1800 from England to his native city, where he officiated as a clergyman, mingling at the same time familiarly in the Society of the many distinguished men of letters who then adorned the capital of Scotland, until 1831, when a severe illness compelled him to relinquish the performance of all public duties. He died in 1839, at the advanced age of 82.-Besides the Essays on Taste, Mr. Alison published two volumes of sermons, and a memoir of Lord Woodhouselee in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which learned body he was a member. ALLAHABAD, a city of Hindostan, having a population of about 20,000 souls, is the capital of a province of the same name. It is situated at the confluence of the sacred streams of the Ganges and the Jumna, and, for this reason, is itself held in especial reverence by the Hindoos. It is visited annually by crowds of pilgrims, sometimes amounting in number to 200,000; some of whom imagine they secure a happy futurity for themselves by seeking death in hallowed waters. Those whose infatuation does not carry them quite so far as this, are content with the purification to be derived from bathing, and with carrying away with them, on their return to their homes, a certain quantity of the water for the service of their temples. The most remarkable feature of Allahabad is the palace, originally constructed and fortified by the emperor Akbar on the spot where the Jumna unites with the Ganges, at the enormous expense, it is said, of twelve millions of rupees, but fortified since by the English in the European manner. They have made of it a great military depot for the upper provinces. ALLARD, general-in-chief of the army of Lahore, was born in France in 1783. He entered the French army at an early age, and during the eventful campaign of 1814, he held the rank of captain of cavalry. In the following year he was an aidede-camp of Marshal Brune, and, on the assassination of the latter, quitting France, he went to Leghorn, with the design to embark for America. But, by the advice of a friend, he changed his plans, and set out for Egypt, whence he proceeded to Persia. He was favourably received by Abbas Mirza, who bestowed upon him the rank and pay of a colonel in his army. But, dissatisfied at not obtaining a command corresponding to his nominal rank, he pushed forward into Afghanistan, and, in 1822, still further into Lahore. There he entered the service of the celebrated Runjeet Sing, and succeeded in insinuating himself into the good graces of that prince to such an extent, that the latter was induced to place the most unlimited confidence in him, and to load him with honours. A large force was organized by him on the model of the French army, of which he was appointed the commander. Not long afterwards he married a native of the country, by whom he had several children. All this, however, failed to make him entirely forget his own country. After the revolution of the three days, he was especially anxious to revisit it; and at length, in 1835, he obtained permission from Runjeet Sing to do so, accompanied by his family, on his giving a solemn promise to return again to his post. On his arrival in France, he was received at court with the greatest distinction. He was appointed chargé d'affaires of France in Lahore, with liberty to serve in the army of its chief, without thereby forfeiting his privileges as a French citizen. Leaving his wife and children behind him in France, he went back to Lahore in 1837, where an opportunity was soon afforded him of rendering important services to Runjeet Sing, by successfully conducting his military operations against the Afghans. But in the midst of prosperity, he was suddenly taken sick at Peshawer, and expired at that place on the 23d of January 1839. His body was brought to Lahore, and was interred there with the highest military honours.-Allard was not unmindful of the cause of science. He had formed a rich collection of coins and medals, which he brought with him to France, and presented to the Royal Library. ALLIX* (General). In 1826, several years after he had been permitted by the government of the Restoration to return to France, and to resume his former military rank, he presented a memorial to the Chambers, depicting the dangers to which the house of Bourbon was exposed from the administration of M. de Villèle, and from the proceedings of the Jesuits. He published, in 1827, a work, entitled "Système de l'artillerie de campagne." In the revolution of the three days, in July 1830, he took an active part on the popular side; and subsequently, in his "Bataille de Paris," he gave an account of the contest at that period in the streets of the capital, pointing out particularly the faults in the measures of attack adopted by Marshal Marmont. ALLSTON (Washington). This great historical painter was the second of three children of William Allston, one of the distinguished South Carolina family of that name, who served as a captain in the war of the Revolution, and was the proprietor of a plantation at Waccamaw, near Georgetown, in that state, where the subject of this notice was born, November 5th 1779. At the early age of seven he was sent by the advice of physicians to Newport, R. I., where he remained at a private school, frequented by many gentlemen's sons afterwards distinguished, until In his seventeenth year. In the autobiographical sketches published in Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design, he mentions, without attaching undue importance to it, his early tendency to the imitative arts. From forming miniature-landscapes about the roots of the old trees on the plantation, he passed, in his school-days, to drawing from prints of all kinds, and thence to original compositions from the romances that interested his boyhood. He had no direct instruction, but gained something incidentally from a worthy nautical-instrument maker who had been bred to portraitpainting; and shortly before quitting Newport he became acquainted with young Malbone, a native of the place, soon after celebrated as a miniature-painter. 