armed Sulla against Marius and Caesar against Pompeius. | things, and re-establish the old Roman religion on its firm The heir of Cæsar inherited the favour of the plebeians, and was bound to requite it by distinguished patronage. The plebeians were still the electors to the tribunate, and still regarded the tribunes as their protectors against the encroachments of the patricians represented by the senate. The tribunes had proved themselves most useful allies to Casar, and might yet again array themselves in support of the faithful inheritor of his principles. The emperor proposed to balance the consular potestas by assuming at the same time a tribunician potestas also. He thus endowed himself with the authority of the tribune for life, and assured the commons of the city and empire that he could at any time exercise the formidable veto upon the proceedings of the consuls which had served them so well, even down to recent times. Thus did he become emperor indeed,—the sovereign both of the nobles and the people in the city, as well as the commander of the army in the field and in the provinces. There remained yet another sovereign authority in the state, namely, that which the chief pontiff exercised over the affairs of religion. However much the religious scntiment had been weakened throughout the Roman world, there was yet enough superstition left among the citizens to confer great and sometimes overwhelming influence upon the legitimate interpreter of divine things to the nation. The senate had exercised this power with great effect, as long as the appointment to the chief pontificate rested with the patrician curia. Of late years, however, this important dignity had been thrown open to the commons also. Octavianus was well pleased to accept it on the nomination of the whole people combined. He allowed, indeed, his former colleague Lepidus to retain it unmolested during his lifetime, but upon his death he assumed himself the exalted position which he might hesitate to intrust to any other. With this last addition to his prerogatives the emperor might well be content. The name of king he had from the first utterly repudiated. The office of dictator approached too near to that of a king to be acceptable to a ruler, who studied to confine himself within the limits of the republican constitution. Yet there still lacked some general appellative which might reflect in a single word the full dignity and power resulting from the combination of so many honours and prerogatives. The emperor proposed at first, it is said, to assume the name of Romulus; but Romulus had been a king; and further, Romulus had been destroyed, according to the tradition, by the senate, just as Cæsar had been in later times. Such associations were ominous. At last he fixed upon the epithet Augustus, a name which no man had borne before, and which, on the contrary, had been applied to things the most noble, most venerable, and most sacred. The rites of the gods were called august; their temples were august. The word itself was derived from the holy auguries; it was connected in meaning with the abstract term authority, and with all that increases and flourishes upon earth. The use of this glorious title could not fail to smooth the way to the general acceptance of the divine character of the mortal who was deemed worthy to bear it. The senate had just decreed the divinity of the defunct Caesar; the courtiers were beginning now to insinuate that his successor, while yet alive, enjoyed an effluence from deity; the poets were even suggesting that altars should be raised to him; and in the provinces, among the subjects of the state at least, temples to his divinity were actually rising, and the cult of Augustus was beginning to assume a name, a ritual, and a priesthood. Augustus, as we may now call him, viewed all this with secret satisfaction. It was one of his first objects, indeed, to restore the outward show at least of reverence for divine political basis. It was easy to rebuild, or cause to be rebuilt, the fallen or dilapidated temples of the national gods. The nobles paid their court to their master by seconding his efforts in this direction. The Pantheon, the temple of all the gods, if such was its original destination, remains still as a monument of his minister Agrippa's munificence; but Virgil would assure us that not less than three hundred "grand" temples were erected throughout the city. Perhaps, indeed, these were mostly the sacella or chapels of the Lares, which are placed at the corners of the streets. Augustus took the sentiment of the people at a favourable moment. They were thoroughly sickened by the miseries of the civil wars; they were ashamed of the crimes for which the whole nation were more or less responsible; they were eager to rush into any scheme of expiation and reparation that should be offered to them, and lend their hands to the material work of restoring at least the outward semblance of penitence for sin, and thankfulness for the mercy vouchsafed them. There can be no doubt that the conscience of the nation was awakened to a sense of the divine retribution under which they had suffered, but which had been at last averted under the blessed influence of the ruler whom they had at last chosen. The Romans had not lost their belief in a divine Providence, which oppressed them with anxiety and terror, however little they connected it with a sense of moral duty. The spirit of materialistic philosophy had, however, been rife among them, and during the past century the antireligious