Hardwicke, was the author of the Act passed in 1705, for the security of the Protestant Succession. [GEORGE I.]

On the return of his party to power in 1708, Somers was made president of the council; and he held that office till the recovery of the cabinet by Harley and the Tories in 1710. He succeeded in making himself very acceptable to Queen Anne, notwithstanding her original prejudice against him. It is affirmed by Lord Dartmouth that he impressed her with a deep and grateful sense of his fidelity and integrity, by his acquainting her with and putting her on her guard against a scheme entertained by the Duke of Marlborough to get himself made captain-general, or commander of the forces, for life, which, without having so much as mentioned it to her majesty, his grace tried in 1709 to get proposed in the House of Commons, and expected the Whigs should all come into, in return for the great services he had lately done them. The following year, on occasion of the proposals for peace made by the French at Gertruydenberg, Somers strongly recommended the continuance of the war. He had of course gone along, apparently, with his colleagues in the prosecution of Sacheverell, in 1709; but Swift, in his History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne,' tells us that he had heard from Lord Somers himself that he was against engaging in that foolish business, as foreseeing that it was likely to end in the ruin of the Whig party. There is a curious note to Burnet's History of his own Time,' by Mr. Speaker Onslow, in which he relates some negociations that were carried on with Harley by Somers, Halifax, and Cowper, a short time before the change of ministers in 1710, on the basis of an overture made by Harley for keeping them in place, if they would consent to the substitution of himself and some of his friends for the lord treasurer (Godolphin) and his dependants. Onslow says that he had his information from Sir Joseph Jekyl, "who," he adds, "had it very likely, and I think he said so too, from the Lord Somers, to whom he was brother-in-law." The negociation was broken off in consequence of the opposition of Lord Wharton, who expressed his detestation of having anything to do with Harley.

Somers continued to take part occasionally in the debates of the House of Lords after his second dismissal from office; but the infirm state of his health is said by this time to have somewhat affected his intellect. In 1713 we find him joining in support of the factious motion brought forward by a section of the opposition, for leave to bring in a bill to dissolve the Union. "I had it," writes Onslow, "from good authority (the late Sir Robert Monroe, then of the House of Commons), that at a meeting upon it at my lord Somers's house, where Monroe was, nobody pressed this motion more than that lord!" He resumed his place at the council-board after the accession of George I.; but is faculties were now almost gone. It is related however that he took an interest in the progress of the Septennial Bill, which he declared "he thought would be the greatest support possible to the liberty of the country." At last a stroke of apoplexy occasioned his death, on the 26th of April 1716. Lord Somers was never married, though it is stated by the author of the Memoirs of his Life,' that when he was solicitor general he paid his addresses to a daughter of Sir John Bawdon, a London alderman, and that he went so far in the matter as to deliver in a rental of his estate, after several meetings with the lady's friends; "but," concludes the story, "the treaty broke off on account of a difference about the marriage-portion and settlement, to the great regret of the lady, when she found him made lord keeper of the great seal in two years' time." His estates descended to the family of his sister, who was married to Charles Cocks, Esq., M.P., whose grandson was created Baron Somers in 1784.

The character of Lord Somers has been elaborately drawn by Addison in one of the numbers of the Freeholder' (published May 14th, 1714), but with considerable wordiness, and something perhaps of the air of insincerity which commonly attaches to a formal panegyric. He had been an early and zealous patron of Addison, who had obtained his notice by inscribing to him his early poem on the campaigns of King William, and who afterwards dedicated to him his Travels in Italy and the first volume of the 'Spectator.' There is much more force in the more shaded picture of him which Swift has given in his 'History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne;' nor perhaps, taken with the proper allowance, does it convey a less correct notion of the man.

