chemist, born at Rimini, 1454; died, 1537; famous for his persevering efforts in search of the philosopher's stone, on which subject he published a poem, in three books, called "Chrysopoia," Venice, 1515. This poem he dedicated to Pope Leo X., who, in return, made him a present of an empty purse of extravagant dimensions, telling him that one who could make gold could find no difficulty in filling it. His "Carmina" (Verona, 1491), have been inserted partly in "Gruter's Deliciæ Italorum Poetarum," 1608. Augurelli was a man of genius; though depreciated by Scaliger, he was honoured by Bembo, who consulted him for his taste in composition, which was marked by simplicity and correctness.—A. L.
AUGURINUS. This name was borne by several families of ancient Rome. We notice the more eminent individuals:—
Augurinus, Roman consul, 497 years b.c., famous for the part he took in favour of Coriolanus, then in banishment. He was one of those who went out to meet the hero on his return.
Augurinus, Lucius Minucius, famous for having been elected præfect of the corn market at the time of the dreadful scarcity, 439 b.c. All his efforts were ineffectual to save the people from starvation and suicide; but Spurius Mælius, a rich Roman knight, came to his aid with a show of munificence which, however good for the people, was proved by Minucius to have been only a device to veil his ambitious designs upon the republic. Mælius was eventually slain, and Minucius distributed the corn he had stored up, at a low price, to the famishing people. For this he was rewarded by the gift of a bull with gilded horns, and a statue. If Niebuhr is right in vindicating the innocence of Mælius, we have an example of injustice scarcely paralleled in the excesses of a people.
Augurinus, C. Minucius, a Roman tribune, 187 b.c., chiefly remembered for having insisted that Scipio, the Asiatic, should be fined, and give caution for the payment. Scipio having refused, Augurinus proposed that he should be put in prison—an attempt opposed by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the father of the Gracchi.
Augurinus, Sentius, a Roman poet. He was much beloved by Pliny the younger, who praised him as being one of the greatest poets of his time. His poems bore the title of "Poematia."—A. L.
AUGUSTA, Jan, a Bohemian theologian, born at Prague, 1500; died 13th January, 1575. He studied under Waclaw-Koranda, a famous professor among the Utraquists. Resorting to Wittenberg, he became acquainted with Luther and Melancthon, but neither of the two parties appears to have given up any thing to the other. Augusta, no doubt, left the sect of the Utraquists, but he did not embrace the opinions of Luther, who, he thought, was more for doctrine than discipline. He became one of the sect of Bohemian brethren, and was appointed a pastor of the congregation of Leutomysl. He made repeated attempts at a junction of his church with the protestants, but in vain, even if it may not be said that his good intentions brought him into peril; because the brethren, true to their feeling with the protestants, resolved to withhold their assistance from King Ferdinand in the war of Smalkald against the elector of Saxony, and that monarch banished the sect from Bohemia, and threw Augusta into prison at Prague, where he was three times put to the rack. The charge against him and his friends was, that they had been plotting for a transference of the crown from Bohemia to Saxony. He confessed nothing, and suffered in patience; nor was it till the death of Ferdinand that he was liberated. He wrote many works in Bohemian. His life was written by Jan Blahoslaw.—A. L.
AUGUSTE, D'Udine, an Italian poet, born at Udine in the sixteenth century. He was author of a work entitled "Augusti Vatis Odæ," which was published at Venice in 1529, in 4to.
AUGUSTENBURG, Christian Augustus, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Sonderburg, and Augustenburg, was born 9th July, 1768. He was raised by Charles XIII. to the dignity of prince royal of Sweden, under the name of Charles. On the 22nd January, 1810, he made his public entry into Stockholm, and received the title of the adopted son of the king. He died on the 28th of May following, under suspicion of having been poisoned.
AUGUSTI, Friedrich Albert, a protestant theologian, of Jewish family, born in 1696 at Frankfort-on-the-Oder; died at Eschenberg in 1782, where he was pastor. He was converted to Christianity in 1722, by Reinhard, Lutheran superintendent or bishop at Sondershausen. Among his works are the following:—"Dissertatio de adventus Christi necessitate, temporo templi secundi;" Leipsic, 1794, 4to. "Dissertationes historico-philosophicæ, in quibus Judæorum hodiernorum consuetudines, mores, et ritus, tam in rebus sacris quam civilibus exponuntur;" Gotha, 1753, 8vo.—A. M.