dogmas of Epicurus had sapped the belief of the educated and literary classes. The patrician youth of Rome had been trained in the schools of Greece, and especially at Athens, or had been placed under the teaching of Greek instructors at home; and of the three contending schools, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Academics, the second was that which had carried off far the greater number of disciples. The men of books or of speculative character might be generally Academics, and claim Cicero as their noblest leader; the men of imagination and deep religious fervour might follow, with Cato and Brutus, the teaching of the Stoics; but the practical men, the men of arts and arms and business, if they adhered to any school of thought at all, were almost all, like Cæsar himself and his associates generally, addicted to the easy precepts and still laxer morality of Epicurus. This philosophy was noted for its utter denial of Providence and, for all practical objects, of divinity altogether None of these rival systems, whatever degrees of right sense and reason they might embrace respectively, could sanction any real belief in the still current mythology of the national worship, which was assailed and derided on all sides. Nevertheless, such was the pertinacious adherence of the Roman people to their ancient forms, especially where they had any connection with their national polity, that the outward ritual of their religion was still maintained, though a mere shadow of its former substance. Statesmen, indeed, had invented a formula for reconciling their actual unbelief with their outward profession. Varro had said, and the dictum was favourably accepted, that the ancient beliefs were to be upheld as a matter of public policy. Such, no doubt, was the principle on which Augustus, who was himself neither a believer nor a philosopher, but a politician only, proceeded, when he assumed the part of a restorer of the national religion. He touched, with great sagacity, a chord which vibrated to the heart of the people, who firmly believed that the destinies of the city were bound up with the due observance of the ancient rites, and statesmen looked on with decorous acquiescence at shows and ceremonies to which they attached no significance whatever. The world " composes its countenance to the expression III. II assumed by the king." Such was the aphorism of the man of the world, and in this particular Augustus was a king indeed. The Romans rushed forward in the course he marked out for them. His word dictated the fashions of the day, not in sentiment only, but in many particulars of external conduct. He was anxious to restore the dignity of the Roman citizen, as one of the conquering race which ruled its subjects as much by the prestige of its character as by its arms, and he resented all relaxation from the strait-laced discipline of the ancients, even to the petty matters of their dress and deportment. He marked his sovereign displeasure at the degenerate Romans who indulged in the loose habiliments of Greece. "Are these," he exclaimed, in the language of Virgil, "the rulers of the world, the nation of the gown?" And in order to keep up the high distinction of Roman citizenship at a period when provincials from all sides were crowding into it, he reversed, in this single instance, the policy of Cæsar, and was very sparing in granting admission to the Roman franchise. He was, indeed, extremely careful in striking a balance between the tendency of the age to a general fusion of castes and privileges and the ancient spirit of exclusion, in which he thought the strength of the republic still really reposed. The policy of Augustus was one, on the whole, of cautious and moderate reaction. He made an effort to stay the process of disintegration, which he found so rife throughout the vital forces of the empire. The lawlessness of his own usurpation did indeed combine with the gross selfishness of his personal character to sap the moral principles of society, and render its ultimate dissolution inevitable; but he made a vigorous effort to stem the tide, and succeeded in giving the Roman world a period of rest in the downward path which it was generally pursuing. The character of the period, however, as an epoch of rest for reflection and self-control, was chiefly marked in the literature, which, more than anything else, has contributed to give it the name of the Augustan Age. The religious sentiment which has been described, resting as it did upon a deep sympathy with historical antiquity, coloured by a bold and vigorous imagination, is reflected in the poetry of Virgil, and more particularly in the spirit of his great epic, the Eneid. No doubt, both depth and tenderness of feeling may be traced even in the eclogues of the same master, however slight for the most part their subjects, and however imitative their treatment. The Georgics present us with more serious and dignified characteristics, and though these pieces are directed mainly to the practical treatment of practical operations, they admit of high moral as well as religious colouring. They recall the Roman reader to the moral foundations of the national character, its honest simplicity, its love of nature, its devotion to labour, its conviction that industry is the appointed path to virtue and to honour. But this moral feeling is elevated by a sense of the divine within man and around him. The Roman husbandman, the breed of heroes, is never suffered to forget that there is a God and a Providence, or that the favour