International Exhibition of 1862, and one of the last acts of his life was the compilation of the catalogue of the Natal court at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886. Mann died at Wandsworth on. 8 Aug. 1886, and is buried at Kensal Green.
In addition to the writings already mentioned, Mann's chief works were; 1. 'The Book of Health.' 1850. 2. 'The Philosophy of Reproduction,' 1850. 3. 'Lessons in General Knowledge,' 1855-6. 4. 'Tennyson's "Maud" vindicated; an Explanatory Essay,' 1850. 5. 'A Guide to the Knowledge of Life,' 1858. 6. 'A Guide to Astronomical Science,' 1858, 7. 'A Description of Natal,' 1860. 8. 'The Colony of Natal,' 1860-2. 9. 'Medicine for Emergencies,' 1861. 10. 'The Emigrant's Guide to Natal,' 1868; 2nd ed. 1873. 11. 'The Weather,' 1877. 12. 'Drink: Simple Lessons for Home Use,' 1877. 13. 'Domestic Economy and Household Science,' 1878. 14. 'The Zulus and Boers of South Africa,' 1879, 15. 'The Physical Properties of the Atmosphere,' 1879. 16. 'Familiar Lectures on the Physiology of Food and Drink,' 1884.
[Personal knowledge; Soc. of Arts Journ. 1885, xxiv. 961; Royal Astron. Soc. Monthly Notices, February 1887; British Medical Journal. 21 Aug 1895; Times, obituary, 9 Aug. 1886; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
MANN, THEODORE AUGUSTUS, called the Abbé Mann (1735–1809), man of science, historian, and antiquary, the son of an English land surveyor, was born in Yorkshire on 22 June 1735. Educated at a provincial school, he exhibited, with much general precocity, a special bent towards mathematics, and before 1753, when he was sent to London with a view to his adopting the legal profession, he had already produced manuscript treatises on geometry, astronomy, natural history, and rational religion. He soon revolted from the routine incidental to legal or commercial life, and towards the end of 1754 proceeded without the knowledge of his parents to Paris. There he managed to subsist in some unexplained manner, read and re-read Bossuet's ‘Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle,’ and devoted himself to meditation on religious subjects. This resulted in his being, on 4 May 1756, received into the Roman catholic communion by Christophe de Beaumont, the archbishop of Paris, who subsequently promulgated a sort of bull against Rousseau's ‘Emile.’ On the outbreak of war between England and France in 1756, Mann took refuge in Spain, carrying letters of introduction to Don Ricardo Wall, then chief minister of Spain, and to the Count d'Aranda. Wall lodged him in his own house, and soon obtained for him a commission in Count O'Mahony's regiment of dragoons. But the dearth of books which he experienced in his new profession proved intolerable to him, though he obtained leave to study mathematics at the military academy at Barcelona. To obviate all interruptions to his studies, he resolved in 1757 upon monastic retirement. This he found in the English Chartreuse, at Nieuport in the Netherlands, where he at once recommenced reading fourteen hours a day in the endeavour to appease ‘his insatiable thirst for study.’ After nearly two years of fruitless attempts at a reconciliation with his parents, he became professed in 1759, and in 1764 was made prior of his house.
About 1775 Mann, whose talents and power of application were becoming widely known, was proposed for the bishopric of Antwerp, then vacant; the coadjutorship of the bishopric of Quebec was at the same time offered him by the English minister at the Hague, but he hesitated to accept this offer on account of his delicate health. His doubts were finally resolved by the proposal of the Prince de Stahremberg, the Austrian plenipotentiary, in October 1776, that he should be minister of public instruction in the emperor's service, at Brussels. There, in the enjoyment of ample literary leisure and an annual income of 2,400 florins, he became, as the ‘Abbé Mann,’ a recognised celebrity in the world of letters. An ‘ingenious writer’ on an astonishing variety of subjects, he became a sort of foreign correspondent to numerous learned societies and individuals in England, and was regularly visited ‘by almost every English Traveller of erudition.’ The Austrian government were fully alive to his value; and to free him from unnecessary preoccupation, Cardinal Hersan, Austrian minister at Rome, obtained for him a bull of secularisation, with a permission to hold benefices. Quitting the Chartreuse in July 1777, Mann was almost immediately made a prebendary of the church of Courtrai, without residence, and in November 1777 was sent to London by Stahremberg to examine the means invented by David Hartley the younger [q.v.] and Lord Mahon for preserving buildings from fire. In 1781 he was charged to examine the state of the coast of Flanders with a view to the opening of a fishing port at Blankenberg, his memoir on the subject being presented to the emperor. He was commanded to prepare a scheme for the canalisation of the Austrian Netherlands; wrote manuals and