AUGUSTI, Johann Christian Wilhelm, grandson of the preceding, was born at Eschenberg in 1772, and died in 1841. He studied at Jena, where he afterwards became professor of Eastern languages. After being connected successively with the universities of Breslau (1812), and of Bonn (1819), he was appointed in 1828 consistorial councillor at Coblenz, where he died. He has left—"Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Christlichen Archæologie" (Memorabilia in the domain of Christian Archæology), Leipsic, 1817-30; "The Handbook of Christian Archæology," published at Leipsic in 1836-37, is a later edition of the same work. "Lehrbuch der Christlichen Dogmengeschichte " (Manual of the History of Christian Dogmas), Leipsic, 1805 and 1835. "Grundriss einer historisch-kritischen Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Outlines of a historico-critical Introduction to the Old Testament), Leutenberg, 1809.—A. M.
AUGUSTIN or AUGUSTINO, surnamed the Venetian, an engraver, pupil of Raimondi. Born 1490; died in Rome about 1540. His plates, which are marked with an A and V on a small tablet, are numerous, but do not equal his master's.
AUGUSTIN, Jean Baptiste-Jacques, a French painter of miniature and enamel of modern times. He began his career in Paris in 1781, when, self-taught and free from all the vagaries of the Rococo and Boucher style, he completely astonished the public by the simplicity and truthfulness of his portraits. Equally patronized during the Empire and the Restoration, he closed his life in Paris 1832, aged seventy-three.
AUGUSTINE, Saint, or AUGUSTINUS, Aurelius, the most eminent of the Latin fathers, the founder of the Western theology, and the greatest of theologians, was born on the 13th of November, in the year 384, at Tagaste in Numidia, now called Tajelt. His father, Patricius, a man of rank though poor, embraced Christianity late in life, and died when his son was seventeen years of age. His son tells us that he was a man of violent temper, but at the same time of a kindly disposition; and he specially records that he never beat his wife, a circumstance which excited the wonder of surrounding matrons, whose husbands, though far less passionate than Patricius, frequently left the marks of blows on their persons; and which, he says, was to be accounted for by the fact, that she never resisted him when angry, but would wait for a fitting opportunity and then bring him to reason. This excellent person, Monnica by name, was a model of gentleness and virtue, the child of Christian parents, and, from her youth up, accustomed to live under the influence of Christian principles. As her patience and gentleness were rewarded by her gaining her husband to embrace Christianity, so to her son she acted the part of a kind and wise and watchful mother, seeking to imbue his mind from the outset with religious truth, and to train him in the ways of piety and virtue. For a time, however, it appeared as if her care had been bestowed in vain; like many a pious mother besides, she had to go through the severe discipline of seeing her child apparently hastening to ruin before she was permitted to reap the reward of her anxieties and her labours, in seeing him enter decidedly the paths of virtue and goodness. The hot passions which he inherited from his father, and which his father had done little, either by precept or example, to induce him to check, hurried him, while still a youth, into many follies and excesses, of which he himself gives a vivid picture in his Confessions. Meanwhile, however, his intellectual culture was going forward. He tells us he loved the Latin authors, but hated the Greek,—a circumstance, he says, he never could fully account for, but which, with much naivetè he adds, was probably owing to the difficulty of learning the Greek, to him a foreign language, and to the harshness of his teacher, who enforced his lessons "saevis terroribus ac pœnis," with savage terrors and punishments. His first school was at Madaura, whence he was removed to Carthage, where, notwithstanding his sensual indulgences, he applied himself with characteristic vigour to the study of eloquence and philosophy. The perusal of Cicero's treatise entitled "Hortensius," in his nineteenth year, first awakened him to a nobler state of being than he had hitherto aimed at. The study also of Aristotle's Categories, which, says he, "solus apud meipsum legens cognoveram,"