The collection commonly called the 'Somers Tracts,' which has been twice printed, first in 16 vols. 4to, 1748, secondly, in 13 vols. 4to, 1809-15, under the superintendence of the late Sir Walter Scott, consists of scarce pamphlets, selected, as the title intimates, principally from the library of Lord Somers. A valuable collection of original letters and other papers left by his lordship was unfortunately consumed in a fire which happened in the chambers of the Honourable Charles Yorke, then solicitor-general, in Lincoln's Inn Square, on the morning of Saturday, the 29th of January 1752. Mr. Yorke's father, the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, married Lord Somers's niece, Miss Margaret Cocks.

SOMERSET, EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF. [EDWARD VI.] SOMERSET, EARL OF. [JAMES I., vol. iii., col. 588.] *SOMERVILLE, MRS. MARY, was born about 1790 in Scotland, and her early years were passed at Musselburgh, a small sea-port near the city of Edinburgh. She is said to have been first married to an

BIOG. DIV. VOL. V.

officer of the British navy, who instructed her in the mathematical and physical sciences. She became afterwards the wife of Dr. Somerville, and attracted the attention of the philosophical world by some experi ments on the magnetic influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum. These experiments were conducted in a simple manner, without costly apparatus, and her statement of the results was free, unembarrassed, and unassuming. Mrs. Somerville's next appearance before the scientific public was at the instance of Lord Brougham, who, knowing her mathematical and astronomical qualifications, had engaged her to furnish for publication by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge a popular account of the 'Mecanique Céleste' of Laplace. The work however outgrew its first destination, and was published in an independent form, under the title of the 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' London, 8vo, 1832. In the body of the work, the demonstrations of Laplace are in many cases given without alteration; in others they have been in some degree changed; and in a few instances they have been entirely superseded by others drawn from different sources. In a preliminary dissertation extending to seventy pages Mrs. Somerville has collected and detailed most of the striking facts which theory and observation have made known concerning the constitution of the universe.

This preliminary dissertation to the 'Mechanism of the Heavens' became the nucleus of her next work, 'On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences,' 12mo, 1834, which is dedicated by permission to the Queen. Portions of the original dissertation are introduced into the present work, but the whole has been recast, and additional subjects have been introduced, such as meteorology, electricity, magnetism, and others. She gives an account of the great law of gravitation, and treats of the mutual actions of the primary and secondary planets, of the figure of the earth, of the oceans and their tides. She afterwards treats of acoustics as connected with the constitution of the atmosphere, of light and colours, of heat, of electricity, and of comets. All these subjects are explained with great clearness and precision. In 1835 Mrs. Somerville was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Mrs. Somerville's next and last work, dedicated to Sir John Herschel, is entitled 'Physical Geography,' 2 vols. 12mo, 1848. She treats first of the under surface of the earth, or geology, and then successively of the land-surface, of the great oceans and seas, of the river-systems, of the atmosphere, and lastly of the distribution of organic existence over the globe. The style is always simple and perspicuous, is often vigorous and elegant, and occasionally rises to a strain of eloquence suitable to the grandeur of the scenes which it has to describe.

Mrs. Somerville enjoys a pension of 300l. a year from the civil list fund, as a reward for her valuable literary services.

SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM, was born in 1692 at Edstone, in Warwickshire, which had been the residence of his ancestors from the time of Edward I. He studied at Winchester School, and at New College, Oxford. Having completed his education he resided during the rest of his life in the family mansion, partly occupied with the duties of a justice of peace, partly with the active pleasures of the sportsman, and partly with the cultivation of his poetical talents. His income, derived from the estate which he inherited from his father, was 1500l. a year, out of which his mother had a jointure of 600l. a year. Hospitable, convivial, and careless of economy, he became involved in debt, and in the latter part of his life, according to the account of his friend Shenstone the poet, "drank himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains of the mind." He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire.

Somerville's 'Chase' is still a favourite with those who combine a taste for poetry with an attachment to the sports of the field, and has beer frequently reprinted. It is written in tolerably harmonious blank verse; and as the poet was practically master of his subject, his descriptions are always accurate and frequently vivid, and he has given variety to them by comparing the rural sports of other countries with those of his own. Somerville has written another rural poem, called Field Sports,' which describes the amusement of hawking; and Hobbinol, or Rural Games,' a mock heroic. He has also written some Fables, which are mostly dull and uninteresting; some rather coarse Tales; and a few lyrical pieces, which display no great poetical power, but contain many beautiful lines.

