720 



DECAMERON 



DECATUR 



Ex. xix. 3 to xxiv. 15). They are quoted at length 

 in Deut. v. 1-21, and, besides minor differences, 

 with remarkable extensions and variations in the 

 fourth, fifth, and tenth commandments. The 

 Divine rest after Creation is given as the ground of 

 the fourth commandment in Ex. xx. 11, the first 

 part of that verse being based on Ex. xxxi. 17 b, 

 and the second part on Genesis, ii. 26, both of 

 which form part of the ' Priestly Narrative ' of the 

 Pentateuch. In Deuteronomy this reason for the 

 commandment is omitted, and appended to the 

 commandment there is a statement of the purpose 

 of the Sabbath (based, indeed, on Ex. xxiii. 12), 

 ' in order that thy man-servant and thy maid- 

 servant may rest as well as thou,' and of the 

 motive to keep it viz. Israel's gratitude to Jehovah 

 for deliverance from his own servitude in Egypt. 

 It has been conjectured that the Decalogue in 

 its original form was entirely without comments, 

 and that all the commandments were expressed 

 with the same terseness and brevity as in the first, 

 sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. 



The prohibitions of other gods and of image- 

 worship being closely connected, and supported 

 in common by the reason annexed in Ex. xx. 5, 6, 

 were even in ancient times taken together as one 

 of the Ten Words ; the number ten being made 

 out of the rest in various ways. The Jews com- 

 monly considered the prefatory words in Ex. xx. 2 

 (Deut. v. 6), 'I am the Lord,' &c., as forming the 

 first Word. The Lutheran Church, following 

 another ancient Jewish division, divides the pro- 

 hibition of evil concupiscence into two the ninth 

 and tenth commandments, making ' Thou shalt 

 not covet thy neighbour's house' (which in Ex. 

 xx. 17, is mentioned first) the ninth. The 

 Roman Catholic Church, following Augustine, 

 finds the ninth commandment in the first clause 

 of Deut. v. 21, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neigh- 

 bour's wife.' In the other Protestant Churches, 

 and in the Greek Church, as also in Josephus, 

 Philo, and the earliest Church Fathers, the pro- 

 hibitions of other gods and of image-worship are 

 counted as the first and second commandments, and 

 that of evil desire as one viz. the tenth. The 

 Catholic and Protestant Churches agree in making 

 ' Honour thy father and thy mother ' begin the 

 second table of the Decalogue ; but Delitzsch, 

 Oehler, and other scholars hold that the ten com- 

 mandments fall into two sets of five, the first includ- 

 ing the commandments of piety to God and to those 

 whom he has invested with natural authority ; the 

 second, the commandments of probity, or of duty 

 to one's neighbour. See PENTATEUCH ; Driver's 

 Notes on Lessons from the Pentateuch (New York, 

 1887) ; Stanley's Christian Institutions, chap. xvii. 



Decameron, the great work of Boccaccio 



(q.v.). 



Decamps, ALEXANDRE-GABRIEL, a celebrated 

 French painter, was born at Paris in 1803. A 

 great portion of his childhood was spent in a lonely 

 part of Picardy among the peasants, which seems 

 to have given him a lifelong distaste for the ways 

 of cultivated society. He studied in a desultory 

 manner under Bouchot, Abel de Pujol, David, and 

 Ingres, but he saw nature in his own way, and 

 stamped the small pictures of animals which he 

 then produced with his own individuality. His 

 want of a thorough grounding in art, and his dis- 

 inclination for systematic study, told against him, 

 and prevented him from working with perfect 

 ease and mastery. His effects were attained by 

 repeated paintings, and his pictures exhibit a 

 strong impasto, which he scraped with pumice- 

 stone, and again retouched. In 1824 he spent the 

 summer in Switzerland, and in 1827-28 he travelled 

 in Italy and passed to the Levant, where he found 



congenial subjects, of the class that Delacroix 

 afterwards treated, which greatly occupied his 

 brush, and which attracted attention in the 

 Salon of 1831. He aspired to treat historical and 

 religious subjects : his ' Defeat of the Cimbri ' 

 (1834) attained a great success. He was made a 

 chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1839, and 

 became officer in 1851. He died at Fontainebleau 

 from a hunting accident, 22d August 1860. His 

 works prove him to have been a powerful colourist ; 

 they are effective in composition and the distribu- 

 tion of light and shade, and show a fine apprecia- 

 tion of the wilder and more picturesque aspects 

 of man and nature. Since his death they have 

 realised large prices, his water-colour of ' Children 

 let out of a Turkish School ' ( 1842) fetching 34,000 

 francs in Paris in 1861. See his Life by Moreau 

 (1869). 



De Candolle, AUGUSTIN PYRAME, an emi- 

 nent botanist, descended from an ancient noble 

 family of Provence, was born at Geneva, 4th 

 February 1778, and was first drawn to the study 

 of botany by the lectures of Vaucher. In 1796-97 

 he studied chemistry, physics, and botany in Paris, 

 where in 1797 his earliest work, on lichens, was 

 published. Other works quickly followed, includ- 

 ing his Astragalogia ( 1802), and his valuable Essais 

 sur les Proprietes Medicates des Plantes ( 1804). In 

 1802 he was elected to an honorary professorship in 

 the Academy of Geneva, but remained in Paris, 

 and delivered his first botanical lectures in the 

 College de France in 1804. His Flore Frangaise 

 appeared in four volumes in 1805. Employed by 

 the government, he visited all parts of France and 

 Italy in 1806-12, investigating their botany and 

 agriculture. The results of his journeys are partly 

 embodied in a supplement to the Flore. He was 

 appointed in 1807 to a chair at Montpellier, where 

 he lived from 1810 to 1816; he then retired to 

 Geneva, where a professorsliip of Botany was 

 founded for him, and where he spent the remainder 

 of his life. He died 9th September 1841. De Can- 

 dolle was an industrious writer, and the fruits of 

 his valuable studies in systematic botany and the 



Eroperties and natural affinities of plants are em- 

 odied in a considerable number of works. The 

 greatest of these, his Rec/ni Vegetabilis Systema 

 Naturale (vols. i. and ii. Paris, 1818-21), was 

 commenced on too grand a scale, and was con- 

 tinued within more reasonable limits in the Pro- 

 dromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis ( 17 

 vols. 1824-73, the last ten by his son and others). 

 De Candolle bequeathed his collections including 

 a herbarium of more than 70,000 species of plants 

 to his son, ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE (bom 1806), 

 on condition of his keeping them open to the public, 

 and of his carrying on the Prodromes. That son, 

 himself a botanist of no mean fame, published 

 several works of note, the most important being 

 Geographic Botanique (2 vols. 1855) and Origine 

 des Plantes Cultivees (1883). He also edited the 

 Memoires of his father (1862). Died April 9, 1893. 



Decapoda. See CRAB and CRUSTACEA. 



Decapolis. See DECA. 



Deca'tlir, capital of Macon county, Illinois, on 

 the Sangamon River, 39 miles E. of Springfield, at 

 the junction of several railways. It has woollen, 

 planing, and flour mills, and a number of smaller 

 manufactories. Pop. (1880) 9547; (1890) 16,841. 



Decatlir, STEPHEN, American naval com- 

 mander, was born in Sinnepuxent, Maryland, 5th 

 January 1779, of French descent, and obtained 

 a midshipman's warrant in 1798. He saw some 

 service against the French, and was commis- 

 sioned lieutenant in the following year ; and at 

 the close of the French \var in 1801 he was one 

 of the thirty-six officers of that rank retained in 