of the divine power has always fallen upon the industrious and the virtuous. "Thus it is that Etruria of old, and Rome in later times, waxed illustrious and mighty; thus that the city on the seven hills became the fairest object of creation." The Georgics are undoubtedly animated throughout with a religious sentiment, and bespeak the high religious purpose of their author. But in the Eneid this religious sentiment and purpose are both still more distinctly proclaimed to us. The great epic of Virgil, the national epic of the Roman people, glorifies the divine Providence which founded Rome in the beginning, and carried her through all her triumphs to the consummation of her greatness in the era of Augustus. It begins with the divine Æneas, and it leads us on to the divine Cæsar. The greatness and the weakness of the hero of the poem equally tend to this one end, the illustration of the Providence which has educed strength out of weakness, and overruled everything to the glory of the Roman people. The moral to be deduced from the story of Eneas is too plain for any Roman to mistake. The divinity which protects Rome is the Lord of heaven and earth and all that is therein. There is no God or Lord like unto Him. Blessed are the Romans who have this Lord for their God. The majesty of the Roman empire, now at the crowning summit of its progress, is the immediate efflux of this sovereign power, and the one is for ever bound up with the other. If such was the doctrine sung by Virgil, surely none could be more grateful to Augustus, the sovereign ruler of an empire so guided and protected. The names of Virgil and Horace are familiarly united in every review of the age of Augustus; yet no two men can stand more in contrast one with the other in their personal character, in the scope of their writings, and in the influences they respectively exercised upon their contemporaries. Horace, as is well known, had been a republican in his youth; he had espoused the cause of Brutus and Cassius, and, while yet a student in the schools at Athens, had obtained a commission in their army. He fought in person in the battle of Fhilippi, and, as he tells us himself, threw away his shield in his rapid flight from the swords of the Cæsarians. From that time he abjured the losing cause, and obtained, perhaps without seeking it, the advice of the minister Mæcenas, by whom he was taken into favour and introduced to Augustus himself. However agreeable might be his temper and manners, it is not likely that the politic usurper would distinguish a mere upstart with admission to his society without at least tacitly exacting some return. The character of this poet's compositions, both in his lyrics and his satires and epistles, seems pretty clearly to betray the inspiration of the emperor and his astute associates. The most animated and imaginative of his pieces are almost invariably employed in sounding the praises of the Cæsar and his family. When he descends from his highest flights of poetry, he finds congenial matter for his muse in delicate flattery of Mecenas and other magnates of the court. But it will be observed that he seldom, if ever, addresses the haughty nobles of Rome except in a strain of prudential advice, soothing their pride, but lowering their ambition, and directing them to scek contentment and happiness not in objects of public interest, but in the tranquil enjoyment of ease, which he dignifies with the name of philosophy. The poetry of Horace is full of pleasing sentiments, but it contains perhaps no single strain of generous and ennobling enthusiasm. Such feelings it was the policy of Augustus to discourage, and the policy of Augustus is faithfully represented in the utterances of his courtly flatterer. But there was another task imposed upon him, and it is to this that his satires and epistles are more commonly directed, namely, to put out of countenance the offensive self-assertion of the "new men" of the empire, the men whom the fortunes of the civil war had suddenly raised from their native obscurity, and enriched or ennobled, notwithstanding the barrenness of their origin and the vulgarity of their breeding. Augustus wanted, no doubt, to tame the aspiring spirits of his genuine nobles, but he shrank from driving them to desperation by swamping them with an inundation of baseborn inferiors, perhaps their own former clients and freed possessed in perfection both the delicate irony and the graceful amenity which are essential to the performance of a task so critical. Doubtless Horace, in his own peculiar line, exercised as great an influence in Roman society as Virgil. The laughing philosopher was no less a power among his contemporaries than the religious devotee. Each of them, in his several way, performed an immense service to the government under which he enjoyed favour and reward; nor can we deny that, considering how necessary the government of Augustus was to the bleeding commonwealth, each in his several way did an invaluable service to his country. Nor, though we may admit that irony and persiflage were Horace's forte, should we do him justice if we supposed that he had no feelings of genuine tenderness and earnestness. Even Horace had his instinctive sense of religious duty, which peeps out occasionally from under the robe of his pretended philosophy, and shows that he recognised a principle of duty, and felt ill at ease in the consciousness of his own deficiencies. We may recognise in many of his later compositions his growing dissatisfaction with the worldly views of