tion of her plaints and reproaches. The friends who could have supported the artist through such an ordeal, were driven away, as causing loss of time and distraction by their conversation; art itself was no more to have its meed, as he must only attend to speed; so that, worn out by this perpetual struggling, tired of life, poor Dürer, half out of his senses at times, finished by losing all his energy, and died most wretchedly in 1528, when only fifty-seven years of age. And yet this Agnes was beautiful! Her image lives for ever in those mild, charming representations of the Virgin, which the inexhaustible artist has produced by scores; there she appears all that is sweetest and most engaging in womanhood.
Dürer is justly called the father of German painting. The comprehensiveness of his mind allowed him to extend his attention to almost all the branches of art, and to excel in all. German above all, his very faults are those of a refined, metaphysical, painstaking artist. His later works especially make one regret his early death. It is evident that he had arrived at a period when the primitive, fantastic, lugubrious, allegoric forms were giving place to the simplicity of sweet, well-selected nature, such as seen by Mantegna, Bellini, and Raphael; and when the charms of Flemish colouring were more and more becoming his own. Dürer's genuine paintings are fewer in number than those which bear his name. The most celebrated are the following—"The Descent from the Cross," at Aix; "Young Christ in the Temple, and a Madonna," two masterpieces; "The Saviour," at Dresden; "Adam and Eve," at Florence; "The Apostles," at Munich; "The Ecce Homo," at Venice; besides several other specimens to be seen in his native town and at Vienna. Works of sculpture in wood or stone, from the studio of Dürer, are preserved at Munich, Vienna, and Stuttgart. The British museum contains one of his bas-reliefs in gritstone, representing the nativity of St. John. The drawings, engravings, etchings, and woodcuts which he executed in the course of his career, cannot be enumerated in a work like ours. For complete information we refer our readers to his life written by Joseph Heller, and also to Nagler's Künstler-Lexicon.—R. M.
DURET, Francisque, a French sculptor, born in 1805. His works are distinguished by great purity of design, bordering sometimes on harshness. He is deservedly considered as one of the champions of French sculpture. His "Neapolitan Fisherman dancing" and his "Improvisatore" have acquired such a world-wide fame that the mere mention of them will realize to the reader the extent of Duret's merit. Duret died in 1865.
DURFEE, Job, LL.D., an eminent American judge, was born at Tiverton, Rhode Island, September 20, 1790, and graduated at Brown university in 1813. He studied law, and, settling in his native town, soon acquired a high reputation at the bar of the state. He was frequently elected a member of the state legislature, and in 1821 was chosen to the congress of the United States, where, as a representative from Rhode Island, he served for two terms till 1825; when, failing of a second re-election, he returned to the practice of his profession and to literary studies, in which he had always delighted. He devoted much attention to the traditions and mythology of the American Indians, and also to the history of his native state, and in 1832 he published a historical poem, in nine cantos, entitled "What Cheer? or Roger Williams in banishment," which was favourably received oy the American public, and attracted considerable attention in Great Britain. From these pursuits, for which his predilections were very strong, he was, however, recalled by his appointment as one of the justices of the supreme court of Rhode Island in 1833. In 1835 he was promoted to the post of chief justice of the supreme court, and in the discharge of its responsible duties he passed the remaining years of his life. He was not remarkable for his technical knowledge of law so much as for his sense of justice, and his thorough views as to the nature of civil society, and the obligations and rights it involves. In 1842, when the state was threatened with a rebellion, he prepared a lecture on the fundamental principles of society and the institutions of the state, which he delivered to the people in many of the towns. His firmness and integrity as a judge, also, did much to allay the excited passions of the period. He was the author of two or three literary and historical discourses which hold a high place in this species of literature, and also of a metaphysical work of much acutenesss, styled "Panidea, or an Omnipresent Reason considered as the creative and sustaining Logos." These and others of his writings have been published together in a volume since his death. He died in July 1847, aged fifty-seven years.—F. B.
D'URFEY, Thomas, or, as he was invariably called, Tom, was born in Exeter, but in what year is not known. Hawkins says shortly after the Restoration, and Addison speaks of him in 1713, as "in a blooming old age." His family were originally French; and his parents came to England in the time of Louis XIII., about 1628. Thomas was designed for the law which, says Hawkins, "he forsook under a persuasion which some poets and even players have been very ready to entertain as an excuse for idleness and an indisposition to sober reflection, viz., that law is a study so dull that no man of genius can submit to it" (a taste which seems to have been in the family, for he has translated a poem of "Uncle D'Urfey's"). He had some talent for poetry, was a capital boon companion; wrote a good song, and could sing it well; and so he took to writing for the stage and living a merry life, and became a celebrity in the licentious and joyous circles which moved round Charles II. In the dedication of a volume of songs and odes to Lord Carlisle, he tells him, "For my own part I have lately taken up a new way of diversion, viz., by making of songs and odes to the hardest and most taking tunes." Some of these compositions are happy enough, but most of them are so gross that one wonders how such men as Blow and Purcell would have set them to music, or any female could have been got to sing them to public audiences. Many of them, too, are headed, "Sung to the king at Windsor," which may account for their grossness. With that monarch, indeed, he seems to have been a favourite. "I myself remember," says Addison, "King Charles II. leaning on Tom D'Urfey's shoulder more than once, and humming over a song with him." Tom was a thorough "no popery" man and a great enemy of the whigs, to whom Addison says he gave such a blow by his ode, "Joy to Great Cæsar," as they were not able to recover that reign. If so we must say, looking at that composition to-day, their recuperative powers must have been very feeble. Like most men who give themselves up to such a life, Tom found himself after the death of Charles in very straitened circumstances. Those who furnished him with the necessaries of life were unreasonable enough to decline receiving payment in a song; and so, to avoid their importunities, his friends had to get up a benefit for him by performing his play of "The Plotting Sisters." D'Urfey died on the 26th of February, 1723, being then probably not much under eighty years old, and was buried at St. James', Westminster. D'Urfey wrote a large quantity of dramas, songs, and odes—he said himself more odes than Horace, and about four times as many comedies as Terence. The number of the latter is ascertained to be thirty-two. His songs have been collected in 3 vols. under the title of "Laugh and be Fat, or Pills to purge Melancholy." We are happy to say the work is very rare, but an odd volume of songs and plays is still to be met with, which will not repay perusal. "He made the world merry" for a while, but of all his dramas not one was on the acting list of a theatre within thirty years of his death; the very qualities which recommended them to the vicious age of Charles II. having, by a just retribution, banished them in the more decorous times of William III.—J. F. W.
DURHAM, James, a popular Scotch divine, was born in 1622. He was the proprietor of the estate of Easter Powrie in Angus, and was educated at the university of St. Andrews. In the civil war between Charles I. and the parliament Durham joined the popular party, and held the rank of captain in their army. But, in compliance with the advice of the celebrated David Dickson, he quitted the military service in order to devote himself to the work of the ministry. He accordingly went to Glasgow college, where he resumed his studies and took his degree; and in 1647 was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Irvine. He was soon after ordained minister of Blackfriars' church in Glasgow, and speedily acquired a great reputation as a popular preacher. In 1650 he was chosen to succeed Mr. Dickson as professor of divinity in the college of Glasgow; but before he could be admitted to that office, he was appointed by the assembly chaplain to the young king, Charles II. He discharged the duties of this office "with great gravity and faithfulness," but more to the satisfaction of the church than of the sovereign and his associates. After the battle of Worcester Durham returned to his ministerial duties in Glasgow, and was chosen minister of the inner High Church, having for his colleague, his brother-in-
