237 



URE, ANDREW, M.D. 



URSINS, PRINCESSE DES. 



him to be a man after his own mind, and took him into his confi- 

 dence ; but the ostensible object of Mazzarino's mission, that of 

 peace-making, was forgotten or set aside, and the war continued in 

 North Italy. 



la 1642 the Papal state itself was the scene of a petty war. Odoardo 

 Farueso, duke of Parma, was possessed also of the duchy of Castro and 

 Rouciglione, a fief of the Roman see. The Barberini, nephews of 

 Pope Urban, were at variance with the duke upon matters of prece- 

 dence, and they also wished to have the duchy of Castro for their 

 own family. The duke made preparations for defence. The Barberini 

 persuaded their uncle, who was old and infirm, to take military 

 possession of the duchy of Castro. The duke of Parma made a 

 defensive alliance, with the duke of Modena, the grand-duke of 

 Tuscany, and the republic of Venice, against the ambition of the 

 Barberini, who, disposing at their pleasure of the Papal treasury and 

 influence, had moved an army to the northward to attack the state of 

 Parma. Several combats took place on the banks of the Po between 

 the Papal troops, commanded by Cardinal Antonio Barberiui, and the 

 troops of Modena and Venice. The troops of Tuscany also took part 

 in this desultory but destructive warfare, which lasted till 1643, 

 when by the mediation of France peace was made and Pope Urban 

 promised to restore the duchy of Castro to the duke Farnese on the 

 latter making an humble apology. Vittorio Siri wrote a diffuse history 

 of this war, called ' Guerra di Castro.' 



On the 29th of July, 1644, Pope Urban VIII. died, after a pontifi- 

 cate of nearly twenty-one years. He was succeeded by Innocent X. 

 Urban encouraged learning and the arts ; he founded the college of 

 Propaganda ; he completed the aqueduct of Acqua Felice ; built the 

 country residence of Castel Gandolfo, enlarged and embellished the 

 Quirinal palace, and increased the Vatican library. He was himself a 

 good classical scholar, and no mean Latin poet. The principal charge 

 against him is his extreme partiality towards his nephews, who abused 

 his old age and credulity. 



URE, ANDREW, M.D., a distinguished chemist, was born at 

 Glasgow in the year 1778. He was educated in the university of his 

 native town, and afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh, and took 

 his degree of M.D. at Glasgow in 1801. In the following year he was 

 appointed professor of chemistry and natural philosophy in the 

 Audersonian Institution in Glasgow. He also gave the lectures on 

 materia medica in connection with the medical courses of this institu- 

 tion. In the year 1809 he took an active part in the establishment of 

 an observatory in the city of Glasgow, and for this purpose visited 

 London, where he made the acquaintance of many of the distinguished 

 astronomers and chemists of the day. The observatory having been 

 erected, he was appointed astronomer, and lived in the observatory, 

 where he waa visited by Sir William Herschell. In the year 1813 he 

 published a ' Systematic Table of the Materia Medica,' with a disser- 

 tation on the action of medicines. In 1818, he read a memoir before 

 the Royal Society, entitled ' New Experimental Researches on some of 

 the leading doctrines of Caloric, particularly on the relation between 

 the Elasticity, Temperature, and Latent Heat of different Vapours, and 

 on Therrnometric Admeasurement and Capacity.' This memoir was 

 printed in the ' Philosophical Transactions,' and has obtained for the 

 author a lasting reputation as a natural philosopher. He subsequently 

 wrote several papers on chemical subjects, all remarkable for the 

 accuracy of the experiments on which his views were founded. 

 Amongst these were papers on nitric acid, the constitution of muriatic 

 acid, and on the construction of a new eudiometer. In 1 821 he published 

 a ' Dictionary of Chemistry,' which was remarkable for the extent and 

 accuracy of its information on all subjects connected with the science 

 of chemistry. The following year (1822) he published a paper ' On the 

 Ultimate Analysis of Animal and Vegetable Substances,' in the ' Phi- 

 losophical Transactions.' This paper was remarkable as being one oi 

 the first to initiate the brilliant period in the history of chemistry, 

 connected with researches into the composition of organic bodies. In 

 1824 he published a translation of Berthollet on ' Dyeing.' In 1829 

 he published his ' System of Geology,' one of the last books on 

 this subject advocating the influence of the Noachiau deluge on the 

 surface of the earth. In 1830 Dr. Ure removed to London, and in 

 1834 was appointed analytical chemist to the Board of Customs. Il 

 was in connection with this important office that he obtained mate 

 rials for many of his subsequent works. In 1835 he produced a work 

 on the ' Philosophy of Manufactures,' and in 1836, ' The Cotton Manu 

 facture of Great Britain compared with that of other countries.' In 

 1839 he published a great work ' On the Arts and Manufactures.' A 

 second edition of this work was published in 1853. It contains a 

 great mass of useful information of the most accurate kind and con 

 veyed in a most lucid style. He was elected a Fellow of the Roya 

 Society of London in 1822, and was one of the original Fellows of th 

 Geological Society, and a Fellow of the Astronomical and other 

 scientific societies both in this country and abroad. He died at hi 

 residence in Gower-street, London, on the 2nd of January 1857. 



