PAGANINI
PAGET
Beligious Cruelty (1800), and was an out
spoken Deist. D. May 20, 1824.
PAGANINI, Niccolo, Italian violinist and composer. B. Oct. 27, 1782. Ed. Genoa and Parma. Paganini composed his first sonata before he was nine years old, and made his first public appearance in 1793. He played in various parts of Italy, and in 1805 was appointed first violinist at the Lucca Court. During the three years he was there he studied and practised his art with such severity that he became the most accomplished violinist in Europe. For the next twenty years he confined himself to Italy, and he then made world-tours which aroused wonderful enthusiasm. In Vienna he received the Gold Medal of St. Salvator. In 1834 he retired to live in his villa at Parma. Paganini was so marvellous an executant that he was popularly credited all over Italy with magical powers and intercourse with evil spirits. There was at least good foundation for the charge of " Atheism," as he lived and died entirely without religion. Count Conestabili, his religious biographer, admits his " religious indif- ferentism " (Vitadi Niccolo Paganini, 1851, p. 186), and says that he received neither the sacraments of the Church when he was dying nor its ceremonies afterwards. D. May 27, 1840.
PAGANO, Professor Francesco Mario,
Italian jurist. B. 1748. Ed. Naples. He became associate professor of ethics to Filangieri [SEE], of whom, and other leading Eationalists, he was a great friend. After some years he studied law, and he was appointed professor of criminal law at Naples University. He supported Beccaria s ideas of penal reform, and drew up various plans (Consider azioni, 1789). His chief work was Essais politiques sur I origine, les progres, et la decadence des societes (3 vols., 1783-92). It embodied his Deistic views, and was fiercely assailed by the clergy for its " impiety and Atheism." The pressure forced him to 575
abandon active reform work, but Pagano
courageously defended the Liberals whom
the Government selected for prosecution.
He was himself arrested, and kept three
months in prison, on a charge of treason.
He went to Milan, but returned at the
Eevolution of 1799, and joined the Provi
sional Government. On the return to
power of the royalist-clericals he was,
although he had received a guarantee of
safety from Cardinal Buffo, sent to the
scaffold on October 6, 1800.
PAGE, Professor David, LL.D., F.G.S., geologist. B. Aug. 24, 1814. Ed. village school Lochgelly, and St. Andrews Uni versity. Son of a stonemason, Page was sent to the university at the age of four teen to prepare for the ministry, but he abandoned theology for science. He took to lecturing and journalism, edited a Fife- shire paper, and in 1843 was appointed " scientific editor " to Messrs. W. and E. Chambers. He wrote a number of attrac tive works (The Earth s Crust, 1864 ; Geology for General Readers, 1866, etc.), and he contributed also to the Academic side of his science. In 1871 he was ap pointed professor of geology at Durham University College of Physical Science. Page assisted Eobert Chambers in writing the Vestiges, and he seems to have shared his Theistic views. D. Mar. 9, 1879.
PAGET, Violet, writer (" Vernon Lee "). B. 1856. Miss Paget, who lives at Florence and was a friend of Mr. A. W. Benn, entered the literary field with Studies of the Eigh teenth Century in Italy in 1880, and has since written a large number of essays and novels. In her philosophical dialogues (Baldwin, 1886 in which, Mr. Benn tells us, "Baldwin" represents herself and Althea, 1893) and her various volumes of essays (Belcaro, 1883 ; Euphorion, 2 vols., 1884, etc.) she often expresses her disdain of all creeds. The subject is more pointedly treated in Vital Lies : Studies of Some Varieties of Eecent Obscurantism (2 vols., 1912), in which she scourges all " obscu-
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