the scene of his triumphs brooded over the supposed wrong for fourteen whole years, during which time he neither touched chisel nor marble. There he died in 1816.—R. M.
DEKKER, Thomas. See Decker.
DE LA BECHE, Sir Henry Thomas, a distinguished geologist, born in London in the year 1796. He was director-general of the geological survey of the United Kingdom, director of the museum of practical geology, and the government school of mines, and a member of the health of towns' commission. His father was Thomas De la Beche, Esq. of Clarendon, Jamaica, a colonel in the army, and he claimed descent from the barons De la Beche of Aldworth, Berks, in the time of Edward III. He received his early education at the school of Ottery St. Mary, and in 1810 was admitted into the royal military college of Great Marlow, afterwards removed to Sandhurst. For a short time he served in the army, but settling with his family in Dorsetshire, a district rich in fossils and geological remains, he imbibed that taste for geology which determined his future course of life. At the age of twenty-one he became a fellow of the Geological Society, and pursued his studies in that direction unremittingly for the next few years. In 1818 he married a daughter of Capt. Charles White, who died in 1844, leaving one child. One of his earliest papers appeared in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for 1820, "On the temperature and depth of the Lake of Geneva." His first paper in the Transactions of the Geological Society, written in conjunction with Mr. Conybeare, afterwards dean of Llandaff, is entitled, "On the discovery of a new fossil animal forming a link between the Icthyosaurus and Crocodile." This animal, afterwards named the Plesiosaurus, was thus first described. In 1824 Mr. De la Beche visited his paternal estates in Jamaica. Here he exerted himself greatly on behalf of the slave population, and was a great loser by the act of emancipation, which he nevertheless supported. Whilst in Jamaica, he gave much time to his favourite pursuit, and published several papers on the geology of the country. He associated himself with the officers of the trigonometrical survey, then engaged in surveying the western counties of England. For some years he devoted himself to the task of laying down the geological features of these counties on the ordnance maps, and was the first to point out to the government the advantages which would accrue to the public from connecting a geological survey with the geographical. In 1835 he suggested the formation of an illustrative collection. Both these plans of his were adopted, and he was appointed director of the geological survey. The original collection which he proposed was made in a house in Craig's Court, and formed the nucleus of the museum of practical geology, now occupying a handsome building in Jermyn Street in connection with the geological survey, which were united there in 1845. In 1819 Mr. De la Beche became a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1821 of the Linnæan. He was knighted in 1848, and in the same year was president of the Geological Society. His services to geology were greatly appreciated in foreign countries. He was elected a correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of Paris in 1853, and about the same time received the order of Leopold of Belgium, and was created a knight of the Danish order of Dannebrog. He died on the 13th of April, 1855, of paralysis, which had been gradually making inroads on his physical power, although it left his intellect unimpaired and clear to the last. He was succeeded as director of the school of mines and geological survey by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison. The number of Sir Henry De la Beche's published works and papers given in Agassiz's Bibliography is forty-three, all of which are on geological subjects.—E. L.
DE LA BORDE, Jean Benjamin. See Borde.
DELACROIX, Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène, the most fertile of modern French painters, was the son of the conventionist Charles Delacroix de Constant, and was born in 1799 at Charenton St. Maurice, near Paris. His life from the first was a rather remarkable one. When a babe he was once nearly drowned in the sea, once nearly burned in his cradle, and in his boyhood he nearly poisoned himself with verdigris. He ran no fewer risks in his artistical career, his training having been committed to such men as Guerin and David, whose art-creed was directly hostile to the development of such a genius as his. Delacroix, however, had the good fortune to escape these latter perils, as well as the former. He rebelled against the tenets of his masters, which, although the means of greatness and display to themselves, were to him utterly stupid and repulsive. In fact, neither the correct and patient design, nor the elaborate and miniature-like workmanship, nor the temperate and almost cold colouring of the two painters, could afford commensurate scope to the fiery and overcrammed imagination of the young artist. And so, abandoning both their studios and their system, he plunged headlong in his own mannerism; one that partakes of the facile style of Paul Veronese, and of the animated grouping of Rubens—a combination of Venetian colour and Dutch forms. Only a great and fertile genius could have succeeded with such a style; but this he undoubtedly possessed, and accordingly the triumphs achieved by him were neither few nor small. He, in fact, produced the largest and most varied series of works that any modern artist has ever accomplished, which, for its originality of character, may well render his country proud of him. It has often been made a reproach to Delacroix that his pictures cannot be seen but at a considerable distance. If you go near them, what seemed depth or transparency of colour but a few steps off appears, if seen too close, a muddled mass of pigment, or a streaky unfinished spot; the forms which were markedly distinct a moment before, lose all their outlines and character; the general and powerful effect of the scene turns into the most confused and miserable daub that ever surprised a disappointed examiner. At the great French Exhibition of 1855, Delacroix's display was one of the most varied and interesting. It consisted of no less than thirty-five specimens, a small number, however, in comparison with the whole of the works produced by this champion of French art. On that occasion, one of the ten great prizes for painting was awarded to him. The comprehensiveness of his subjects, the dashing facility of his grouping, the intensity of expression, the vigour of the colouring, were features of such importance as no one, however he might be biassed in favour of a more chaste and more elaborate style of working, could slight or resist. But this must be said, that although French writers affect to call him the founder of a new school, it is evident that it would be the destruction of art if his fantastic method were to become popular. Any enumeration of the works of this artist is beyond our limits. We will only mention his pictures of "Dante" and "Virgil," and of "The Massacre of Chios;" by these he first astonished the world, and at once established his fame and success. No branch of subjects did his fruitful mind leave unattempted; religious, mythological, historical, ancient and modern, public and private life, all were treated by him with equal facility and efficiency, but, above all, with an originality of style as powerful as novel. For more complete notes on his doctrines and his works, we refer to some of Delacroix's own writings in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and to Planche's account of him in the Portraits of Contemporary Artists. He died in 1863.—R. M.
DELACROIX, Jacques Vincent, born at Paris in 1743; died at Versailles in 1832. Jacques Delacroix was educated at Troyes, where his father was conseiller du roi and officier des eaux et forêts. He studied jurisprudence and practised as an avocat. He took an active part in the discussions, then agitated, on the rights and powers of the local parliaments, and brought his views before the public in a new series of the Spectateur Français, a. publication originated by Marivaux. The conducting of the class of suits in which Delacroix was chiefly engaged was by written pleadings. In the French procedure there is more freedom and less apparent formality than in the processes of the English courts, and discussions are permitted and encouraged which would be regarded by persons familiar with the judicature of England as wholly out of place. The eloquence of the "Memoires," in which Delacroix advocated the rights of his clients, attracted the notice of Voltaire, and his praises led the young advocate to address a wider circle. He published "Réflexions Morales sur la Civilisation." In this work Delacroix contended against the use of torture in judicial proceedings. Torture was then applied habitually in criminal cases to procure confessions of guilt. His work was treated by the magistrates as a libel on the administration of justice. It was, however, read universally, and crowned by the French Academy. At the commencement of the French revolution Delacroix lectured at the lyceum on public law, and was daring and honest enough to deny the right of the revolutionary tribunal to try Louis XVI. The fearless man was himself prosecuted for his bold act, but acquitted. In 1795 he was named civil judge of the tribunal of the Seine and Oise; and in 1800 he was
