JAHN, Friederich Ludwig, the reviver of gymnastics in Germany, was born at Lanz, August 11, 1778, and studied theology at Halle and Göttingen. Deeply sorrowing for the oppression of his country, and an ardent hater of everything French, he devoted all his energies to the revival of the national spirit, by physically and morally strengthening the rising generation. In 1811 he established a school for gymnastics at Berlin, and in 1813, with a number of his pupils, joined the volunteer corps of the celebrated Lützow. After the restoration of peace he was arrested on suspicion of demagogism, but set free again, though for a long time he was kept under surveillance. He then lived in retirement at Freiburg on the Unstrut, whence in 1848 he was sent to the Frankfort national assembly, where he sided with the deputies forming the party of the right. He died at Freiburg on the 10th October, 1852. His writings—particularly his "Deutsches Volksthum"—are distinguished by their national feeling, but disfigured by an antiquated and affected style.—(Life, by Pröhle, 1855.)—K. E.
JAHN, Johann, an eminent Roman catholic biblical scholar and philologist, born in Moravia in 1750; died at Vienna in 1816. After completing his education he was ordained as a Romish priest, but received an appointment at Bruck as professor of hermeneutics and of oriental languages. In 1789 he was removed to Vienna, where he was professor of oriental languages and other subjects for seventeen years, when the ignorant bigotry of his adversaries compelled him to retire. Jahn was a man whose profound acquaintance with biblical subjects was accompanied by a disposition of the utmost frankness and honesty. He was far removed from neologian tendencies, and controlled but little by certain principles which have in his church thrown the scriptures into the background, as owing their authority and sense to the church. Hence his teachings and writings were very unsavoury; and before he had been long at Vienna he was reported unsound in the faith. Complaints were laid by a cardinal before the emperor, and a commission was appointed to investigate the matter. This commission required him to be more careful for the future, and in a new edition to modify some things in his "Introduction to the Old Testament." Notwithstanding his submission his detractors continued their machinations, and he was nominated to an office which compelled him to resign his chair in 1806. Even his offer to teach for nothing was rejected, and his works, although so popular, were subject to constant carping criticism. His "Introduction" and his "Biblical Antiquities," so well known in this country, were both put in the Index. He wrote many other works, as grammars and dictionaries for the Hebrew, Aramean, and Arabic languages; an Arabic lexicon; a "Commentary on the Prophetical Books of the Old Testament," &c.—B. H. C.
* JAHN, Otto, a distinguished German archæologist and writer on music, was born at Kiel on 16th June, 1813. After having completed his education at the universities of Kiel, Leipsic, and Berlin, he travelled in France and Italy, and stayed two years at Rome. In 1842 he obtained the chair of archæology at Greifswald, whence in 1847 he was translated to Leipsic. Here he was dismissed, from political motives, in 1851, but was called to Bonn in the same capacity in 1856. Besides a number of valuable treatises on subjects of archæology, and several editions of Latin poets (especially Juvenal), he has published an excellent life of Mozart, 3 vols., and some other works on musical subjects.—K. E.
JAKOB, Ludwig Heinrich von, a German writer on political economy, was born at Wettin, 26th February, 1759, and was educated at Halle, where in 1791 he was appointed professor of philosophy. After the dissolution of this university in 1806, he was called to the chair of political economy at Charkow, whence in 1809 he was translated to St. Petersburg, and there successively raised to several high offices under government. In 1816 he retired to Germany, and died at Lauchstädt, near Halle, July 22, 1827. The celebrated authoress, Mrs. Robinson (Talvj) is his daughter. Among his writings we note—"Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie;" "Staatsfinanzwissenschaft;" and his "Entwurf eines Criminalgesetzbuchs für das russiche Reich." In the Russian language he published a series of philosophical handbooks for the Russian gymnasia.—K. E.