1796 he entered Harvard College, at Cambridge, Mass., where he took the degree of A. B. in 1800. His academical exercises soon procured him the reputation of a writer of elegance both in poetry and prose, which he justified by a fine taste and already extensive cultivation in polite literature. His leisure hours, however, were chiefly devoted to the pencil. He tried his hand in the department of his friend Malbone, but soon abandoned it, for he already succeeded so much better in oils that a landscape with figures, painted about this time, was afterwards exhibited at Somerset House. An old rich-toned Italian or Spanish landscape, at a friend's house, some pictures by Pine at a museum in Boston, and Smybert's copy of Vandyke's head of Cardinal Bentivoglio in the college-library, were his models. From Cambridge he returned on a visit to Charleston, S. C., where he painted for some months. By his own account, up to this time, and for a year afterwards, his favourite subjects, with an occasional comic intermission, were banditti. would seem, however, that there was some other exception, for it was about this period that he painted a head of St. Peter at the cock-crow, and of Judas Iscariot. Disposing of his share of his paternal inheritance at some sacrifice, with a view to the support of his studies abroad, he embarked for London, where he arrived in June 1801. He took letters from a common friend to Dr. Moore, the author of Zeluco, who, however, had died shortly before his arrival. In a few weeks he became a student of the Royal Academy. His first drawing (from the Gladiator) obtained him permission to draw at Somerset House, and his third a ticket as an entered student. He was directly introduced to his countryman West, who had It been, since 1792, the successor of Rey-painted successively the large historical nolds in the presidency of the Academy. pictures of St. Peter liberated by the AnOf his constant kindness for a long series gel, for Sir George Beaumont, now in the of years Allston always cherished a grate- church at Ashley de la Zouch; Uriel in ful remembrance. He also made the ac- the Sun, for which the British Institution quaintance of Fuseli, whom he then thought presented him with a gratuity of 150 the greatest living painter, and for whom, guineas, and which is now in the possesespecially as a writer on the art, he always sion of the Duke of Sutherland; and the retained a strong though more discrimi- Jacob's Dream, now in the collection of nating admiration. At the Somerset Lord Egremont, at Petworth; besides House Exhibition in 1802, the next year many other less considerable works. Inafter his arrival, he exhibited three pictures, deed, such had been his success, that on the college landscape already mentioned, his return to America, in 1818, he had but a rocky coast with the favourite banditti, one finished picture to bring with him, the and a comic piece. For three years he Elijah in the Wilderness, and this was applied himself closely to the more secret afterwards purchased by the Rt. Hon. Mr. labours of his art, and laid securely the Labouchere, and taken back to England. foundations of his future eminence. In Shortly after his return he received in1804 he visited Paris, where the master- formation of his election as an associate pieces of the Continent were then col- of the Royal Academy. During his resi lected. Though then, as ever after, "a dence for the next twelve years in Boston, wide liker" in art, his special admiration he produced his celebrated pictures of Jereseems to have been for "the gorgeous con- miah prophesying, now in the possession cert of colours" of the Venetian school. of Miss Gibbs, of Newport; Saul and the After a few months thus spent, he pro- Witch of Endor, in the collection of Coloceeded to Italy, where he passed about nel T. H. Perkins, of Boston; and Miriam four years, principally at Rome, in the singing the Song of Triumph, owned by study of the great masters. He was also the Hon. David Sears, of the same city; a fellow-member with Thorwaldsen of a besides numerous others of a smaller size, private association, and devoted much time landscapes and female heads, of which the to modelling, with a view to anatomical most distinguished are the Beatrice of accuracy in his art, a practice which he Dante, and the Valentine, owned respecoften afterwards followed. Here, too, tively by the Hon. Samuel A. Elliot and commenced his long intimacy with Cole- George Ticknor, Esq., both of Boston. In ridge, of whom he says that to no other 1830, he married for his second wife a man did he owe so much intellectually. daughter of the late Chief Justice Dana, The impression he even then made, as an of Cambridge, and made that place his artist, is sufficiently attested by the fact future residence. He had brought with that many years afterwards he was re- him from London the commencement of a membered there as "the American Ti- picture of the largest size, on the subject tian;" and in Bunsen's great work on of Belshazzar's Feast, and made considerRome, the chapter on modern art, by a able advances in it during the earlier part celebrated German critic, speaks of him of his residence in Boston, where, howas approaching in colouring nearer the ever, he was interrupted by the want of a masters of the best ages in Italian art than proper studio; this was now supplied, and any other modern painter. In 1809, he he looked forward continually to the comreturned on a visit to America, where he pletion of his great work. Various hinshortly afterwards married a sister of the drances, however, which have embarrassed celebrated divine, Dr. Channing In 1811, most modern artists in the prosecution of he resumed his residence in London, where works too extensive for their own private his first historical