SOMMERARD, A. DU. [Du SOMMERARD, A.]

SOMNER, WILLIAM, was born at Canterbury, according to the account given by his wife and son, March 30th, 1606; but according to the register of the parish of St. Margaret's, he was baptised there on November 5th, 1598. His father was registrar of the court of Canterbury under Sir Nathaniel Brent, who was then commissary. He was sent to the free-school of that city, where he acquired a com petent knowledge of Latin. He was next placed as clerk to his father in the ecclesiastical courts of the diocese, and afterwards preferred to an office in the courts by Archbishop Laud. His natural bent was to the study of antiquities, in which he was encouraged by Dr. Meric Casaubon, one of the prebendaries. In 1640 he published 'The Antiquities of Canterbury,' 4to, a work which gained him considerable reputation, and which was afterwards reprinted and enlarged by Nicholas Batteley, fol., London, 1703. Somner's next production was an Appendix to the first part (all that was published) of Casaubon's 24

Commentary 'De Quatuor Linguis,' 12mo, London, 1650, showing the relation of the German with the Saxon language. In 1652 he added a most valuable Glossary to Sir Roger Twysden's 'Decem Scriptores.' He was now urged by his friends to make a Saxon Dictionary, but as this was a work which required time and great labour, it was neces sary that he should have sufficient means of support while engaged upon it. Sir Henry Spelman had founded at Cambridge a lecture for 'promoting the Saxon tongue, either by reading it publicly or by the editing of Saxon Manuscripts;' and this lecture being vacant in 1657, Archbishop Usher recommended Somner to the then patron Roger Spelman, grandson of the founder. Accordingly Somner had the salary, and went on with the work, which was published at Oxford, in folio, in 1659.

A short time before the Restoration, Somner was imprisoned in the castle of Deal for endeavouring to procure signatures to a petition for a free parliament. In 1660 he was made master of St. John's Hospital, in the suburbs of Canterbury, and about the same time auditor of Christ Church. In this year he published in quarto his "Treatise on Gavelkind,' his last publication. He died March 30th, 1669. He left behind him various manuscript collections, and two or three treatises, one of which, 'Of the Roman Ports and Forts in Kent,' was published at Oxford, 8vo, 1693, by Brome. Another, 'De Portu Íccio,' translated into Latin by Mr. (afterwards bishop) Gibson, was published at Oxford, 8vo, 1694. To the former of these a Life of Somner is prefixed by White Kennet, afterwards bishop of Peterborough. Somner was buried in the north aisle of St. Margaret's Church, Canterbury, where there is an inscription to his memory. His books and manuscripts were purchased by the dean and chapter of Canterbury, and they are still in the Cathedral library; a catalogue of them is appended to Kennet's Life of Somner. Somner gave great assistance to Dodsworth, in the first volume of the Monasticon Anglicanum.' Among his friends and correspondents were the Archbishops Laud and Usher, Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Symonds D'Ewes, Sir William Dugdale, Burton the antiquary, Sir John Marsham, and Elias Ashmole. SONNINI DE MANONCOURT, CHARLES NICOLAS SIGISBERT, was born at Lunéville, February 1, 1751. He was the son of Nicholas Sonnini, seigneur of the fief of Manoncourt in Vermois, and councillor of Stanislaus, king of Poland. He was educated at the Jesuit University of Pont-à-Housson, and made rapid progress in his studies. At an early age he became acquainted with Buffon and Nollet, who encouraged his taste for natural history. Having a wish to travel, he obtained a commission in the marine engineer service, and in 1772 was sent to Cayenne in consequence. Here he showed great energy and courage in exploring the country and dislodging from their strongholds the savages with whom the colony was molested, and succeeded, at considerable personal risk, in making a passage by water from Cayenne to the mountain La Gabrielle, the accomplishment of which had been much desired by the colonists, but abandoned by reason of the natural difficulties of the route. He was, in conse. quence of this enterprise, promoted to the rank of lieutenant on his return to France. In 1775, after a visit to the western coast of Africa, he resumed his post as an engineer at Cayenne, and spent two years in researches in natural history. Returning to France, in consequence of ill health, he passed the winter of 1776 with Buffon, assisting him in his labours, till he joined the African expedition of Baron de Tott, in 1777. After remaining some time in Egypt, and exploring the country, he travelled in Greece, the Archipelago, and Asia Minor. He returned to France in 1780, and employed himself in the improvement of agriculture, introducing several valuable exotic vegetables into his country. At the beginning of the Revolution he was appointed one of the administrators of the département de la | Meurthe; but being deprived of this office by St. Just, and reduced to poverty, on account of his noble birth, he employed himself in arranging and publishing the materials collected in his travels. He was afterwards placed at the head of the college of Vienne, in the département de l'Isère; but failing in his projects of reform there, gave up this situation after holding it two years, and returned to his literary labours. In 1810 he went to Moldavia, and, while traversing that country, caught a fever, from which he never recovered. He died at Paris, May 29, 1812. His principal works are, 'Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypt,' Paris, 8vo, 1799; 'Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie,' Paris, 8vo, 1801.

