937 



POWERS, HIRAM. 



POZZO DI BORGO, CARLO ANDREA. 



958 



Optics, designed for the use of Students in the University,' Oxford, 

 1833. ' Revelation and Science,' a Discourse published at Oxford in 

 1833. 'An Historical View of the Progress of the Physical and 

 Mathematical Sciences, from the earliest ages to the present times ;' a 

 volume of the 'Cabinet Cyclopaedia,' London, 1834. 'The Connection 

 of Natural and Divine Truth ; or, the Study of the Inductive Philo- 

 sophy considered as subservient to Theology,' London, 1838. ' Tradition 

 Unveiled ; a candid Inquiry into the Tendency of the doctrines advo- 

 cated in the Oxford Tracts;' with a Supplement. 'A General aud 

 Elementary View of the Undulatory Theory, as applied to the Disper- 

 sion of Light, and some other subjects,' including the substance of 

 several papers, printed in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' and other 

 journals, London, 1841. ' Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philo- 

 sophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of Creation,' London, 

 1 855 ; of which a second edition, revised and enlarged, appeared iu the 

 following year, under the modified title of ' The Unity of Worlds and 

 of Nature : Three Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy ; 

 the Plurality of Worlds ; and the Philosophy of Creation.' A revised 

 second edition of the late Dr. Pereira's ' Lectures on Polarised Light.' 



POWERS, HIRAM, an American sculptor, was born July 29, 

 1805, at Woodstock, in Windsor county, Vermont, where his father 

 kept a small farm. The farm being unsuccessful the elder Powers 

 removed to Ohio, where he soon after died, leaving his family in 

 straitened circumstances. Hiram, compelled to seek a means of main- 

 taining himself, went to Cincinnati, where he obtained employment 

 successively in a hotel, a provision-store, aud a clock-maker's shop. 

 While a child he had been taught drawing, and he had continued to 

 practise the art as an amusement. He now became acquainted with a 

 foreign sculptor from whom he learned how to model in plaster. His 

 former fondness for art was renewed, and he resolved to endeavour to 

 become an artist. Having without much difficulty obtained employ- 

 ment at the Cincinnati Museum in preparing wax-models for exhi- 

 bitions &c., he set himself, during some six or seven years that he 

 retained the situation, to the assiduous cultivation of his powers. At 

 length feeling that he might depend ou the exertion of his talents, he 

 removed in 1835 to Washington, and there continued for some time 

 engaged in modelling busts, in which from his facility in catching a 

 likeness he met with considerable success. In 1837 he was able to 

 put in practice his cherished desire to visit Italy. He settled at 

 Florence, and there, excepting of course visits to the metropolis of 

 art and elsewhere, he has ever since resided. His first task was to 

 acquire mastery over tha cliisel, in which he has been remarkably 

 successful, considering the comparatively late period at which he 

 began to use it. Having achieved that he entered on the regular 

 exercise of his profession. A marble statue of Eve was that by which 

 he first made his name known, and it had the fortune to obtain 

 the hearty applause of Thorwaldsen. A far wider celebrity was how- 

 ever won by his famous statue of the Greek Slave. This having 

 obtained a place of honour in the Great Exhibition of 1851 as the 

 representative of American art, secured the suffrages of art-critics of 

 all countries though of course not without dissentients and it 

 obtained in England a remarkable degree of popularity; reduced 

 copies in parian, and plaster casts of all sizes and every degree of 

 imperfection, being multiplied to an almost unexampled extent. Mr. 

 Powers has produced at least six repetitions of this statue in marble : 

 one of these is in the Dudley gallery, so handsomely thrown open to 

 the public by the noble owner. Among Mr. Powers' other statues may 

 be named his ' Fisher Boy," another very popular work, of which" he 

 has produced three repetitions; ' La Penseroso ; ' 'California;' the 

 ' United States,' for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham ; ' Washington,' 

 for the state of Louisiana ; and ' Calhoun,' his best portrait statue, 

 executed for the city of Charleston. But after all Mr. Powers is 

 perhaps most successful as a sculptor of busts, in which lucrative 

 branch of art he has found ample patronage. Among his best 

 are those of Calhoun, Webster, Adams, Jackson, Judge Marshall, 

 Everett, Van Buren, and other distinguished Americans, the Princess 

 Demidoff, &c. 



Mr. Powers has displayed his inventive skill in contriving a means 

 of avoiding the complex and tiresome, as well as expensive, process in 

 ordinary ue among tculptors, of constructing a clay model and from 

 it taking a plaster-cast before commencing on the marble block out of 

 which the statue or group is to be chiseled. Building up, iu the 

 first instance, a rough solid Blaster model, lie by various chisels and 

 other tools invented by himself carves it down and finishes it to 

 the utmost nicety ; he thus dispenses entirely with the clay model and 

 renders the secondary process of casting unnecessary. This method, 

 which is said to save a great deal of time and labour aud to have 

 many other advantages, is described in the 'Athenaeum' for 1856, 

 p. 1438. 



POWNALL, THOMAS, was born at Lincoln, in 1722. He went to 

 America in 1753, and was elected governor of the colony of Massachusetts 

 Bay in 1757. In 1759 he was appointed governor of New Jersey, and 

 soon afterwards proceeded to South Carolina as governor and captain- 

 general. Having solicited his recal, he returned to England in 1761. 

 In 1768 he was elected a member of the House of Commons, and 

 poke frequently against the war with America. Ho retired to Bath 

 in 1780, where he died in 1805. 