life which he had been wont to recommend, and some efforts at the attainment of higher sources of satisfaction. Both Virgil and Horace were cut off in middle life, but both, we imagine, had already entered into the cloud, and were painfully conscious that the commonWealth they loved had fallen into its decline, and that their own attempts to invigorate or to soothe it were little likely to prove availing. If Virgil deserves our admiration, Horace too is not unworthy of our sympathy; and it is well that we can part in such good temper from the two most perfect artists of the Roman, or perhaps of the ancient, world altogether. Of Ovid, the third great poet of the Augustan Age, we can hardly think or speak so favourably. Ovid, too, was a genuine representative of his epoch, which occupied, however, the latter part of the career of Augustus, when the character of the age had begun to show manifest signs of deterioration. In the character of this poet, which may be abundantly gathered from his numerous works, there appears no religious feeling and no moral purpose. Nevertheless, his writings reflect, in some important particulars, the social tendencies of the epoch, and afford valuable illustrations of the genius of the Augustan Age. To the historian and archaeologist the Fasti presents a store of interesting information; but in this poetical account of the Roman calendar the writer undoubtedly proposed to meet a social want of the time. The work is in fact a rationale of the divine offices, and expounds to the nation the 'seasons and the reasons (tempora cum causis)" of the religious services which the emperor recommended to their pious attention. Minute and manifold as were the memorials of their past history, or of their accredited mythology, which the cult of the Roman temples enshrined, we can imagine how much they must have faded away from the recollection of the people generally during the century of confusion from which they had just emerged, and how even the priests and flamens of the national divinities must have stood in need of a learned interpreter of the rites which they mechanically performed. The Fasti is remarkable as a speaking witness to the fact of the ceremonial revival of the Augustan Age. The generally immoral tendency of a great part of Ovid's poetry is well known; and it speaks all the worse for the character of the age that the writer could declare, and probably not without justice, that his personal conduct was purer than the sentiments with which he sought to please the public. The deterioration of sentiment between Virgil and Ovid is marked in the tone with which they speak in the higher flights of their respective poetry. The writer of the Eneid fully maintains the pure standard of thought and expression which he received as a tradition from Homer, and which had been respected by the epic poets generally; but Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, an heroic, if not an epic, composition, allows himself to descend far below this exalted level, and is not only licentious in his language, but seems to choose, and of set purpose, the most licentious of the stories which his varied subject offers. Again, though Horace adopts the lighter tone and looser phraseology of the lyric poets of Greece, there is at least nothing meretricious in his style; he was not a corrupter of youth himself, nor were the models such which he proposed for adaptation. But Ovid descends to the imitation of a more wanton kind of poetry. He, too, seeks his models for the most part from among the Greeks, but they are the Greeks of a more degenerate age-the Greeks of the court of Alexandria, who pandered to the vicious tastes of a corrupt and degraded society. But, imitator as he doubtless was, Ovid had a strong personal individuality, and all his poetry is marked with the genuine sentiment of his age and country. Perhaps we trace more of the real man in his Tristia and Ex Ponto, in which he is thrown entirely on his own resources, though in the depth of his affliction and the decline of his powers, than in the abler and more interesting works in which he owed we know not how much to the Greeks before him. We have, besides these, the remains of other poets, such as Tibullus and Propertius, who also hold up the mirror to their times, and assist us in scanning its character on all sides. But it will be well to pass them over in this brief sketch, and bring our review of the literature of the Augustan Age to a close with a notice of the great historian Livy. The consummate excellence in form and style of the work to which we refer bears witness to the intellectual accomplishments of the epoch. No doubt the Romans did much at a later period to improve their method of teaching, and to extend their acquaintance with the highest models of literary excellence. An age succeeded in which Rome was formed into an academy, like that of Athens or Alexandria, when all the arts and sciences of the time were taught or practised under the direct instruction of approved professors. Great were the merits of the historical literature of Rome at a later age, and illustrious are some of the men who distinguished themselves in its exercise. But, on the whole, a reasonable criticism will award to Livy the palm of merit at least in the two particulars just specified,-a palm which he may well contest even with the masters of the art in Greece. The form of Livy's history partakes in exquisite proportion of the descriptive, the narrative, and the dramatic; it is replete with personal