Buffon's Histoire Naturelle,' Paris, 1799-1808, to which he contributed 13 vols. of fishes and 1 vol. of cetacea, and, jointly with M. Latreille, 4 vols. of reptiles; and the 'Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle,' 8vo, 1803-4, were edited by him: in the latter he wrote the articles 'Man,' 'Quadrupeds,' 'Birds,' and 'Cetacea.'

Sonnini deserves great praise for his labours as a naturalist. Like other great travellers, though eager and enthusiastic, he was somewhat inconstant in the direction of his energies, as we may infer from the events of his life, not less than from the remarks of his French biographer. In his Travels in the East' he treats of the natural and artificial productions of each country, and gives also archæological and topographical notices not remarkable for their research or originality.

(Biographie Universelle, by the author of his 'Eloge Historique,' where is a list of his other publications.)

SOPHIA, PRINCESS OF RUSSIA. [PETER I.]

From this time twenty-eight years of his life passed without any memorable event being recorded, though Sophocles must have been extremely active in the exercise of his art, for during this period he is said to have composed thirty-one dramas, not including the 'Triptolemus.' (Aristoph. Byz., Argum. ad Antig.')

In the year B.C. 440 he brought out the Antigone, his thirty-second drama; and he gained the prize. The Athenians, who perceived in this play the wisdom of a statesman and general, appointed him one of the commanders to conduct the war against the aristocrats of Samos, who, after being expelled from the island by the Athenians, had returned from Anæa in Caria (whence the Greek biographer calls it the war of Anæa), and endeavoured to induce the Samians to revolt against Athens. In this campaign Sophocles was the colleague of Pericles. No military feat is recorded of him, and it is only stated that he availed himself of the opportunity to enrich himself. In Samos he is said to have made the acquaintance of Herodotus, for whom he wrote a poem. (Plut., 'An Seni sit gerenda resp.,' 3.) Whether Sophocles, after this expedition, which ended in B.C. 439, took any further part in public affairs, is not certain. His life seems to have passed in the glorious career of a successful dramatist, and has left no traces in history; we only hear that several kings invited him to their courts, but that he preferred staying at home. He was married twice. His first wife was Nicostrate of Athens, by whom he had a son, Iophon; his second wife was Theoris of Sicyon, by whom he had a son called Ariston. Ariston again had a son called Sophocles, who is generally distinguished from his grandfather by the epithet 'the Younger.' Sophocles was very partial to this grandson, and it was believed that during his lifetime he intended to transfer to him a considerable part of his property. Iophon, fearing lest his inheritance should be diminished, brought a charge of mental incapacity against his father before the members of his phratria, and proposed that he should not be allowed to have any control over his property. Sophocles is said to have made no reply to this charge, but with a strong convic tion of the excellence of the Edipus in Colonus,' which he had just composed, to have only read to his phratores, who had to examine him, the parodos of this play. The consequence was that he was allowed to retain the management of his property.

