ATT 
before him in conformity to the mutiny act, 
and has declared his assent or dissent to 
such enlistment; and if duly enlisted, that 
the proper oaths have been administered, 
and that the 2nd and 6th sections of the 
articles of war against desertion have been 
read to him. 
ATTITUDE, in painting and sculpture, 
the gesture of a figure, or statue ; or it is 
such a disposition of their parts, as serves to 
express the action and sentiments of the 
person represented. 
ATTORNEY general, is a great officer- 
under the king, created by letters patent, 
whose office it is to exhibit informations, 
and prosecute for the crown in criminal 
causes, and to tile the bills in the exchequer, 
for any thing concerning the king in inheri- 
tance or profits. To him come warrants 
for making of grants, pardons, &e, 
ATTORNIES at law, are such persons 
as take upon them the business of other 
men, by whom they are retained. By the 
2 Geo. II. cap. 23, s. 5, no person shall be 
permitted to act as an attorney, or to sue 
out any process in the name of any other 
person, in any courts of law, unless such 
person shall have been bound by contract 
in writing, to serve as a cierk for five years 
to an attorney, duly sworn and admitted in 
some of the said courts ; and such person, 
during the said term of five years, shall have 
continued in such service, and unless such 
person, after the expiration of the said five 
years, shall be examined, sworn, admitted, 
and inrolled. And for every piece of vel- 
lum, parchment, or paper, upon which shall 
be written any such contract, whereby any 
person shall become bound to serve as a 
clerk aforesaid, in order to his admission as 
a solicitor or attorney, in any of the courts 
at Westminster, there shall be charged a 
stamp duty of 1001. 34 Geo. III. c. 14. 
And in order to his admission as a solicitor 
or attorney in any of the great courts of 
sessions in Wales, or in the counties palatine 
of Chester, Lancaster, or Durham, or in 
any court of record in England, holding 
pleas to the amount of 40 shillings, and not 
in any of the said points of Westminster, 
there shall be charged a stamp duty of 50 1. 
Every attorney, solicitor, notary, proctor, 
agent, or procurator, practising in any 
of the courts at Westminster, ecclesiasti- 
cal, admiralty, or Cinque-port courts, in 
his Majesty’s courts in Scotland, the great 
sessions in Wales, the courts in the coun- 
ties Palatine, or any other courts holding 
pleas to the amount of 40 shillings, or more; 
ATT 
shall take out a certificate annually, upon 
which there shall be charged, if the solicitor, 
&c. residing within the bills of mortality, a 
stamp-duty of 51. in any other part *of 
Great Britain 31. Persons practising after 
the 1st day of November, 1797, without ob- 
taining a certificate, shall forfeit 501. and 
be incapable of suing for any fees. An at- 
torney shall not be elected into any office 
against his will, such as constable, overseer 
of the poor, or churchwarden, or any office 
within a borough; but his privilege will not 
exempt him from serving in the militia, or 
finding a substitute. Black. Rrp. »1123. 
ATTRACTION, a general term, used to 
denote the power or principle by which bodies 
mutually tend towards each other, without 
regarding the cause or action that may be 
the means of producing the effect. 
The philosopher Anaxagoras, who lived 
about 500 years before the Christian sera 
is generally considered as the first who no- 
ticed this principle, as subsisting between 
the heavenly bodies and the earth, which 
he considered as the centre of their mo- 
tions. The doctrines of Epicurus and of 
Democritus are founded on the same opi- 
nion. 
Nicholas Copernicus appears to have been 
one of the first among the moderns, who 
had just notions of this doctrine. 
After him, Kepler brought it still nearer 
perfection ; having determined that bodies 
tended to the centres of the larger round 
bodies, of which they formed a part, and the 
smaller celestial bodies to the great ones 
nearest to them, instead of to the centre of 
the universe : he also accounted for the ge- 
neral motion of the tides on the same prin- 
ciple, by the attraction of the moon ; and 
expi essly calls it virtus tractoria quai in luna 
ext; besides this, he refuted the old doctrine 
of the schools, “ that some bodies were na- 
turally light, and for that reason ascended, 
while others were by their nature heavy 
and so fell to the ground ;" declaring that 
no bodies whatsoever are absolutely light, 
but only relatively so, and that all matter is 
subjected to the law of gravitation. 
Dr. Gilbert, a physician at London, was 
the first in this country who adopted the 
doctrine of attraction; in the year 1600, he 
published a work entitled, “ De Magnete 
Magneticisque Corporibus ; which contains 
a number of curious, things; but he did not 
sufficiently distinguish between attraction 
and magnetism. 
I he next after him was Lord Bacon, 
who, though not a convert to the Coperni- 
