natural history that abound in those wide and little-known regions. In 1801 he obtained leave to return to Spain, and after a short residence at Paris, was appointed a member of the Junta de fortificadones y defensa de Ambos Indias, a public board, in which chiefly was centred the home government of the Spanish colonies. His principal work is his Travels in South America from 1781 to 1801; published in French from the author's MS., by C. A. Walckenaer, with atlas and plates, 4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1809. It contains a valuable account of the discovery, conquest, and civil and natural history of Paraguay and Rio de la Plata; and embodies his former contributions to the zoology of these countries, which had appeared in a French translation at Paris in 1801. The work is enriched with the notes of Walckenaer and Cuvier, and a notice of the author by the former. An English translation of part of Azara's work on the Natural History of Paraguay appeared at Edinburgh in 1838.
AZARA, DON JOSE NICHOLAS D , the elder brother of the naturalist, born in 1731, was appointed in 1765 Spanish agent and procurator-general, and in 1785, ambassador at Rome. During his long residence there he distinguished himself as a collector of Italian antiquities and as a patron of art. He was also an able and active diplomatist, took a leading share in the difficult and hazardous task of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, and was instrumental in securing the election of Pius VI. He withdrew to Florence when the French took possession of Rome in 1798. He was afterwards Spanish ambassador at Paris; was three times deprived of, and restored to his office; and was finally preparing to return to his antiquarian studies in Italy when he was seized with a fatal illness, and died at Paris in January 1804.
AZEGLIO, MASSIMO TAPAKELLI, MARQUIS D , an emi
nent Italian author and statesman, was born in October
1798, at Turin. He was descended from an ancient and
noble family of Piedmont, and was the son of a military
officer, who, when the subject of this notice was in his
fifteenth year, was appointed ambassador to Rome. The
boy went with him, and, being thus introduced to the mag
nificent works of art for which the Eternal City is famous,
contracted a love for painting, as well as for music. He
desired to become a painter, and, although his studies were
for a time interrupted by his receiving i commission in a
Piedmontese cavalry regiment, and by ;. .ubsequent illness,
brought on by the severity of his scientific investigations
and resulting in his quitting the service, he eventually
returned to Rome, and, with some difficulty, obtained his
father s permission to devote himself to art. He remained
at the Papal capital eight years, and acquired great skill
and some fame as a landscape-painter. At the close of
that period events directed his mind into other channels.
His father died in 1830, and the younger Azeglio then
removed to Milan, where he became acquainted with
Alessandro Manzoni, the poet and novelist, whose daughter
he married. In this way his thoughts were turned
towards literature and politics. At that time, Italy was
profoundly agitated by the views of the national and
liberal party. The country was divided into several distinct
states, of which the greater number, even of those that
were nominally independent, were under the influence of
Austria. Lombardy and Venetia formed parts of the
Austrian dominions. The petty monarchies of the north
were little better than vassals to the house of Haps-
burg ; the Papacy, in the centre, was opposed to all
national aspirations ; and the kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, in the south, was a despotism, which for cruelty
and mental darkness could not have been exceeded in
Asia itself. The French revolution of July 1830 gave
additional force to the movements of the Italian liberal
party, and the young men of the day threw themselves
with fervour into the crusade against old abuses and foreign
domination. Mazziui was just beginning his career as an
agitator, and the whole air was surcharged with revolu
tionary enthusiasm. This was especially the case in the
north of Italy, where Massimo d Azeglio was now settled.
Art was abandoned by him for literature, and literature
was practised with a view to stimulating the sense of
national independence and unity. In 1833, M. d Azeglio
published a novel called Ettore Fieramosca, which was
followed in 1841 by another, entitled Niccolo di Lapi.
Both had a political tendency, and, between the two dates
at which they appeared, M. d Azeglio visited various parts
of Italy,diffusing those liberal principles which he saw were
the only hope of the future. His views, however, were
very different from those of the republican party. He was
a constitutional monarchist, and strongly opposed to the
insurrections and secret conspiracies which Mazzini and
others so frequently fostered at that time, and which always
resulted in failure and renewed oppression. His treatise
Degli Ultimi Casi di Romagna (Of the Last Events in the
Romagna), published in 1846, before the death of Pope
Gregory XVI., was at once a satire on the Papal Govern
ment, a denunciation of the republican, attempts at insur
rection, and an exhortation to the Italian princes to adopt
a national policy. M. d Azeglio returned to Rome in 1846,
after the death of Pope Gregory, in June, and, it is thought,
had considerable influence in persuading the new Pope
(Pius IX.) to conduct his government in accordance with
liberal principles. He supported measures relating to the
freedom of the press, the reform of the Papacy, and the
emancipation of the Jews. In 1848 he accompanied the
Papal army of observation sent from Rome to watch the
insurgent forces in Lombardy and Venetia, which had
temporarily discomfited the Austrians, and were being
supported by Charles Albert, king of Sardinia. General
Durando, who had the command of the Papal army, actively
assisted the rebels, in defiance, it is said, of his instructions ;
and Azeglio was severely wounded in the leg at the battle of
Vicenza, where he commanded a legion. In the same year
(184S), he published a work on the Austrian Assassinations
in Lombardy ; and on the opening of the first Sardinian parlia
ment he was chosen a member of the chamber of deputies.
After the crushing defeat of the Sardinians at Novara,
March 23, 1849, a defeat which brought the second of
the two brief wars with Austria to a disastrous close,
D Azeglio was made president of the cabinet by Victor
Emmanuel, in whose favour his father, Charles Albert, had
just resigned. In this position the marquis used his high
powers with great advantage to the progress and consolida
tion of the Sardinian kingdom. His occupation of the
office lasted from the llth of May 1849 to the 20th of
October 1852, when he was replaced by Count Cavour.
At the termination of the war of 1859, when a large portion
of the States of the Church shook off the dominion of the
Pope, and declared for annexation to the kingdom of
Northern Italy, Azeglio was appointed general and com
missioner-extraordinary, purely military, for the Roman
States a temporary office, which he administered in a
conciliatory and sagacious spirit. He died on the llth
of January 1866, leaving a reputation for probity and
wisdom, which his countrymen will not forget to cherish.
His writings, chiefly of a polemical character, were numer
ous. In addition to those already mentioned, the most
noteworthy was a work on The Court of Home and the
Gospels, of which an English translation, with a preface
by Dr Layard, appeared in 1859. A volume of personal
recollections was issued, in 1867, after M. d Azeglio s death.
AZERBI JAN (so called, according to Sir William Ouseley,
from a fire-temple ; azer, fire, and baijan, a keeper), a pro-