Sophocles died in the year B.C. 406, at the very advanced age of ninety. The accounts of the cause of his death are not consistent. Some state that he was choked by a grape, which stuck in his throat; others, that in the loud reading of the Antigone' he exerted himself so much that at last his voice failed him and he expired; and others again, that he died of joy at the announcement of a victory gained by one of his dramas. He was buried in the tomb of his fathers near Decelea.

As regards the private life of Sophocles we know nothing, except that he was addicted to sexual pleasures (Athen., xii., p. 510); but the anecdotes in Athenæus (xiii., p. 603, &c.) seem to belong to that sort of scandal from which no great man can escape.

Sophocles is said to have written 130 dramas, but Aristophanes of Byzantium declared seventeen of them spurious, which would leave

113 genuine dramas, which number includes his satiric dramas. At the age of forty-five he had written 32 dramas, so that more than twothirds of his works were composed during the latter half of his life. The Edipus in Colonus,' his last production, was written a short time before his death, but was not brought out till the year B.C. 401. With these plays he disputed the prize with the greatest dramatists of the day-Eschylus, Euripides, Choerilus, Aristias, Iophon, and others; and gained twenty times the first prize, several times the second, but never the third. Of all his plays there only remain seven; of others we only possess some fragments, and sometimes no more than the titles. The earliest of the extant pieces is the 'Antigone,' and the probable chronological order in which the others followed is this:Electra,' 'Trachiniæ,' 'King Edipus,' 'Ajax,' 'Philoctetes' (first acted in B.C. 409), and the 'Œdipus in Colonus,' which was first acted in B.C. 401.

The ancients themselves regarded Sophocles as the most perfect of all dramatic poets; they called him the tragic Homer, and the Attic bee, to express the unrivalled beauty and sweetness of his productions. Their admiration was well founded, for the tragedies of Sophocles, as far as we can judge, excel everything of the kind that appeared in Greece either before or after him. Sophocles abandoned the pomp, grandiloquence, and harshness of Eschylus, for which he substituted the noble simplicity and tenderness which the ancients admired his heroes are not beings of a superior nature; his men are not the sport of an inscrutable destiny: the world which he represents is peopled by men, agitated indeed by sufferings and passions, but the good and the beautiful do not appear under the iron rule of destiny; all his characters are men in the truest sense of the word, beings with whom we can sympathise. Hence his dramas are of an ethical and practical character, while those of Eschylus are more calculated to inspire religious awe. Sophocles knew the laws of his art and what it required, as appears from an expression ascribed to him by Plutarch. (De Prof. Virt., Sent.,' 7.) During his whole career he appears to have been striving to realise the idea which he had formed of tragedy. In the three earliest of the extant plays there appear occasionally traces of an artificial style and studied obscurity, but the remaining four are entirely free of this fault. But even the 'Antigone' is so different from any play of Eschylus in design and execution, that he must have long before been aware of the necessity of the changes which he introduced. The more particular changes to which we here allude are as follows:-Each drama of Sophocles turns upon one great action, the 'Antigone' perhaps excepted; and one idea, which is the leading idea of the drama, is perfectly developed in one play; while with Eschylus the three plays of a trilogy are like so many acts of one drama. Although therefore Sophocles may usually have brought out three tragedies at once, each of them was complete in itself. The lyric part, or the chorus, in Sophocles has no longer that prominent place which it has in Eschylus, nor does it take part in the action in the same degree; it no longer expresses the feelings supposed to be called forth in the audience; but the tragic development of the characters of the drama, or, in other words, the action, is the most prominent part of the drama. The chorus is subordinate, and it would seem that Sophocles used it as a means to let the spectator see what was going on in the minds of the actors rather than in that of the spectators. As the action was thus extended, Sophocles also introduced a third actor, or the triagonistes, so that now three actors might appear upon the stage at once, whereas before his time there had not been more than two at a time, which rendered the action, as well as the dialogue, monotonous. Lastly, Sophocles introduced several improvements in scene-painting and in other mechanical parts of stage performance. At first he is said, like Eschylus, to have acted in his own dramas, but as his voice was too weak he gave it up. Besides his dramas, Sophocles also wrote an elegy, several pæans, and other minor poems, and also a prose work on the chorus, which was directed against Thespis and Chorilus. Several ancient grammarians, such as Didymus, Horapollon, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Androtion, Praxiphanes, and others, wrote commentaries upon the dramas of Sophocles.

