hearing the crowd as it passes haling Christ to Calvary, and St John conducting the Virgin home again after all is over, are beyond all praise as exhibiting the divine story from a simply human point of view. They are pure and elevated, and also dramatic and painful. Delaroche was not troubled by ideals, and had no affectation of them. His sound but hard execution allowed no mystery to intervene between him and his motif, which was always intelligible to the million, so that he escaped all the waste of energy that painters who try to be poets on canvas suffer. Thus it is that essentially the same treatment was applied by him to the characters of distant historical times, the founders of the Christian religion, and the real people of his own day, such as “Napoleon at Fontainebleau,” or “Napoleon at St Helena,” or “Marie Antoinette leaving the Convention” after her sentence.
In 1837 Delaroche received the commission for the great picture, 27 mètres long, in the hemicycle of the lecture theatre of the École des Beaux Arts. This represents the great artists of the modern ages assembled in groups on either hand of a central elevation of white marble steps, on the topmost of which are three thrones filled by the architects and sculptors of the Parthenon. To supply the female element in this vast composition he introduced the genii or muses, who symbolize or reign over the arts, leaning against the balustrade of the steps, beautiful and queenly figures with a certain antique perfection of form, but not informed by any wonderful or profound expression. The portrait figures are nearly all unexceptionable and admirable. This great and successful work is on the wall itself, an inner wall however, and is executed in oil. It was finished in 1841, and considerably injured by a fire which occurred in 1855, which injury he immediately set himself to remedy (finished by Robert-Fleury); but he died before he had well begun, on the 4th of November 1856.
Personally Delaroche exercised even a greater influence than by his works. Though short and not powerfully made, he impressed every one as rather tall than otherwise; his physiognomy was accentuated and firm, and his fine forehead gave him the air of a minister of state.
See Rees, Delaroche (London, 1880). (W. B. Sc.)
DELARUE, GERVAIS (1751–1835), French historical investigator, formerly regarded as one of the chief authorities on Norman and Anglo-Norman literature, was a native of Caen. He received his education at the university of that town, and was ultimately raised to the rank of professor. His first historical
enterprise was interrupted by the French Revolution, which
forced him to take refuge in England, where he took the opportunity
of examining a vast mass of original documents in the
Tower and elsewhere, and received much encouragement, from
Sir Walter Scott among others. From England he passed over to
Holland, still in prosecution of his favourite task; and there he
remained till in 1798 he returned to France. The rest of his life
was spent in his native town, where he was chosen principal of
his university. While in England he had been elected a member
of the Royal Society of Antiquaries; and in his own country he
was made a corresponding member of the Institute, and was
enrolled in the Legion of Honour. Besides numerous articles
in the Memoirs of the Royal Society of London, the Mémoires de l’Institut, the Mémoires de la Société d’Agriculture de Caen, and
in other periodical collections, he published separately
Essais historiques sur les Bardes, les Jongleurs, et les Trouvères normands et anglo-normands
(3 vols., 1834), and Recherches historiques sur la Prairie de Caen (1837);
and after his death appeared Mémoires historiques sur le palinod de Caen (1841),
Recherches sur la tapisserie de Bayeux (1841), and
Nouveaux Essais historiques sur la ville de Caen (1842). In all his writings he displays a
strong partiality for everything Norman, and rates the Norman
influence on French and English literature as of the very highest moment.
DE LA RUE, WARREN (1815–1889), British astronomer and chemist, son of Thomas De la Rue, the founder of the large firm
of stationers of that name in London, was born in Guernsey on
the 18th of January 1815. Having completed his education in
Paris, he entered his father’s business, but devoted his leisure
hours to chemical and electrical researches, and between 1836 and
1848 published several papers on these subjects. Attracted to
astronomy by the influence of James Nasmyth, he constructed
in 1850 a 13-in. reflecting telescope, mounted first at Canonbury,
later at Cranford, Middlesex, and with its aid executed many
drawings of the celestial bodies of singular beauty and fidelity.
His chief title to fame, however, is his pioneering work in the
application of the art of photography to astronomical research.
In 1851 his attention was drawn to a daguerreotype of the moon
by G. P. Bond, shown at the great exhibition of that year.
Excited to emulation and employing the more rapid wet-collodion
process, he succeeded before long in obtaining exquisitely defined
lunar pictures, which remained unsurpassed until the appearance
of the Rutherfurd photographs in 1865. In 1854 he turned his
attention to solar physics, and for the purpose of obtaining a
daily photographic representation of the state of the solar surface
he devised the photo-heliograph, described in his report to the
British Association, “On Celestial Photography in England”
(1859), and in his Bakerian Lecture (Phil. Trans. vol. clii. pp.
333-416). Regular work with this instrument, inaugurated at
Kew by De la Rue in 1858, was carried on there for fourteen years;
and was continued at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, from
1873 to 1882. The results obtained in the years 1862–1866 were
discussed in two memoirs, entitled “Researches on Solar Physics,”
published by De la Rue, in conjunction with Professor Balfour
Stewart and Mr B. Loewy, in the Phil. Trans. (vol. clix. pp. 1-110,
and vol. clx. pp. 389-496). In 1860 De la Rue took the photo-heliograph
to Spain for the purpose of photographing the total
solar eclipse which occurred on the 18th of July of that year.
This expedition formed the subject of the Bakerian Lecture
already referred to. The photographs obtained on that occasion
proved beyond doubt the solar character of the prominences or
red flames, seen around the limb of the moon during a solar
eclipse. In 1873 De la Rue gave up active work in astronomy,
and presented most of his astronomical instruments to the
university observatory, Oxford. Subsequently, in the year 1887,
he provided the same observatory with a 13-in. refractor to
enable it to take part in the International Photographic Survey
of the Heavens. With Dr Hugo Müller as his collaborator he
published several papers of a chemical character between the
years 1856 and 1862, and investigated, 1868–1883, the discharge
of electricity through gases by means of a battery of 14,600
chloride of silver cells. He was twice president of the Chemical
Society, and also of the Royal Astronomical Society (1864–1866).
In 1862 he received the gold medal of the latter society, and in
1864 a Royal medal from the Royal Society, for his observations
on the total eclipse of the sun in 1860, and for his improvements
in astronomical photography. He died in London on the 19th of April 1889.
See Monthly Notices Roy. Astr. Soc. l. 155; Journ. Chem. Soc.; lvii. 441; Nature, xl. 26; The Times (April 22, 1889); Royal Society, Catalogue of Scientific Papers.
DELATOR, in Roman history, properly one who gave notice (deferre) to the treasury officials of moneys that had become due to the imperial fisc. This special meaning was extended to those who lodged information as to punishable offences, and further, to those who brought a public accusation (whether true or not) against any person (especially with the object of getting money). Although the word delator itself, for “common informer,” is confined to imperial times, the right of public accusation had long been in existence. When exercised from patriotic and disinterested motives, its effects were beneficial; but the moment the principle of reward was introduced, this was no longer the case. Sometimes the accuser was rewarded with the rights of citizenship, a place in the senate, or a share of the property of the accused. At the end of the republican period, Cicero (De Officiis, ii. 14) expresses his opinion that such accusations should be undertaken only in the interests of the state or for other urgent reasons. Under the empire the system degenerated into an abuse, which reached its height during the reign of Tiberius, although the delators continued to exercise their activity till the reign of Theodosius. They were drawn from all classes of society,—patricians,
