PITTSBURGH PIUS VII. 



573 



his genius was better adapted to the regulative pro- 

 cess of peaceable and domestic government, than to 

 the arrangement and conduct of that warlike exertion, 

 wliich his policy entailed upon the country. At the 

 same time, it must be confessed, that he had to 

 encounter overwhelming energies the result of a 

 social crisis of most extraordinary character. Tf, 

 therefore, he can be acquitted of a want of foresight 

 in volunteering such a conflict, the result of the 

 warfare, in establishing French ascendancy on the 

 continent, may be regarded as the effect of causes 

 which no abilities could have controlled. According 

 to the theories with which he set out in life, and as 

 the son of lord Chatham, much constitutional and 

 political improvement was to be expected from him; 

 and much prudent and useful regulation he certainly 

 effected. In higher points, he was, perhaps, more 

 the man of expediency than of principle. It has been 

 seen how he advocated and dropped the subject of 

 parliamentary reform. In a similar spirit, he spoke 

 and voted in favour of the abolition of the slave-trade; 

 but although supported by the voice of a decided 

 national majority, he would not make a ministerial 

 measure of it, as was done without difficulty by his 

 immediate successor; nor can we trace any decided 

 social amelioration to his influence. As a financier, 

 he was expert in practice rather than scientifically 

 grounded; while the waste and profusion of his war- 

 like expenditure were extreme, and will long be felt 

 in their consequences. Although love of power was 

 certainly his ruling passion, he was altogether above 

 the meanness of avarice, and his personal disinterest- 

 edness was extreme. So far from making use of his 

 opportunities to acquire wealth, he died involved in 

 debt, which negligence and the demands of his public 

 station, rather than extravagance, had led him to 

 contract; his tastes being simple, and averse from 

 splendour and parade. Mr Pitt possessed no advan- 

 tages of person and physiognomy; a loftiness ap- 

 proaching to arrogance was the habitual expression 

 of the latter in public, although in private circles he 

 h;is been described as complacent and urbane. His 

 eloquence, if not more elevated or profound, was, 

 upon the whole, more correct than that of any other 

 orator of his time, and remarkably copious and well 

 arranged. Although neither illuminated by the 

 flashes of genius which characterized his father's 

 oratory, nor by the imagination which distinguished 

 the eloquence of Burke, it was more uniformly just 

 and impressive than that of either; while the indig- 

 nant severity and keenness of his sarcasm were 

 unequalled. On the whole, Mr Pitt was a minister 

 of commanding powers, and still loftier pretensions; 

 and he died in possession of the esteem of a large 

 portion of his countrymen. A public funeral was 

 decreed to his honour by parliament, and a grant of 

 40,000 to pay his debts. The reader may co.isult 

 Gifford's Life of Pitt (3 vols. 4to., London, 1809) or 

 the later work of his tutor, doctor Tomline (Pretty- 

 man), bishop of Winchester (London, 1821), a review 

 of which, in the 35th volume of the Edinburgh 

 Review, gives the Whig opinions of Mr Pitt. For the 

 Tory views of Mr Pitt's conduct, the reader is referred 

 to a series of papers in Blackwood's Mag. for 1836. 

 PITTSBURGH ; a city and capital of Alleghany 

 county, Pennsylvania, 230 miles west-north-west of 

 Baltimore, 297 west-by-north from Philadelphia, and 

 225 from Washington; lat. 40 32' N.; Ion. 80 8' 

 W. ; population, in 1800, 1505; in 1810, 4768; in 

 1820,7248; in 1830, 12,542. Pittsburgh is situated 

 in a beautiful plain, on a point of land where the 

 Alleghany and the Monongahela unite to form the 

 Ohio. The site of the town was early regarded as 

 very important, and was selected by the French for 

 fort Du Quesne. Afterwards this was called fort 



Pitt. In 1760, a considerable town rose about the 

 fort; but the present town was commenced in 1765. 

 The Indian wars and other troubles of the western 

 country prevented its rapid growth till 1793. It is 

 now tlie rival of Cincinnati in manufactures, arid, in 

 population, wealth, and importance, is the third town 

 in the Mississippi Valley. In its manufactures it 

 resembles Birmingham. The inhabitants are a mix- 

 ture of Germans, Irish, English, Scotch, French, 

 Swiss, and many other nations, and are distinguished 

 for industry and economy. 



PIU (Italian); more; as piit presto, quicker; pitt 

 piano, more soft. 



PIUS II. See Piccolomino. 



PIUS VI., pope, whose secular name was John 

 Angela Braschi, was born at Cesena, in 1717. On 

 the death of Clement XIV., in 1775, he succeeded 

 to the papal throne, and shortly after made a refor- 

 mation in the financial department, and also improved 

 the museum of the Vatican. But the greatest of his 

 undertakings was the draining of the Pontine mar- 

 shes, a district between the Apennine mountains and 

 the sea, overflowed with water exhaling pestilential 

 effluvia, which gave rise to numerous diseases, and 

 depopulated the surrounding country. While, how- 

 ever, this pontiff was successful in his domestic 

 administration, he had the mortification to witness 

 the absolute decay of the temporal power of the holy 

 see. In 1782, he made a visit to the emperor Joseph 

 II., at Vienna, to endeavour to dissuade him from the 

 prosecution of some ecclesiastical reforms which he 

 meditated ; but the journey was wholly useless, 

 though the death of the emperor put a stop to his 

 schemes. Pius encountered many other misfortunes. 

 In France, he witnessed the confiscation of the pro- 

 perty of the church, and the suppression of the reli- 

 gious orders, by virtue of the decrees of the national 

 assembly ; in Germany, the congress of Ems, for the 

 abolition of the nunciature, in 1785 ; in Naples, the 

 contempt of his authority, by withholding the cus- 

 tomary tribute of a horse; and, in 1791, he lost 

 Avignon and the country of Venaissin, which were 

 reunited to France. But all this was only the pre- 

 lude to greater adversity. In the first coalition 

 against France, the pope ranged himself among the 

 enemies of the republic. In January, 1793, Basse- 

 ville, the French secretary of legation, was massacred 

 during a popular commotion at Rome. After the 

 victories of Bonaparte in Italy, in 1796, general 

 Augereau marched into the territories of the pope, 

 who, unable to resist, was glad to accept an armistice, 

 whicli was signed at Bologna, June 13. The pope 

 having renewed hostilities, Bonaparte attacked and 

 beat his troops at Senio, Feb. 2, 1797, and proceeded 

 towards Rome. He stopped, however, to treat with 

 ministers sent by his holiness, and, Feb. 19, was 

 signed the treaty of Tolentino, by which the pope lost 

 Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara. Dec. 28, 1797, in 

 consequence of another commotion, in which general 

 Duphot was killed, Joseph Bonaparte, the French 

 ambassador, quitted Rome. An army, commanded 

 by general Berthier, entered that capital, Feb. 10, 

 1798, and, on the 15th, proclaimed the establishment 

 of the Roman republic, governed by consuls, a senate 

 and a tribunate. The pope, after this deprivation of 

 his authority, was conveyed to France as a prisoner, 

 and died at Valence, Aug. 29, 1799. In 1802, his 

 body was removed to Rome, and solemnly interred. 



PIUS VII. (GREGORY BARNABAS CHIARAMONTI) was 

 born at Cesena in 1742, and, at the age of sixteen, 

 was received into the order of Benedictines. After 

 serving as teacher in several abbeys, he became pro- 

 fessor of philosophy in Parma, and subsequently of 

 theology in Rome, where his fellow-townsman, Pius 

 VI., created him bishop of Tivoli, and, fii 1785, our- 



