ATTAINT ATTICA. 



327 



nounced against him. It might be by confession, as 

 when the party pleaded guilty, or by verdict, when 

 he pleaded not guilty, and was found guilty by the 

 jury. 



ATTAINT is a writ at the common law against a jury 

 for a false verdict. It might be brought by a party 

 aggrieved, and lay where the jury found a verdict 

 against the evidence, or found a fact foreign to the 

 evidence, or where their verdict was against well- 

 known and acknowledged law. It was a process for 

 trying the jurymen for misconduct in trying a cause. 

 The writ seems to be now obsolete in England. 



ATTERBCRY, Francis; a celebrated English prelate, 

 was born in 1662, and received his education at 

 -Westminster, where he was elected a student of 

 Christ's-church college, Oxford. He distinguished 

 himself at the university as a classical scholar, and 

 gave proofs of an elegant taste for poetry. In 1687, 

 he took his degree of M.A., and for the first time 

 appeared as a controversialist in a defence of the 

 character of Luther, entitled, Considerations on the 

 Spirit of Martin Luther, &c. He was also thought 

 to have assisted his pupil, the hon. Mr Boyle, in nis 

 famous controversy with Bentley on the epistles of 

 Phalaris. He continued some time longer at college, 

 exceedingly discontented, feeling, with truth, that he 

 was adapted to act on a wider theatre, and possessing 

 all the ambition and restlessness, by which his subse- 

 quent career was so much distinguished. His father 

 advised him to marry into some family of interest, 

 " bishop's, or archbishop's, or some courtier's ;" to 

 which parental counsel the future bishop duly at- 

 tended. Having taken orders in 1691, he settled in 

 London, where he became chaplain to William and 

 Mary, preacher of Bridewell, and lecturer of St 

 Bride's, and soon became distinguished by the spirit 

 and elegance of his pulpit compositions, but not with- 

 out incurring opposition, on the score of their ten- 

 dency and doctrine, from Hoadly and others. Con- 

 troversy, however, was altogether congenial to the 

 disposition of A., who, in 1706, commenced one with 

 doctor Wake, which lasted four years, on the rights, 

 privileges, and powers of convocations. For this 

 service, lie received the thanks of the lower house of 

 convocation, and the degree of doctor of divinity 

 from Oxford. Soon after the accession of queen 

 Anne, he was made dean of Carlisle, and, besides his 

 dispute with Hoadly on the subject of passive obedi- 

 ence, he aided in the defence of the famous Sache- 

 verell, and wrote " A Representation of the present 

 Slate of Religion," which was deemed too violent to 

 be presented to the queen, although privately circu- 

 lated. In 1712, he was made dean of Christ-church, 

 and, in 1713, bishop of Rochester and dean of West- 

 minster. The death of the queen, in 1714, put an 

 end to his hopes of further advancement; for the 

 new king treated him with great coolness, doubtless 

 aware ot either the report or the fact of his offer, on 

 the death of Anne, to proclaim the Pretender in full 

 canonicals, if allowed a sufficient guard. A. not 

 only refused to sign the loyal declaration of the 

 bishops in the rebellion of 1715, but suspended a 

 clergyman for lending his church, for the perfor- 

 mance of divine service, to the Dutch troops brought 

 over to act against the rebels. Not content with a 

 constitutional opposition, he entered into a corre- 

 spondence with the Pretender's party, was appre- 

 hended in August, 1722, and committed to the 

 Tower; and, in the March following, a bill was 

 brought into the house of commons for the infliction 

 of pains and penalties. This measure met with con- 

 siderable opposition in the house of lords, and was 

 resisted with great firmness and eloquence by the 

 bishop, who maintained his innocence with his usual 

 acuieness and dexterity. His guilt, however, has 



been tolerably well proved by documents since pub- 

 lished. He was deprived of his dignities, and out- 

 lawed, and went to Paris, where he chiefly occupied 

 himself in study, and in correspondence with men of 

 letters. But, even here, in 1725, he was actively 

 engaged in fermenting discontent in the Highlands 

 of Scotland. He died in 1731, and his body was 

 privately interred in Westminster abbey. As a com- 

 poser of sermons, he still retains a great portion of 

 his original reputation. His letters, also, are ex- 

 tremely easy and elegant ; but, as a critic and a con- 

 troversialist, he is deemed rather dexterous and po- 

 pular, than accurate and profound. If an anecdote 

 told by Pope to Chesterfield be correct, he was a 

 sceptic early in life ; but the same authority also 

 states, that he ceased to be so after his mind had be- 

 come mature. 



ATTIC BASE ; a peculiar kind of base, used by the 

 ancient architects in the Ionic order, and by Palladio 

 and some others in the Doric. Attic Order, or Attics, 

 in architecture ; a kind of order raised upon another 

 larger order by way of crowning, or to finish the 

 building. Attic Salt ; a delicate, poignant kind of 

 wit, for which many Athenians were distinguished, 

 and which, in fact, was peculiar to them. The mo- 

 derns have adopted this expression from the Latin 

 writers. Attic Story, in architecture ; a story in the 

 upper part of a house, where the windows are usu- 

 ally square. 



ATTICA, a province of ancient Greece, the capital 

 of which, Athens, was once, by reason of its intellec- 

 tual culture and refinement, the first city in the 

 world, is a peninsula, united, towards the north, with 

 Boeotia, towards the west, in some degree, with Me- 



faris, and extends far into the jEgean sea at cape 

 unium (now cape Colonna), where the Athenians 

 had a fortress and a splendid temple of Minerva. 

 The unfruitfulness of its soil protected it against fo- 

 reign invaders, and the Athenians boasted of their 

 ancient and unmingled race. They called themselves 

 sons of the soil on which they dwelt, and pretended 

 that they originated at the same time with the sun. 

 The earliest inhabitants of A. lived in a savage man- 

 ner, without bread, without marriage, and in scattered 

 huts, until the time of Cecrops, who came, B. C. 1550, 

 with a colony from Sais, at the mouth of the Nile, to 

 A., and is acknowledged as their first real king. He 

 softened their manners, and taught them a better 

 mode of living ; he planted the olive tree, and in- 

 structed them in the culture of different kinds ot 

 grain ; he instituted the worship of the gods, and com- 

 manded to ofier them sacrifices of the fruits of the 

 earth ; he established laws of marriage, and directed 

 the burial of the dead. The inhabitants, who amount- 

 ed to about 20,000, he divided into four classes, com- 

 pelled them to bring their habitations near to each 

 other, and protect them with a wall against the at- 

 tacks of robbers. This was the origin of Athens, 

 which, at that time, bore the name of^Cecropia. One 

 of the Cecrops' descendants, as like him in spirit 

 as in name, founded eleven other cities, which, in 

 after times, made war upon each other. Theseus 

 compelled these cities to unite, and to give to Cecro- 

 pia, now called Athens, as the capital city of the whole 

 country, the supreme power over the confederacy. 

 He founded the great feast called the panatheneea. 

 He himself, as the head of the state, watched over 

 the administration of the laws, and commanded the 

 army. He divided the whole people into three classes 

 noblemen, husbandmen, and mechanics. From the 

 first class the magistrates were selected, who per- 

 formed the duties of priests, and interpreted the laws. 

 .He embellished and enlarged Athens, and invited 

 foreigners to people the country. -After the death of 

 Codrus, B. C. 1068, the monarchical form of govern- 