characteristics, which bring us into direct acquaintance with the individuals of whom it treats; it abounds, moreover, in matter of antiquarian interest, which we who read it at a distance of nineteen centuries feel to be specially valuable, and which did not fail to attract the sympathy even of the writer's own contemporaries. The Romans in the time of Augustus were just beginning to be keenly self-conscious. They felt that they had attained to such a position in the world's history as no people before them had acquired. They were led by all the traditions of their youth to attribute their splendid success to the examples of national virtue paraded before them. They were sensible of the deep debt they owed to their ancestors, and they wanted to know who their ancestors were; they wanted to trace the features of their own character in the lineaments of the great men who had gone before them. Of these ancient heroes of the commonwealth they had hitherto imbibed a faint and vague conception from songs and poems and family or national traditions. The legends connected with their ritual and their laws and institutions assumed the existence of those heroes, and the | of the Rhine and Danube were constantly harassed by the reality of the deeds imputed to them; but the men and indomitable spirit of the barbarians beyond them. On the their deeds were for the most part wrapped in obscurity, Danube the Roman arms seem to have been crowned with or presented under dubious colours. The voice of Livy's a sufficient measure of success, but on the Rhine the great contemporaries muttered around him that of all their disaster of Varus, and the loss of three legions, left a deep compatriots he should be held most in honour among impression of gloom upon the feelings of the age. Augustus them, who should bring these traditions of the past into himself suffered a succession of disappointments in the the light of day, and make them pass among a generation, premature death of his nearest kindred, and in the loss of willing so to accept them, as genuine and accredited history. his trustiest advisers. Though he maintained to the last The history of Livy was the true product of the age, an outward serenity almost touching, he appears to have inasmuch as it answered to the call of the age. It pre- been painfully conscious of the substantial failure of the sented Roman history to the Romans much as Shakespeare's great pacification he had accomplished, and to have dramas presented English history to the English; the augured nothing but evil from the character of the stepson, history in both cases was just what the people wished to be- to whom, at the last moment, he was content to leave his lieve, and from thenceforth they so accepted and believed it. inheritance. A general foreboding of evil was creeping As regards the style of Livy's composition, it is enough over the minds of his people. The age of Augustus, which to say that it is generally regarded as the most perfect lasted nearly fifty years, was indeed a long day even in the specimen of the Latin prose writing that we possess, and life of a nation, but its sun was manifestly hastening to its we may be pretty confident that if anything better had setting, and the night was coming, slowly, gradually, but been written, posterity would not have suffered it to perish. surely. (c. M.) It holds the middle place between the oratorical exuberance of Cicero and the philosophic sententiousness of Tacitus. While sentence follows sentence throughout in logical sequence, so that the thread of meaning and argument is never lost under a mass of verbiage, yet we are beguiled in our lengthened study by the repeated recurrence of passages of highly-imaginative colouring; we feel that if the historian sometimes deviates into poetry, he never misleads us with a show of empty rhetoric. The Roman people, as represented by Livy, retained the genuine strength and bluntness of their character. The teaching of their Greek instructors had had as yet little effect in seducing them into the conceits and affectations of the more frivolous people they had conquered. The history of Livy remains the noblest monument of the Romanus honos, the national dignity, which his countrymen so proudly contrasted with the Graia licentia, which was gradually enervating and degrading them. The spirit of the Augustan Age is set forth, perhaps at its best and brightest, in the illustrious history of Livy. It is probable that Livy, who had been a republican in his heart, lived for the most part the retired life of a student, though he is said to have been employed in the education of some of the princes of the imperial family. He reflects the character of the earlier generation, among whom he was born, rather than of the later, in which he died, at an advanced age, in the fourth year of Tiberius. All the great poets above mentioned met an early death about the middle of the principate of Augustus, except Ovid, who survived to the eighth year of his successor. Accordingly, it is in Ovid, as might be expected, that we trace the first marks of degeneracy from the high standard of the Augustan literature-the Golden Age of Latin composition. The decline of Rome, both in intellect and morals, was becoming rapidly apparent. The splendid promise of the Augustan Age was quickly exhausted. The spirit of freedom evaporated under the influences of the time, and the spurious appearances which the emperor kept up had no power to impart real vigour to the national constitution. Just in the same manner it is abundantly