enforcing sound commercial principles. At the coup d'état of 1851, he scrupled for a time to take his place at the admiralty. When, however, the universal suffrage of the people legitimatized, in his judgment, the presidency, and afterwards the empire, he felt constrained to give to his country the benefits of his experience and his counsels. In 1851 he was appointed president of the jury sent by the French minister of commerce to the great London exhibition of that year, and in that capacity he superintended the drawing up of very valuable reports on various departments of industry.—W. L. M.
DUPIN, Louis Ellies, born at Paris in 1657; died in 1719. Dupin was descended from an old Norman family. He was educated at Harcourt, took orders, and became doctor of the Sorbonne in 1684. In 1686 the first volume of his "Bibliothèque univèrselle des auteurs ecclesiastiques" appeared. Bossuet and the French clergy were scandalized at the unreserve with which he expressed himself; and, fearing that the publication of the work might be interfered with, he, at Racine's suggestion, sought to appease the storm by a retractation of the matter that gave most offence. Its publication was permitted with some change of the title. The work, with its supplements, runs to sixty-one volumes. Dupin was a man whose whole life was given to study, and who seemed to find time for everything. He held the chair of philosophy at the royal college. He saw every friend who called on him; aided every author engaged in the preparation of any ecclesiastical work in his researches; and lived a peaceful and happy life, when the bull Unigenitus was published, and he was banished to Chatelherault as a jesuit. On expressing his submission, however, he was permitted to return to Paris, but not to resume his professorship. Clement XI. wrote to thank Louis XIV. for thus punishing him. During the regency Dupin did not fare better. He was in correspondence with Wake, the archbishop of Canterbury, with the object of seeing whether the churches of France and England could not be united. Dubois, who was then looking for a cardinal's hat, had Dupin's papers seized. It was found that, among other arrangements, Dupin said there would be little difficulty in France consenting to the marriage of the clergy, and thus gave rise to a story that Dupin was himself married. When Peter the Great was in France, Dupin was in communication with him, for the purpose of seeing whether there might not be a union of the Greek church with that of France. Dupin for many years edited the Journal des Savants, and supplied many notices to Moreri's Biographical Dictionary.—J. A., D.
DUPLEIX, Joseph, Governor-general of the French possessions in Hindostan, was born towards the close of the seventeenth century, the son of a wealthy ex-director of the French East India company. After a youth spent in study, followed by commercial adventure, Dupleix was appointed a member of council at Pondicherry, and ten years later he was promoted to be chief superintendent of the French settlement at Chandernagore. Under his care, Chandernagore attained to great commercial prosperity; and, in 1742, he was rewarded by being transferred to Pondicherry, as governor-general of France's Indian possessions. He had enriched himself by his private commercial speculations, and he now began to form vast schemes for the extension of French authority and influence in Hindostan. In 1746, when war broke out between France and England, the English government sent a squadron to the East Indies, whither, too. La Bourdonnais, the able and energetic governor of the Mauritius, was despatched by the French with a naval and military force. He took Madras from the English, but Dupleix quarrelled with him respecting the terms of surrender, and English interests in India were preserved from the combined hostility of these two men, who, if they had been united, would have proved very formidable foes. Dupleix's energy and skill were elements in the miscarriage of the attempt subsequently made by the English under Admiral Boscawen to take Pondicherry. A year afterwards, the treaty of Aix-la-chapelle was signed (November, 1748), and the contest between England and France for influence in India had to be waged, under cover of support given by the representatives of the two companies to rival native princes. By skilful campaigning and skilful diplomacy, Dupleix had succeeded in 1751 in securing for a protégé the vice-royalty of the Deccan itself, when he was checked by the appearance on the scene of the great Lord Clive, then a young and obscure adventurer. What was more, he received no encouragement from the authorities at home. The French government did not enter into his vast schemes of aggrandizement, and the French East India company grumbled at the expense of the war. Similarly unambitious and pacific sentiments animated the authorities in England, and, in fact, the two governments were both displeased, that while at peace in Europe, they should be virtually at war in India. A conference was held in London; a convention between France and England was signed; Dupleix was sacrificed and recalled. On his return to France, he vainly pleaded his claims as a creditor of the India company; and impoverished, as well as dispirited, he died about 1768, of a broken heart.—F. E.
DUPLEIX, Scipion, born at Condom in 1569; died in 1661. Dupleix came to Paris in 1605 in the suite of Margaret, wife of Henry IV. She appointed him mâitre des requests de son hôtel. He was made historiographer of France. He soon got weary of court life and retired to the country, choosing for his residence the place of his birth, and bearing with him the title of conseiller d'état. He wrote a book on the Gallican liberties, which he was not only not permitted to print, but compelled to burn. The vexation is said to have cost him his life. His historical works—and he wrote several—seem to have deserved higher praise than they obtained, if Langlet Dufresnoy's report of them is to be regarded as more than a jest—"Dupleix," says he "has composed many bad books; c'etait son plus grand talent." Dupleix in his historical works has the great merit of always referring distinctly to his authorities; the neglect of this renders narratives more easily read than those of Dupleix of but little value for any useful purpose.—J. A., D.
DUPLESSIS, Joseph S., a distinguished French painter, born at Carpentras in 1725. He studied under his father, under the Carthusian monk Imbeit, and ultimately at Rome. He excelled in portraits, and amongst those he executed are noted—that of Gluck, now at Vienna; those of Franklin, Marmontel, Bossuet, Necker, &c. Having lost his fortune through the Revolution, he accepted the place of keeper of the museum of Versailles, where he died in 1802.
DUPLESSIS-MORNAY. See Mornay.
DU PONCEAU or DUPONCEAU, Peter S., was born on the 3d of June, 1760, at St. Martin's in the isle of Re, on the western coast of France. At an early age he showed a strong taste for the study of language, which was developed by excellent instruction. His father held a military command on the island, and caused his son to study, with some educated recruits whose drilling he superintended, various branches connected with military engineering. Young Duponceau's shortsightedness, however, obliged the father to forego all plans of military life for his son. In 1773, therefore, Peter was sent to a college of Benedictine monks at St. Jean Angely. Here he was very successful, and his fondness for English studies and literature obtained him the nickname of "L'Anglais." After he had spent eighteen months here his father died, and he, yielding to the wishes of his mother and family, "took the tonsure," to use his own words, and, by influence of the bishop of Rochelle, was sent as regent to the episcopal college at Bressiere in Poitou, where, though only fifteen years old, he taught Latin. Jealousy from his compeers and annoyances from the boys rendered him so uncomfortable, that on Christmas-day, 1775, he started for Paris, where he supported himself by translating English books, by writing foreign commercial letters, and teaching French and English. Count de Genlis told him that the duke of Orleans wished an English and French vocabulary of hunting words and phrases. Duponceau with much labour prepared one so well, that it was splendidly bound and placed on the prince's shelves. When he asked the promised reward, however, he received the answer—"Les princes ne donnent rien." Count de Gebelin, the well-known philologist, employed him as secretary, and valued his services so highly, that to retain them he even offered to put his name on the title-page of his own great work, "Le Monde Primitif." At the house of Beaumarchais, however, Duponceau had met Baron Steuben, who wanted a secretary who could write and speak English, to accompany him to America. Duponceau gladly accepted Steuben's offer, and all the more readily as he did not agree with Gebelin's scientific opinions. Steuben and he sailed for America from Marseilles, and landed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on 1st December, 1777. On 18th February, 1778, Duponceau received, at the request of Steuben, the brevet appointment of captain in the United States army. After serving with Baron Steuben for more than two years, pulmonary disease forced him to abandon military life for a time,
