Crapelet in 1832, preceded by a literary and historical monograph. The value of his writings being recognized, another and more critical edition was brought out, in 1849, by M. Prosper Tarbe. The same editor published Le Miroir de Manage in 1865, and a long poem entitled Le Lay des douze Estats du Monde, in 1870. Deschamps excelled in the use of the ballad and chanson royal. In each of these forms of verse he was the greatest master of his time. One of his ballads is addressed to the English poet " Geoffrey Chaucier," to whom he says Tu es d amours mondains dieux en Albie Et de la Rose en la terre Angelique. In Eustache Deschamps the modern language of France first found a pure lyrical expression ; his long life seems to connect the literature of Theobald IV. with that of Charles of Orleans.
DESERT. See Physical Geography.
DESFONTAINES, René Louiche (1751-1833),French
botanist, was a native of Brittany, born at Tremblay, in
the department of Ile-et-Vilaine, in 1751 or 1752. He
was sent to the town school, but made slow progress in
learning, and was at length dismissed by the schoolmaster
as a dullard and a robber of apple orchards. This treat
ment left a life-long painful impression on his mind. At
the college of Rennes, to which he was next sent, he applied
himself heartily to study, and rejoiced in a success which
falsified the judgment of his old master. From Rennes
he passed to Paris, to study medicine ; but this soon
became a secondary pursuit, his chief attention being
drawn to the study of plants. At Paris he acquired the
friendship of Lemonnier, physician to the king, and of
Jussieu. At the age of thirty he took his degree of M.D.,
and in 1783 he was elected member of the Academy of
Sciences. In the same year he set out for North Africa,
and spent two years in a scientific exploration of Barbary.
In 1785 he returned to Paris, bringing with him a large
collection of plants, animals, and other objects illustra
tive of natural history. The collection, it is stated,
comprised 1600 species of plants, of which about 300 were
described for the first time. His successful labours were
rewarded, and a new congenial field of work was opened to
him, by his nomination by Buff on to the post of pro
fessor at the Jardin des Plantes, vacated in his favour by
his friend Lemonnier. The garden, says one of his
biographers, now became his world. His life was thence
forth marked by few incidents. He devoted himself to
his pupils, to his plants, and to the preparation of various
botanical works. He purposed to publish a narrative of
his African explorations, but the manuscript journal being
lent to Lemonnier, and by him to the king, Louis XVI.,
was lost, and only a few fragments of the narrative appeared.
His great work is entitled Flora Atlantica sive historia
plantarum quae in Atlante, agro Tunetano et Algeriensi
crescunt. It was published in 2 vols. 4to in 1798, and is
esteemed for the singular clearness and precision of its
descriptions and its nomenclature. Desfontaines, as a
recluse student, escaped the perils of the Reign of Terror.
On two occasions he courageously quitted his retirement to
rescue the naturalists Ramond and Lheritier from prison
and from death. He was admitted to the Legion of
Honour at the time of its establishment. At the age of
sixty-three he married a young wife, but the prospect of
happiness thus opened was soon closed by her death. In
1831 he became blind, and was reduced to the recognition
of his favourite plants by touch alone. Desfontaines was
author of many valuable memoirs on vegetable anatomy
and physiology, descriptions of new genera and species,
&c., contributed to learned societies and scientific journals.
One of the most important was the " Memoir on the
Organization of the Monocotyledons," which gave him a
high place among discoverers. He published in 1804 a
Tableau de I ecole botanique du museum d histoire naturelle
de Paris, of which a third edition appeared in 1831, under
the new title Catalogus Plantarum Horti Regii Parisiensis.
His modesty, simplicity of life, and good humour endeared
him to his friends and to his pupils. He died at Paris on
the 16th November 1833, a daughter surviving him. His
Barbary collection was bequeathed to the museum, and his
general collection passed into the hands of the botanist Webb.
DESHOULIÈRES, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde (1634-1694), a French poetess, born at Paris, was
the daughter of the Chevalier de la Garde, maitre d hotel to
the queens Mary de Medici and Anne of Austria. She
received a careful and very complete education, acquiring
while still young a knowledge of Latin, Spanish, and
Italian, and studying prosody under the direction of the
poet Hesnaut. At the age of eighteen she married the
Seigneur Deshoulieres, who had soon afterwards to go
abroad along with the prince of Conde on account of his
complicity in the Fronde. Madame Deshoulieres returned
for a time to the house of her parents, where she gave
herself to writing poetry and studying the philosophy of
Gassendi. She rejoined her husband at Rocroi, near
Brussels, where, being distinguished for her personal
beauty, she became the object of embarrassing attentions
on the part of the prince of Conde, against which, how
ever, she knew how to protect herself. Having made
herself obnoxious to the Government by her urgent demand
for the arrears of her husband s pay, she was imprisoned in
the chateau of Wilworden, the hardships being increased
by the refusal of all books except the Bible and some
volumes of the fathers. After a few months she was freed
by her husband, who attacked the chateau at the head of
a small band of soldiers. A,n amnesty having been
proclaimed, they returned to France, where Madame
Deshoulieres soon became a conspicuous personage at the
court of Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the
friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary
men of the age some of her more zealous flatterers even
going so far as to style her the tenth muse, and the French
Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included
specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues,
idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these
the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the
test of time, the others being entirely forgotten. She
wrote several dramatic works, the best of which do not rise
to mediocrity, and the worst of which are worthy of the
taste that could prefer the Phedre of Pradon to that of
Racine. Voltaire pronounced her, nevertheless, the most
successful of the female poets of France ; and her reputation
with her contemporaries is indicated by her election as a
member of the Academy of the Ricovrati of Padua, and of
the Academy of Aries. In 1688 a pension of 2000 livres
was bestowed upon her by the king, and she was thus
raised from the poverty in which she had long lived. She
died at Paris on the 17th February 1694. Complete
editions of her works were published at Paris in 1797
and 1799. These include a few poems by her daughter
Antoinette Therese Deshoulieres (1662-1718), who in
herited her talent.
DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO, sculptor, was born
nearly at the beginning of the 15th century, and died in
all probability in 1485. Vasari s statement, that he died
at the age of twenty-eight, is altogether a mistake.
Settignano is a village on the southern slope of the hill of
Fiesole, still surrounded by the quarries of sandstone of
which the hill is formed, and still inhabited, as it was 400
years ago, by a race of " stone-cutters," several of whom,
though not disdaining the title of " lapicida," earned for
themselves honoured places in the roll of Florentine
