PAS A PASQUINO. 



429 



to be sufficient reason to dissolve it. But where there 

 is no ground for such application to a court of chan- 

 cery, and the company is dissolved by the death of 

 one partner, the joint property will survive to the 

 other partner, who may dispose of it, and collect.and 

 pay the debts of the concern, and will be liable to ac- 

 count to the personal representatives of the deceased 

 partner for his proportion of the surplus property. 

 In case of the decease of a partner, his personal re- 

 presentatives do not become copartners with the sur- 

 viving partners, but the affairs of the concern must 

 be settled with reference to the time of the death of 

 the deceased partner. 



PAS A, or FES A (anciently Pasargada) ; a town 

 in Persia, in Farsistan; sixty-eight miles south-east 

 of Schiras, 235 south-south-east of Ispahan ; Ion. 

 53 40' E.; lat. 29 10' N. This was formerly the 

 burial place of the Persian monarchs, and a royal 

 city. 



PASCAGOULA; a river of Mississippi, which 

 runs south into the gulf of Mexico, thirty-eight miles 

 west of Mobile bay; Ion. 88 30' W. It is navi- 

 gable for vessels drawing six feet of water about 

 fifty miles. Length about 300 miles. 



PASCAL, BLAISE, born at Clermont, in Auvergne, 

 in 1623, was the only son of the president of the 

 cour des aides, who educated him with great care, 

 and instructed him himself. In early youth, he gave 

 proofs of extraordinary talents, and showed a decided 

 inclination for geometry. His hours of relaxation 

 were employed in the study of mathematics. His 

 father surprised him engaged in studying Euclid, 

 which he understood without any assistance ; and, in 

 his sixteenth year, the young Pascal wrote a treatise 

 on conic sections, displaying great acuteness, but 

 which, notwithstanding the entreaties of his friends, 

 he would not consent to publish. His studies in the 

 languages, logic, physics, and philosophy, were pur- 

 sued with such assiduity, that his health was irre- 

 coverably gone in his eighteenth year. In the course 

 of the next year, he invented the celebrated calcu- 

 lating machine, the mechanism of which it cost him 

 much pains to render intelligible to the workmen, at 

 a time when he was hardly free from suffering for a 

 day. In his twenty-third year, he made several dis- 

 coveries concerning the Torricellian vacuum. Before 

 he was twenty-four years old, the reading of some 

 religious works had brought him to the conviction 

 that a Christian must love God only : he therefore 

 laid aside all profane studies, and became more and 

 more deeply rooted in his ascetic notions, which, 

 however, had been familiar to his childhood. Pas- 

 cal's piety produced a great effect on his whole 

 family. His father became his pupil, and his sister a 

 nun in the Port Royal. Pascal, although constantly 

 sick, continued to practise his penances with addi- 

 tional rigour. By the direction of his physician, he 

 went into society ; but his sister soon induced him to 

 renounce all intercourse with the world, and to give 

 up all superfluities, even at the expense of his health. 

 In this manner he lived from his thirtieth year till his 

 death. After spending some time in a monastery, 

 he retired to an estate in the country, denied himself 

 every indulgence, made his own bed, ate in the 

 kitchen, and allowed himself to be served only when 

 it was indispensably necessary. He spent his time 

 in prayer, and in reading the Scriptures (vyhich he 

 thus learned by heart), and commentaries on them. 

 His disease, meanwhile, became aggravated, and he 

 died in 1662, at the age of thirty-nine. Pascal had 

 a powerful mind. He had conceived a work on the 

 Christian religion, the object of which was to show 

 its excellence, from a consideration of human nature 

 BS well as on historical grounds. The fragments, 

 which were written down during the last four years 



of his life, and published under the title of Pensees sur 

 la Religion (Amsterdam, 1667), show the hand of a 

 master. His Provinciates, ou Lettres ecrites par 

 Louis de Montalte a un Provincial tie ses Amis, is a 

 most bitter satire upon the lax morality of the Jesu- 

 its, whose influence was more affected by it than by 

 the most violent attacks of their declared enemies. 