clear that the fame of the age of Louis XIV. in France is founded on the excellence of the men who were actually born and bred in an earlier epoch and under a healthier régime. Neither the age of Augustus nor that of Louis produced the men who have rendered it illustrious. But the decline of Rome was becoming marked before the death of Augustus in other respects also. Although internal dissensions had been appeased, and private ambition quelled, the external relations of the empire were insecure, and caused vivid apprehensions. The frontiers AUGUSTUS II. (also, and more accurately, designated FREDERICK AUGUSTUS I.), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, second son of John George III. of Saxony, was born at Dresden, 12th May 1670. His personal beauty was remarkable, and from his great physical strength he received the surname of The Strong, by which he is commonly distinguished. He was very carefully educated, and spent several years travelling in Europe, visiting most of the courts, and taking part in some campaigns against the French. In 1694 he succeeded his elder brother as elector of Saxony, and shortly after, having entered into alliance with Austria, was appointed to the chief command of the imperial forces against the Turks. In 1697, after having suffered a defeat at Olasch, he resigned this office, and proceeding to Vienna, entered into negotiations with regard to the throne of Poland, left vacant by the death of John Sobieski in 1696. As a preliminary step in his candidature, Augustus renounced the Protestant faith, and proclaimed himself a Catholic. Among his rivals the most formidable was the French prince of Conti. Both expended enormous sums in buying over the Polish nobles, and both claimed to be elected at the general diet. Conti, however, was not on the spot, and Augustus, marching into Poland with his Saxon forces, gained possession of the kingdom. Scarcely was he settled on the throne, when he entered into alliance with Russia and Denmark against the young king of Sweden, and with his Saxon troops (for the Poles would not unite with him) invaded Livonia. In the campaigns which followed (1700-1704), he was completely worsted by the extraordinary military genius of his opponent, the celebrated Charles XII. of Sweden he was driven from Poland, and Stanislaus Leszczinski was crowned in his place. The Swedes, following up their victories, invaded Saxony, and in 1706, at Altranstädt, Augustus was compelled to make peace, to repay the expenses of the Swedish army, to acknowledge Stanislaus as king of Poland, and to congratulate him on his accession. After these reverses he spent some time as a volunteer in the Netherlands, but the defeat of Charles at Pultowa (1709) again raised his hopes. He at once declared the Altranstädt treaty null and void, and having received promises of assistance from Russia, entered Poland, drove out Stanislaus, and was a second time proclaimed king. During the following years he continued to carry on the war with Sweden, while at the same time his kingdom was distracted by the jealousy with which the Poles regarded the Saxon troops, who were compelled to leave Poland in 1717. In 1718 Charles XII. was killed at Fredericshall, and from that time the reign of Augustus was marked by no important event. His court became celebrated as the Newfoundland, appear to have been its proper home. The probability that this bird is now totally extinct gives special value to the remains of it now existing. These, according to Professor Newton, are as follows:-71 or 72 skins, 9 skeletons, 38 or 41 detached bones of different birds, and 65 eggs. The other Auks are the Puffin, the Razorbill, and the Little Auk, all widely distributed along the northern-temperate and Arctic coasts. most extravagant and luxurious in Europe, and he himself | Orkneys, while Iceland, the Faroes, and the islets about as the most dissolute and magnificent of princes. His lavish expenditure, though it enriched his capital with treasures of art, impoverished both Poland and Saxony, and laid the foundations for the future misfortunes of those countries. He died, 1st February 1733, from mortification of an old wound. Of his numerous natural children, the most famous was the distinguished general,,Maurice of Saxony. AUGUSTUS III., or FREDERICK AUGUSTUS II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, only legitimate son of AULIC COUNCIL (from the Latin aula, a hall, in Augustus the Strong, was born at Dresden, 7th October German, Reichshofrath), one of the two supreme courts 1696. He was brought up in the Protestant faith, but in of the old Germanic empire, the other being the imperial 1712, while on his travels, he entered the Church of Rome, chamber (Reichskammergericht). It was called into existthough his change of opinion was not publicly known till ence in 1501 by the Emperor Maximilian, and was by 1717. In 1733 he succeeded his father as elector of him intended to counterbalance the influence of the imSaxony, and put forward claims to the kingdom of Poland. perial chamber, which he had been compelled to form by The Polish nobles, however, had become dissatisfied with the states six years before. The Aulic Council had in foreign rule, and endeavoured to reinstate Stanislaus Lesz- many respects equal power with the chamber; from its czinski, whose daughter was married to Louis XV. of France. decisions there was no appeal, and under its special jurisRussia and Austria, probably bribed, but certainly dread- diction were included the consideration of