picture, the Dead Man means, delayed the resumption of his laRevived, immediately obtained the first bours upon it for some years. In the mean prize of the British Institution of 200 time he sent from his easel many of his guineas, and was afterwards purchased by most beautiful pictures of a smaller size; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine among others, Spalatro's Vision of the Arts. His labour on this painting occa- Bloody Hand, for Mr. Ball, of S. C., besioned him a severe illness, which left sides more landscapes and female heads, him, in a degree, an invalid ever after. of which the Rosalie, now in the possession In 1813, he published a small volume, of the Hon. N. Appleton, of Boston, is the "the Sylphs of the Seasons, and other most celebrated. In 1836, he was honoured poems." Mrs. Allston died in 1815. Dur- by Congress with a request to fill, with ing this second residence in England, he national pictures, two of the four vacant consent, reckoned the first artist of his time, and worthy to take rank as a successor rather than a follower of the great masters of an earlier age. ALPACA. There are several species of the South American lama, one of which is called el paco, or alpaca. It yields the alpaca wool, of which three millions of pounds weight were exported from Peru to Great Britain in 1841; and the quantity exported has since been constantly increasing. This wool is of an extraordinary length, of a silky nature, and free from grease. Some of the alpacas are brown, and others white; but the former, as well as the latter, have long and white wool on their bellies, which readily admits of being dyed. Like the lama, commonly so called, the alpaca is employed to carry burdens, and its flesh is said to have an agrecable flavour. It frequents the higher and colder regions of the Andes, easily accustoms itself to the presence of man, and is more easily tamed than the lama. It can endure thirst for a considerable time, and requires but little food, and of the coarsest quality, to sustain it. The various qualities of the alpacas which have been mentioned, have led to the project of introducing them extensively into the British isles. As yet, however, only very few of them have been imported there, and the results of the experiment thus made have not been of a character sufficient to justify a positive opinion, as to the effects of the change of climate on the animal or its wool. panels in the rotundo of the Capitol, but he did not feel at liberty to divert his labour from the anticipated completion of the Belshazzar. In 1839, nearly fifty of his pictures, collected from various parts of the country, were exhibited in Boston with great success, and excited the enthusiasm of all the lovers of art. In 1841, he published "Monaldi," a tale of much power and beauty, written many years before. He had now resumed his labours upon his great picture, and though enfeebled by ill health and advancing years, was steadily progressing towards the completion of the extensive alterations he had previously planned in it. Amidst days thus passed in the exercise of his beautiful art, and evenings occupied with literary recreations, or in delighting, by his conversation and the singular amenity of his manners, a circle of chosen friends, or of younger artists who visited him as a master, his life was closed by a sudden but gentle death, on the 9th of July 1843, in the 64th year of his age. His personal appearance was most appropriate to a man of such a genius. His figure was of a good height, rather slender and of a graceful movement; his countenance, of striking intellectual beauty, was set off by flowing locks of prematurely silvered hair. His conversational powers, educated by intercourse with the finest minds in England, whether in anecdote, literary criticism, or on the philosophy of his art, were such as would have made him eminent had he been known only as a man of society; and his writings, both in poetry and prose, ALTERATIVES; a class of medicines exhibit a force of imagination and felicity which act on the causes of disease, withof language which would have insured out producing sensible evacuations, or any him distinction had he been known only other visible symptoms of their action. This as an author. Though full of the sensi- action is commonly slow, and gradual in bilities of genius, he was singularly free its effects; and its reality is the more dif from its unamiable vices. His character ficult to be established, because time and was marked by a native purity, of which the natural reaction of the system are often the spiritual beauty of all his female por- of themselves sufficient to produce a cure. traitures was but a fit expression. During Hence it is not surprising that a number his second residence in England, he be- of substances should have found their way came a communicant in the church of that among the alteratives, so called, whose country, and the delicate reserve of his chief merit is that of being absolutely inreligious nature but increased the devout-ert, and therefore not in any degree interness of his inner life. As an artist his excellence was various and of the highest order. In his few portraits, in ideal heads, in landscape and the higher walk of history, his works are masterpieces in their respective departments. In alternate grandeur and beauty of conception, in consummate execution, in the effects of composition and chiaroscuro, and more than all, in a certain magic of colour peculiar to himself, he was, by a general fering with the operation of the curative agents actually employed. Among those substances which an incontestable experience has truly entitled to be styled alteratives, are iodine, bromine, and mercury and' its compounds. Arsenic, in almost infinitesimal doses, possesses the same properties. ALVAREZ (Don Jose), a celebrated Spanish sculptor, was born, April 23d 1768, at Priego, in the province of Cordova. |