Respecting the life and works of Sophocles, see the Life, by an anonymous Greek writer, which is prefixed to several editions of his works; Suidas, s. v. Zоpоkλns; the masterly treatise of Lessing, 'Leben des Sophocles,' which has unfortunately been left a fragment by the author; Ferd. Schultz, De Vita Sophoclis Poetæ,' 8vo, Bonn, 1836; Adolph. Schöll, Sophocles, sein Wirken und Leben,' 8vo, Frankfurt; Müller, Hist. of the Lit. of Ancient Greece,' i. pp. 337-356; A. W. v. Schlegel, 'Lectures on Dramatic Literature,' vol. i,

lect. 4.

The works of Sophocles were first printed by Aldus, 8vo, Venice, 1502. The best of the subsequent editions are those of H. Stephens, 4to, Paris, 1568, with valuable notes; and that of Brunck, 2 vols. 8vo, Strasbourg, 1786, with a Latin translation and notes. In the same year Brunck published his great edition, in 2 vols. 4to or 4 vols. 8vo. It was reprinted in London, in 3 vols. 8ve, 1823, with some additions by Burney. The text of Brunck has served as the basis for all subsequent editions. The best among them are that of Musgrave, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1800, &c.; of F. H. Bothe, 2 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1806, the last edition of which appeared in 1827 and 1828; of Erfurt, 7 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1802, &c.; of Elmsley, 1826, reprinted at Leipzig |

in 8 vols. 8vo; of Erfurt and G. Hermann, 7 vols. 12mo, Leipzig, 1823-25. An edition by G. Hermann, in 7 vols. 12mo, appeared at Leipzig in 1850-51. The most useful edition of Sophocles for students is that of E. Wunder, Gotha and Erfurt, 1831-41. An edition with a translation of Wunder's introductions and notes, and a collation of Dindorf's text, was published in London in 2 vols. 8vo, 1854. The editions of single plays and dissertations upon them are almost innumerable. The titles and remains of the lost pieces of Sophocles have been collected by Welcker, in his 'Die Griechischen Tragödien,' p. 59, &c. He has classed them according to the legendary cycles to which they belong, and also given the probable contents or the leading idea of each play, as far as this can be made out from the fragments. The translations of Sophocles are very numerous. The best German is that by Solger, the last edition of which appeared at Berlin, 2 vols. 8vo, 1824. There are numerous English translations: in prose, by George Adams, 2 vols., London, 1729, and others subsequently; in verse, by Franklin, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1758-59; by Robert Potter, London, 1788; and by Thomas Dale, 1824.

SO'PHRON, son of Agathocles, a native of Syracuse, was born about the year B.C. 420. He is believed to have been the inventor of a peculiar kind of poetry called 'mimes,' which were dramatic performances of irregular form, in which occurrences of real life were clothed in a poetical dress; and which usually consisted of a single scene, mostly comic, sometimes with such dialogue added as the excitement of the moment prompted. Sophron wrote his works in the vulgar dialect of the Doric Greek as spoken in Sicily, and in a kind of rhythmical prose. Plato, who had become acquainted with the productions of Sophron through Dion of Syracuse, valued them very highly, and is said to have made the Athenians acquainted with this species of poetry. (Quinctil., i. 10, 17.) Besides the few fragments of the mimes of Sophron which yet remain, we only know the titles of some others of his poems, so that we are scarcely able to form an exact idea of this species of poetry. The circumstance that Sophron wrote in a popular dialect full of peculiarities and solecisms, was probably the reason why his works were studied by the grammarians. Apollodorus of Athens wrote a commentary upon them.