URFE', HONORE' D', author of the pastoral romance ' L'Astree : 

 an anti-Ga,llican satirist might call him the French Sir Philip Sydney 

 He was born in 1567, the younger son of a noble family originally from 

 Suabia, and allied with the houses of Lascaris and Savoy. There is a 

 perfect harmony between his life and the tinsel sentiment of his 

 romance. In 1583, when studying in the college of Tournon, he com 



posed a drama, which wag acted by himself and his schoolfellows, ha 

 )laying the part of Apollo, " in a wide taffety robe of crimson and 

 orange, his head surrounded by sunbeams." On leaving college he 

 obtained a company of fifty men, and served bravely in the ware of 

 Henri IV., whose party waa embraced by the family D'Urfe*. In 1598 

 or 1599 he married Diane de Chdtpau Morand ; this lady had been 

 married in 1575 or 1577 to Anne d'Urfe", elder brother of Honore", then 

 n his twentieth or twenty-second year; it was a juvenile passion, so 

 irdent on both sides, that their parents found difficulty in preventing 

 heir marrying before the lady was of marriageable age. After more 

 phan twenty years of married life Anne d'Urfe" and Diane were di- 

 vorced by mutual consent, and Honoro" married the lady in order that 

 ler estates might not go out of the family. Diane's passion for the 

 chase kept her continually surrounded by numbers of large doge, 

 which she allowed to share her own and husband's sleeping apartment. 

 Stunk out of his bed by his wife's canine attendants, Honore" retired 

 to a small property which he owned in the neighbourhood of Nice, 

 and amused himself with the composition of ' L'Astre'e,' the first part 

 of which was published in 1610, and received BO favourably, that a 

 second part appeared in 1612, and two more in 1618. Honore d'Urfe 

 died in 1625, of a breast complaint; his secretary Baro compiled a 

 conclusion to the work from his master's manuscripts. For upwards 

 of half a century 'L'Astre'e ' enjoyed an unmeasured popularity ; it was 

 a storehouse of subjects for the playwright, the painter, and the en- 

 graver. La Fontaine placed it next to the works of Maret and Rabe- 

 lais. The best editicns of 'L'Astree' are that of Paris, 1637, and that 

 of Rouen, 1647; Honore d'Urfe" also published 'La Syreine; avec. 

 d'autres Pieces,' 1611 and 1618; 'Epitres Morales,' 1598, 1603, and 

 1620 ; and ' La Sylvanire, Fable bocagere.' His brother Anne, after 

 getting rid of his wife, declined the order of St. Esprit offered him by 

 Henri IV. in 1598, for his warlike services, and took priest's orders in 

 1599. He died in 1621, with the reputation of a gentleman and 

 scholar. When young he composed one hundred and fifty sonnets 

 in honour of Diane de Chateau Morand, which remained in manu- 

 script; in maturer years he wrote hymns, which he published in 

 1608. He also published, in 1592, 'Deux Dialogues: 1'Honneur et la 

 Vaillance.' 



URSINS, ANNE MARIE DE LA TREMOUILLE, PRINCESSE 

 DES, was remarkable in her day for her daring and restless spirit of 

 political intrigue. She was daughter of Louis de la Tremouille, duke 

 of Noirmoutier; was born before 1642, and married, in 1659, Adrien 

 Blaise de Talleyrand, prince de Chalais. Her husband was banished, 

 in 1663, for being engaged in a duel; and she, following him to Italy, 

 was left by his death a widow in a foreign land. In 1675 she married 

 the old and rich duke of Bracciano, head of the Orsini family, after 

 whose death she sold the duchy, and, retaining only his family name, 

 was called la Princesse des Ursins, by which name she is known in 

 history. Rome was in her time looked upon as the best school of 

 state intrigue; and the voluptuous, haughty, subtle, and dexterous 

 princess was soon recognised as one of the leading spirits of that 

 court. In 1701, when Philip V. of Spain was married to the princess 

 of Savoy, the choice of a camerara-major occasioned considerable 

 embarrassment. Louis XIV. neither dared to confide the post to a 

 Spanish lady, nor to give umbrage to the Spaniards by the appoint- 

 ment of a French lady. Madame des Ursins, an Italian princess, 

 though a Frenchwoman by birth, was ultimately fixed upon, and in 

 1701 she joined her royal mistress at Nice. With the exception of a 

 brief interval (in 1704), the princess retained the post of camerara- 

 major till the queen's death in 1714. Previous to her ephemeral dis- 

 grace the princess courted the alliance of the Spanish party at court ; 

 after her return she appears to have acted entirely by the direction of 

 Madame Maintenon. After the death of the queen the chief solicitude 

 of Madame des Ursins was to select a new wife for Philip, over whom 

 she might exercise as unbounded a control as over her predecessor. 

 Alberoni, by his false representations of the character of Elisabeth 

 Farnese, persuaded her to promote the king's union with that princess. 

 The first step of the new queen was to drive the camerara-major from 

 court with indignity; a step to which the king submitted without 

 remonstrance, and against which the court of France offered no objec- 

 tion. Hopeless of returning to Spain, the Princess des Ursius retired 

 to Rome, but, unable to live without the excitement of political 

 intrigue, she thrust her services upon the Pretender James Stuart, 

 who allowed her to do the honours of his house, till her death in 

 December 1722. Madame des Ursins was a mere courtier; her 

 political struggles were exclusively personal. She could make and 

 unmake friendships supplant favourites recover power when under- 

 mined herself but of governing a state she does not appear to have 

 had even the shadow of an idea. She was merely one of those idle 

 though gaudy weeds which grow up in courts, and are of no use even 

 when they supplant triflers as worthless as themselves. The memoirs 

 and letters of the Princess des Ursins interest us hi the same way that 

 'Gil Blaa' does by their mixture of passion and adventure. In tLis 

 point of view her correspondence with the Marechal de Villeroi, and 

 still more her correspondence with Madame Maintenon (both have been 

 published), are very edifying. It is clear from those letters that all 

 her unquestionable energy and versatility only enabled her to make 

 her power the means of more embroiling the perplexed affairs of Spain 

 during the War of Succession. 