 These letters are esteemed a model of the didactic 

 epistolary style in French literature. Pascal's (Euvres 

 appeared at the Hague, in 1779, in 5 vols. Rai- 

 mond's Eloge de Pascal (1816) contains an account 

 of his life. 



PASCATAQUA. See Piscataqua. 



PASIGRAPHY (from vaua., universal, yjp, writ- 

 ing) . A universal written or spoken language, that is, 

 a language easily understood by all nations, has never 

 yet been formed. Leibnitz seems to have first con- 

 ceived the idea ; at least, he laboured a good deal in 

 attempting to execute it. He was followed by Wil- 

 kins in England, (1668), and in Germany by Berger, 

 Plan of a Universal Written and Spoken Language 

 (in German, Berlin, 1779) ; Wolke, Means of render- 

 ing a Universal Language practicable (in German, 

 1797) ; Sicard, the celebrated isstructer of the deaf 

 and dumb (in 1798) ; Nather (in 1805) ; Biirja, Pasi- 

 lalie (1808) ; J. M. Schmidt, of Dillingen, Attempts 

 at Pasigraphy (in German, Vienna, (1815); and 

 Stethy, Lingua universalis (Vienna, 1825). The 

 academy of sciences at Copenhagen, in 1811, offered 

 a prize for the best plan of such a language, and its 

 accomplishment. " The idea of a universal language," 

 says Wagner, in his Philosophy of Education, " is 

 founded upon the fact, that the essence of every lan- 

 guage consists in its internal organization, for which 

 a common expression must be possible, since this in- 

 ternal organization of a language can be only the 

 expression of the various relations of ideas, and these 

 relations, again, only the expression of the real rela- 

 tions of things. If, now, a general representation 

 can be found for these relations, a universal grammar 

 is obtained ; and, if this can be communicated in 

 common characters, intelligible by every one, we 

 have a complete pasigraphy." See Vater's Pasigra- 

 phy and Anti-Pasigraphy (in German, Weissenfels, 

 1795); Niethammer, Ueber Pasigraphie und Ideogra- 

 phic (Nuremberg, 1808) ; and Riem, On a Written 

 Language and Pasigraphy (in German, 1809). A 

 universal spoken language (pasilaly) is also a deside- 

 ratum. See Language. 



PASIPHAE ; in heathen mythology, daughter of 

 Sol and Perseis, and wife of Minos, king of Crete, to 

 whom she bore Deucalion, Glaucus, Ariadne, and 

 Phaedra. Blinded by Neptune, who wished to punish 

 Minos for not having sacrificed a bull to him, or, ac- 

 cording to others, by Venus, who had sworn ven- 

 geance against the whole family of Sol because he had 

 betrayed her intrigue with Mars, she was inflamed 

 with an unnatural love for the bull. Her desires 

 were gratified by means of the wooden animal made by 

 the ingenious Daedalus, and the Minotaur was the fruit. 



PASQUIL ; derived from Pasquino. (q. v.) 



PASQUINO, PASQUINADE. Pasquino was a cob- 

 bler, who lived, above 300 years ago, in Rome, and 

 was so much celebrated for his caustic satire and 

 wit that his shop was much visited by persons desirous 

 to hear him. Soon after his death, a beautiful but 

 mutilated statue (according to some, that of 

 Menelaus) was dug up not far from Pasquino's shop, 

 and put up in a corner of the Ursini palace. The 

 people unanimously called the statue Pasquino, and 

 satirical placards were attached to it put, as it 

 were, into the mouth of the revived Pasquino. 

 Another statue, called Marforio (q. v.), supposed to 

 be a corruption of Martis forum, stood opposite Pas- 

 quino ; and questions were generally attached during 