the imperial ing French influence in Poland, supported Augustus, who reserved rights, fees, and privileges, the settlement of was elected, though in an informal manner, and by disputes as to precedence among the several states, and their aid established himself in the kingdom. On the the arrangement of matters relating to the Italian possesdeath of Charles of Austria in 1740, Saxony at first sions of the empire. All questions of law could be subjoined the league against Maria Theresa, but jealousy of the mitted either to this council or to the chamber. The Prussian successes in the first campaign caused Augustus members were at first appointed by the emperor, at whose to unite with the empress when war broke out a second death the court dissolved, and new appointments were made time in 1744. His forces were completely defeated by by his successor. The power of the council increased Frederick, and Saxony was overrun and pillaged by the under several of the emperors; it was formally recognised Prussian troops. Eleven years later Augustus joined the as coequal with the imperial chamber; and after the peace alliance against Frederick, which gave rise to the Seven of Westphalia its organisation was altered so as to meet the Years' War. He was again unfortunate; the whole Saxon requirements of the time. It then and afterwards consisted army was surrounded and compelled to surrender at Pirna of a president, vice-president, and eighteen councillors, all in 1756, and during the remainder of the war Saxony and selected and paid by the emperor, and of a vice-chancellor, Poland were the seats of operations, and suffered severely. whose appointment rested with the electorate of Mainz. Augustus died 5th October 1763, surviving only by a few Six members were Protestants, and the votes of these six, months the peace of Hubertsburg. During his reign when unanimous, could not be overturned by any majority considerable additions were made to the collections of art of the others. The councillors were divided into two treasures formed by his father, and Dresden began to be parties-the first consisting of the counts and barons, the celebrated throughout Europe for its china and pictures. second of the men of learning, who possessed equal rights AUK, a name common to several species of sea-fowl with the nobles, but were more highly paid. At the belonging, with one exception, to the family Aleida. Of dissolution of the old Germanic imperial system in 1806, these, special interest attaches to the Great Auk, or Gare- the Aulic Council in its former signification came to an fowl (Alea impennis), from the circumstance that there is end, though an Austrian court bearing the same title still no authentic record of its having been taken, or even seen continued to sit in Vienna. alive, for more than a quarter of a century. In the autumn of 1821 Dr Fleming, while on a cruise through the Hebrides, observed and described one which had been taken alive in the sea off St Kilda and put on board the yacht. With a rope attached to one of its legs, this specimen was occasionally allowed to disport itself in its native element, where it astonished every one by the rapidity with which it swam under water. On one of these occasions it got loose from its bonds, and was soon beyond reach of pursuit. Another specimen had been observed a few years before off Papa Westra, one of the Orkney Islands, but in spite of the exertions of the crew of a six-oared boat, continued for several hours, the auk could not be overtaken. This specimen, however, was afterwards secured, and is now in the British Museum. The Great Auk measures about three fect in length, has a large bill, but wings so small as to be totally useless for flying, serving, however, as powerful swimming organs It is said to have laid a single egg on the bare rock,-usually, from the inability of the bird to rise on wing to the higher cliffs, close to the water edge. Its food, according to Fabricius, consisted of the lumpsucker and other fishes of a similar size. From the earliest existing accounts, the Great Auk does not appear to have ever been more than an occasional visitant to the British Isles, and then chiefly to the sea around St Kilda and the AULIS, a town in Boeotia, supposed to have been situated on a rocky peninsula between two bays, about three miles S. of Chalcis. During the Trojan war it was the rendezvous of the Greek fleet, and has obtained celebrity as the scene of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Pausanias states that in his day there was still to be seen here the temple of Artemis ascribed to Againemnon. AUMALE, formerly ALBEMARLE, from the Latin Alba Marla, a town of France, in the department of Seine Inférieure, on the banks of the Bresle, 35 miles N.E. of Rouen. Grain and hemp are cultivated in the neighbourhood; cloth is manufactured; and the town has a trade in wool and cattle. Population, 2229. Aumale was erected by William the Conqueror into a countship, which was afterwards held in succession by the houses of Castile, Dammartin, Harcourt, and Lorraine; and in 1547 it was raised to the rank of a dukedom in favour of Francis of Lorraine. It afterwards passed to the house of Savoy, from whom it was purchased in 1675 by Louis XIV., who In conferred it as an apanage on one of his natural sons. 1769 it came into possession of the house of Orleans. The earl of Albemarle, in the British peerage, derives his title from Aumale. AUNGERVYLE, RICHARD, commonly known by the name of Richard de Bury, was born in 1281, at Bury St |