Pownall wa a fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Society of 



Antiquaries. He was the author of a few works, of many pam- 

 phlets, chiefly antiquarian and political, and of several papers in 

 the ' ArchseclogU." Among his more important works may be men- 

 tioned his ' Notices and Descriptions of the Antiquities of Provincia 

 Romana of Gaul,' London, 1788, 4to ; and his ' Intellectual Physics, 

 an Essay concerning the Nature of Being,' 1803, 4to. A full list of 

 his productions is given iu Watt's ' Bibliotheca Britannioa.' 



POZZO DI BORGO (sometimes BARGO), CARLO ANDREA, a 

 distinguished diplomatist, was one of that considerable number of 

 remarkable men produced by the island of Corsica in the earlier part 

 and middle of the last century. His family had ranked among the 

 nobility of the island ever since the 1 2th century ; and he was born 

 on the 8th of March 1764, at Ajaccio, also the native place of Napoleon 

 Bonaparte. The latter was the younger by five years, but they were 

 in early life intimate friends. After having received a careful ele- 

 mentary education in his own country, Pozzo di Borgo went to finish 

 his studies at Pisa ; whence he had not long returned when Corsica, 

 now under the dominion of France, was excited and shaken, like all 

 the rest of that kingdom, by the outbreak of the Revolution of 1789. 

 He had attached himself to General Paoli; and under the patronage 

 of that venerable head of the patriots, he was appointed, along with 

 General Gentili, to proceed to Paris with the thanks of Corsica to the 

 Constituent Assembly for having declared the island an integral 

 portion of the French territory. This mission led to his being nomi- 

 nated a member of the Legislative Assembly, which commenced its 

 sittings iu October 1791. While occupying this position he is stated 

 to have attracted considerable notice by the knowledge and talent he 

 showed in tha diplomatic committee. When the Legislative Assembly 

 was dissolved in September 1792, he returned to Corsica, and there 

 joined Paoli in those efforts by which he accomplished the liberation 

 of his country for a season from France, and the restoration of a native 

 government under the protection of England. When the new consti- 

 tution was established, in the summer of 1794, Pozzo, who had pre- 

 viously acted as one of the Secretaries of the General Consult held at 

 Corte, by which the constitution was drawn up, was appointed, accord- 

 ing to his biographer, M. Capefigue, President of the Board of Council, 

 nominated by the King of England to assist the Viceroy. 



When the English abandoned Corsica in 17*7, he came to this 

 country with the viceroy, Sir Gilbert Elliott (afterwards Earl of 

 Minto), and he remained here for about a year and a half. While in 

 England Pozzo was considered as the principal adviser and agent of 

 the French refugees ; and it is from this period of his life that we 

 may date the real, if not the formal, commencement of his diplomatic 

 career. In 1799 he proceeded to Vienna, where he attempted, unsuc- 

 cessfully, to bring about a coalition between Austria and Russia. He 

 continued to reside at Vienna during the short peace that followed the 

 treaty of Amiens. Soon after the recommencement of hostilities (in 

 May 1 803) he entered the diplomatic service of Russia, in which he 

 spent the remainder of his life. Having been made a Councillor of 

 State, he was first sent on a mission to Vienna, whence, after a few 

 months, he was despatched in the character of Russian commissioner 

 to the army, composed of English, Russian, aud Neapolitan forces, 

 in the north of Italy. After the battle of Austerlitz and the peace of 

 Presburg (December 1805) he returned to Vienna, and thence pro- 

 ceeded to St. Petersburg. When Prussia rose against Napoleon I. in 

 October of the year following, and was about to be joined by Russia, 

 Pozzo received the military rank of colonel, and was to have accom- 

 panied the emperor as one of his suite, when the scheme of the con- 

 federates was struck to the ground and annihilated by the fatal battle 

 of Jena (October 1 4th, 1806). He now proceeded once more to Vienna, 

 where he endeavoured, without success, to induce Austria again to 

 take up arms. Meanwhile war had, at the instigation of France, been 

 declared against Russia by the Porte (December 30th, 1806) ; aud in 

 the beginning of the year 1807 Pozzo joined the English fleet which 

 was sent, under Sir Thomas Duckworth, to force the passage of the 

 Dardanelles. He was present in the battle fought between the Russian 

 and Turkish fleets near the island of Tenedos on the 1st of July, when 

 the Turks were signally defeated. But on the 7th of the same month 

 Russia made peace with France by the treaty of Tilsit, one of the 

 articles of which provided for an armistice between Russia aud the 

 Porte, which was accordingly concluded on the 24th of August following. 

 Pozzo, all whose feelings were vehemently anti-Gallican, now obtained 

 Alexander's permission to travel ; upon which he proceeded to Vienna, 

 and he continued to reside in that capital till the destruction of the 

 fifth Anglo-Austrian coalition against France by the peace of Vienna 

 (October 14th, 1809). 



He now bttook himself to Constantinople, whence he proceeded to 

 London, which he reached in October 1810. There he remained till 

 after the expulsion of the French from Russia in the winter of 1812, 

 when he was recalled by Alexander ; and, passing through Sweden, he 

 met the emperor, after a separation of five years, at KaUtz. After the 

 Congress of Prague (July 1813), Pozzo, now raised to the rank of 

 major-general, was sent to Beniadotte at Berlin ; and it it said to have 

 been by his representations that the Swedish prince-royal was prevailed 

 upon to take part in the battle of Leipzig (October 18th, 1813). 

 Meanwhile, immediately after the previous affair of Gros-beriu (August 

 23rd) Pozzo had been despatched to Frankfurt to take part in the 

 military conferences held there by the allies ; and thence, in the begin- 



