3ys 



PALI PALISOT I)E BEAUVAIS. 



which ht subsequently obtained celebrity. In 1767, 

 he took priest's orders, and maintained an intimate 

 acquaintance with the most eminent persons in the 

 university, \\ho falling below the established standard 

 of orthodoxy, Mr Paley began to be regarded with 

 coolness by his zealous defenders. His friends could 

 not, however, persuade him to sign the petition for 

 relief in the subscription to the Articles, on which 

 occasion he observed, that " he could not aflbrd to 

 keep a conscience." In 1776, he quitted the univer- 

 sity, and was inducted into the vicarage of Dalston, 

 in Cumberland, to which was soon after added the 

 living of Appleby, and a prebendal stall in the cathe- 

 dral of Carlisle. In 1782, he was appointed arch- 

 deacon of the diocese, and, not long afterwards, suc- 

 ceeded doctor Burn in the chancellorship, for all which 

 preferments he was indebted to the bishop of Carlisle. 

 In 1785, he published his Elements of Moral and Po- 

 litical Philosophy a work of much simplicity and 

 pertinence of illustration, but exceptionable in many 

 of its definitions and principles, both in politics and 

 morals. In 1787, Paley published his Horee Pauli- 

 na, the chief object of which is, to bring together, 

 from the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles, such 

 passages as furnish examples of undesigned coinci- 

 dence, and thus prove the authenticity of the scriptu- 

 ral writings. In 1794, he published his View of the 

 Evidence of Christianity, in three parts, which con- 

 tains a popular view of the arguments for the truth 

 of the Christian religion, drawn up with his usual 

 perspicuity and dialectic skill. He was soon after 

 made a sub-dean of Lincoln, and received several 

 valuable livings. In 1795, he was created D.D. by 

 the university of Cambridge ; and, his health not 

 allowing him to officiate in the pulpit, he undertook 

 the compilation of his natural Theology, or Evi- 

 dences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 

 collected from the Appearances of Nature (8vo, 

 1802). He died in 1805. Doctor Paley was fond of 

 amusement and company, and displayed much wit and 

 humour. No man was more beloved by his friends, 

 or evinced more attachment to them in return. Since 

 his death, a volume of his sermons has been published 

 in 8vo. 



PALI. See Indian Languages. 



PALIMPSESTS, re-written manuscripts (codices 

 rescripli, from <xa.\r and ^au), have, in modern times, 

 by the successful exertions of signer Maio (see Codex 

 and Maio) to discover the contents of the original 

 writings, greatly attracted the attention of philolo- 

 gists, and we may hope that the great collections of 

 manuscripts at Rome, Naples, Oxford, Cambridge, 

 &c., which have been little examined, will yet afford 

 us many remains of ancient literature which have 

 escaped the general wreck. On account of the dear- 

 ness of writing materials in the time of the ancients, 

 it was very natural that they should seek means for 

 rendering serviceable, a second time, the parchment 

 or Egyptian papyrus which had been already used. 

 A preparation for effacing the original writing was 

 known even in the time of A ugustus. The writing 

 upon parchment could be scratched out, and a pecu- 

 liar kind of knife (rasorinm) belonged to the appara- 

 tus of a transcriber. The parchment scratched in 

 this manner, was rubbed with pumice stone to render 

 it more fit for writing. Fortunately the original char- 

 acters have often remained legible, so as to be visible 

 to the naked eye, or to appear very plain with the 

 assistance of chemical agents. As the transcribers 

 in the middle ages, when the want of writing mate- 

 rials was felt, in consequence of the great demand 

 for missals, &c., often divided the large sheets of 

 written parchment, the second set of lines is some- 

 times found diagonal to the first, so that the old and 

 new cross each other, or the old lines have remained 



above the others, as in the fragments of Ulphilas, the 

 Phaeton, &c. The increasing zeal in the search for 

 remains of classic literature has directed the attention 

 of learned men to these hidden treasures. Maio's 

 discovery of Pronto, and the subsequent discovery of 

 the fragments of the Phaeton of Euripides, and Ci- 

 cero's books De Republica, Niebuhr's discovery of 

 Gains, together with the results of the labours of 

 Peyron and others, have increased the interest of 

 learned men in these investigations. See Manuscripts. 



PALINDROMON ; a verse or line which rein Is 

 the same either forwards or backwards ; e. g. that 

 which is put in the mouth of Satan Signa te, signu, 

 temere me tangis et angis (cross thyself, cross thyself, 

 you touch and torment me in vain); or, Anna tenet 

 mappatn mndidam, mulum tenet Odo. 



PALINGENESY ; Greek for regeneration. Tho 

 word is used to designate the transitions from one 

 state into another, observed with insects, and in each 

 of which the insect appears in a totally different form. 



PALINODY ; a recantation, particularly a poeti- 

 cal one, of any thing dishonourable or false uttered 

 against another person. Thus the ancient poet Ste- 

 sichorus wrote a palinody of his poetical invective 

 against Helena, for which he had been punished by 

 blindness, and declared all the charges contained 

 therein untrue. 



PALINURUS ; pilot of ^Eneas in his voyage to 

 Italy, and son of Jasius. According to the celebra- 

 ted poem of Virgil, the god of sleep, under the form 

 of Phorbas, sealed his eyes in slumber, and threw 

 him into the sea, at the very moment when the ship 

 was reaching the desired shoj-e. ./Eneas saw his lost 

 companion, when the shades of the lower world 

 passed before his eyes, and Palinurus related to him 

 how he had been saved from the water, but slain by 

 the Lucanians, on the southern coast of I taly. The 

 Lucanians, being afterwards tormented by a pesti- 

 lence, raised a monument to his honour, to pacify his 

 manes, and consecrated a grove to him. Mount Pali- 

 minis was named after him. 



PALISADES ; stakes, eight or nine feet long, and 

 six or seven inches square, and sharpened at the end, 

 which are set in the ground either perpendicularly or 

 obliquely, for the greater security of a fortification , 

 particularly for the closing up of an open passage to 

 the works, or the protection of any exposed point, 

 previous to an attack. 



PALISOT DE BEAUVAIS, AMBROISE MARIK 

 FRANCOIS JOSEPH ; an eminent naturalist, born at Ar- 

 ras, in the French Netherlands, in 1752. He studied 

 at the college of Harcourt, at Paris, and, in 1772, was 

 admitted a counsellor of the parliament of that city. 

 Some time after, he succeeded his elder brother as 

 receiver-general of territorial imposts, which office 

 was suppressed in 1777. He then devoted his atten- 

 tion entirely to natural history, and especially botany, 

 and, in 1781, became a corresponding member of the 

 Parisian academy of sciences, to which he addressed 

 several memoirs on botany and vegetable physiology. 

 The love of science induced him to undertake a voy- 

 age to the coast of Guinea, with an intention to travel 

 across the African continent to Egypt ; but he was 

 unable to "execute that design, and, after remaining 

 some time at Owara and Benin, he sailed for St 

 Domingo, and arrived at cape Frangais, in June, 1788. 

 He continued there some years, occupying official 

 situations in the colony ; but his opposition to the 

 revolutionary attempts of the negroes having endan- 

 gered his safety, he with difficulty effected his escape 

 to Philadelphia, in the United States of America. 

 Thence he proposed to return to France, when he 

 learned that he had been proscribed as Jin emigrant. 

 He was obliged to support himself as a teacher of 

 languages, and by exercising his talents as a musician. 