* JAL, A., a French author and archæologist, born at Lyons about 1791. Some of his early years were spent at sea, a circumstance that no doubt gave a nautical direction to his literary researches when he exchanged the ship for the study. His first efforts with the pen were principally contributions to the journals; but in 1834 he was commissioned by the French naval administration to visit Italy, for the purpose of gathering materials towards a history of shipbuilding and navigation. His principal work, the "Archéologie Navale," appeared in 1839, 2 vols. 8vo, with wood-cuts. It was published by order of the king, and one of the dissertations obtained a prize at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. This work contains much curious information relating to the navigation of the middle ages; and M. Jal has attempted to clear up the much-vexed question, "what was a galley." It seems remarkable that all vestiges of the galleys of the middle ages—not those of the Romans, but those of the Venetians and Genoese down to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—should so completely have disappeared, that no scholar and no seaman can at the present day pronounce decisively as to their construction. The most absurd surmises have been made on the subject, and these M. Jal has attempted to clear up by positive evidence. He has also, under the authorization of the Emperor Napoleon III., undertaken to reconstruct a galley so as to prove his point by practical application. M. Jal's essays are really the foundation of a science of naval archæology. With much pleasure we bear our tribute of respect to the author of the "Archéologie Navale," and compliment him on achieving success where Gibbon toiled in vain, and where Ducange was in hopeless darkness. M. Jal has also published a "Glossaire Nautique, repertoire polyglotte des termes de marine anciens et modernes," Paris, 1850. His other works are tales and criticisms.—P. E. D.
JALLABERT, Jean, a Swiss physician, born at Geneva in 1712; died in 1768. In 1752, having been long known as a lecturer in his native city, he was appointed professor of mathematics and philosophy. He did much to promote the science of electricity, and contributed many interesting papers to the literature of natural history.
JAMBLICHUS, a Syrian writer, who lived in the second century after Christ. According to Suidas he was the son of a slave. He wrote "Babylonica, or the loves of Rhodanes and Sinonis," in thirty-nine books, of which Photius gives an account, and some fragments are extant.
JAMBLICHUS, a famous neoplatonic philosopher, was born at Chalcis in Coelesyria in the beginning of the fourth century. The most gifted, original, and illustrious of the neoplatonists was Plotinus, and the most devoted disciple, the acutest, most eloquent, and popular interpreter of Plotinus was Porphyry. For a season Jamblichus held the same relation to Porphyry as Porphyry to Plotinus; but either from conviction or ambition he finally opposed the doctrines of his master, and aimed at being the chief of a sect. The details of his career are scanty, and have such a fabulous air that it is difficult to seize "the sober reality behind the monstrous marvels." None of these would it be edifying here to recount. It is from Jamblichus that the degeneracy and the corruption of neoplatonism date. After his time, though perhaps not wholly in consequence of his teachings and example, neoplatonism, that most interesting of philosophical schools, that subtlest of philosophical doctrines, that speculation more ingenious than profound, sank gradually from a grand idea to a vulgar quackery. Credulous and superstitious, Jamblichus had numerous and enthusiastic adherents, whose credulity and superstition were still more extravagant than his own. Partly perhaps to excite their wonder and secure their attachment, Jamblichus degraded philosophy from its divine eminence to that pretended power of rendering the supernatural obedient to the capricious will of man, with which our own times have grown painfully familiar. But Jamblichus was no doubt influenced likewise by a feeling of a more honourable, as it was of a more universal kind. The last desperate struggle between paganism and christianity had arrived; and of paganism the neoplatonists were the allies and the champions, less from the love of paganism than from the dislike to the gospel as unphilosophical. Now, as the gospel boasted of its miracles, paganism attempted to outbid it, if not in public esteem, in public astonishment, by whatsoever was strange, startling, incredible. Into this stratagem, half reckless, half cunning, of a dying cause, Jamblichus entered from taste, from policy, from vanity, deluded more than deluding. By some historians of philosophy Jamblichus is thought to have improved neoplatonism, by bringing it nearer on several points to platonic simplicity; on the whole, however, he merely added abstraction to abstraction, puerility to puerility,