The fragments are collected by C. J. Blomfield, in the 'Classical Journal,' vol. iv., p. 380, &c., to which a supplement and some corrections were added by the same scholar in the Museum Ctiticum,' No. vii., p. 640, &c. Compare Grysar, 'De Sophrone Mimographo,' Coloniæ, 1838.

SORANUS, an eminent ancient physician, the son of Menander, was born at Ephesus, probably about the end of the 1st century after Christ, and raised the sect of the Methodici to its highest degree of reputation. He had been brought up at Alexandria, but under the reign of Trajan and Hadrian he came to Rome, where he taught and practised medicine with great success. (Pseudo-Gal., 'Introduct.,' cap. 4, p. 184, tom. xiv., ed. Kühn; Suidas.) He passed some time also in Aquitania, and very successfully treated the leprous diseases which prevailed there. (Marcell. Emp., 'De Medicam.,' cap. 19, p. 321, ed. H. Steph.) In his time the leprosy, which had been brought from the East into Italy and Gaul, was making there the greatest ravages; and the physicians, who were not yet well acquainted with this disease, were anxious to recommend certain preparations against each of its particular symptoms. Some of those employed by Soranus have been preserved to us by Galen. (Gal., 'De Compos. Medicam., sec. Loca,' lib. i., cap. 2, 8, p. 414 et sq., 493 et sq., tom. xii.) Their object was in a great measure to effect a metasyncrisis, or the re-estab lishment of the pores in their natural state. To him we are indebted for the first observations (Paul. Ægin., 'De Re Med.,' lib. iv., cap. 59, p. 73, ed. Ald.) upon the species of worm called by the Greeks Spaкóvтiov, by the Latins Gordius, Filaria, or Vena Medinensis; for an account of which see a dissertation by Justus Welhe, entitled 'De Filaria Medinensi Gmel. Commentariolum,' 8vo, Berol., 1832, and especially the very learned work by Georg. Hieron. Velschius, entitled 'Exercitatio de Vena Medinensi, ad Mentem Ebnsina (i.e. Avicennæ), sive De Dracunculis Veterum,' 4to, August-Vindel, 1674. He made the interesting remark, that children while at the breast are sometimes attacked with hydrophobia. (Col. Aurel., 'De Morb. Acut.,' lib. iii., c. 11, p. 221, ed. Amman.) His theory on the Nightmare (Id., 'De Morb. Chron.,' lib. i., c. 3, p. 289), and his opinion on the use of magical songs and incantations in the treatment of diseases, prove how little he was imbued with the prejudices of his age. He seems to have been the first to reduce the opinions of his predecessors to certain principles (Id., 'De Morb. Acut.,' lib. ii., cap. 9, p. 91), and therefore did not, like them, show contempt for the ancients, but tried to refute them by the arguments of the Methodici. (Id., ibid., cap. 19, p. 127; cap. 29, p. 142.) Indeed he was the first who gave a plausible reason for the necessity of rejecting purgatives, in saying that they evacuated indiscriminately the healthy humours as well as the bad ones. (Id., ibid., cap. 9, p. 91.) He always employed venesection in pleurisy, because it proceeds evidently from the strictum, and had no regard to the difference of climate. (Id., ibid., cap. 22, p. 132.) In pneumonia he considered that the whole body suffered, but that the lungs are particularly affected; for Soranus did not admit a single local disease, in the strict acceptation of the term. (Id., ibid., cap. 28, p. 139.) The cholera morbus, said he, is a relaxation of the stomach and intestines, accompanied with imminent danger. (Id., ibid., lib. iii., cap.