but for his resolute refusal to admit them. In 1811 Poniatowski was sent to Paris as ambassador, by the duke of Saxony, who had been appointed sovereign of Poland by the French emperor. He there received instructions on the part he was to play in the Russian campaign of 1812. He found to his sorrow that his army of Poles was to be broken up, and distributed among the French divisions. His gallant conduct throughout that disastrous expedition, and his lamentable end, are matters of general European history. On the 16th of October, 1813, he was created Marshal of France. On the 18th he had been fighting all day, and had been wounded in several places; he swam his horse across the river Plaisse, and to escape from the enemy, attempted to cross the Elster in the same way, when he was drowned.—R. H.
PONIATOWSKI, Stanislas, Count de, governor of Cracovia, and father of King Stanislas Augustus of Poland, was born in 1678. At an early age he took part in the dissensions by which his native country was agitated, attached himself to the Swedish party, and laboured zealously to counteract the intrigues of the Russian faction. He accompanied Charles XII. of Sweden in his daring expeditions, and displayed not only great courage, but extraordinary resources of mind, amid the perils and privations to which he was exposed in the company of that adventurous hero. After the disastrous battle of Pultowa, the count, who acted as major-general of the army, mounted the wounded king on horseback and then rallied a body of five hundred horsemen, with whom he kept at bay ten regiments of Russians till Charles found time to escape. His sagacity was of immense service in providing for the safety of the small band of fugitives, who accompanied the king in his flight across the desert to Bender. The count afterwards proceeded to Constantinople, where, by his courageous and unwearied efforts he foiled the intrigues of the Russian party, and induced the sultan to send a powerful army to the assistance of the Swedes. He was present when the Czar Peter and his forces were hemmed in on the Pruth and lay at the mercy of the Turks; and he in vain urged the grand vizier to take advantage of the opportunity to crush his adversary.—(See Peter the Great.) When Charles quitted Bender for his own dominions, Poniatowski accompanied him, and remained in the service of the Swedish king until his premature death. Poniatowski then returned to his native country, where he was cordially welcomed by the king, Augustus II., though he had been a partisan of his rival Stanislas Leszczynski, and was appointed to several high offices. On the death of Augustus the count zealously supported the pretensions of Stanislas, but the choice of the magnates fell on the elector of Saxony, who took the title of Augustus III. The assistance of a Prussian army enabled him to make good his claim to the throne, and Poniatowski, on making his submission, was received into favour, and secured in the possession of his estates and dignities. In 1740-41 he was sent on a mission to the court of France, and in 1752 he was appointed governor of Cracovia, an office which gave him the first rank among the senators of the kingdom. The count died in 1762. By his second wife, daughter of Prince Casimir Czartoriski, he was the father of two sons, one of whom became king of Poland, the other an Austrian field-marshal.—J. T.
PONSONBY, George, a leading whig statesman and lawyer, was the younger son of the Honourable John Ponsonby, speaker of the Irish house of commons, and was born in 1755. He was educated for the legal profession, and was called to the bar, but did not succeed in obtaining a large practice. He was, however, appointed counsel to the commissioners of public accounts, but when his friends went out of office he was deprived of his appointment, and became the leader of the opposition in the Irish parliament. On the death of Mr. Pitt in 1806, and the accession to office of the Fox and Grenville party, Mr. Ponsonby was appointed lord chancellor of Ireland, but without a peerage. On the dismissal of the administration of "all the Talents" in 1807, Mr. Ponsonby of course lost his office, but retired with a pension of £4000 a year. He was shortly after elected member for Tavistock in the imperial government, and was recognized as the leader of the whig party in the commons. He died in 1817.—J. T.
PONSONBY, Sir William, Major-general, was born in 1782, the second son of the first Lord Ponsonby. He closed a brilliant military career by a glorious death at the battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815. His death is said to have been occasioned by his being badly mounted. He led his brigade against the Polish lancers, and checked their destructive charges against the British infantry; but having pushed on to some distance in advance of his troops, accompanied only by one aid-de-camp, he entered a newly-ploughed field, where his horse stuck, and was utterly incapable of extricating himself. Sir William, seeing a body of lancers approaching at full speed, knew he was lost, and taking out his watch and a picture, he handed them to his aid-de-camp. Both, however, were killed on the spot, the general's body when found being pierced with seven lance wounds. His son, born posthumously in 1816, became Lord Ponsonby.—R. H.
PONT, Robert, rather prominent in the early history of the Scottish reformation, was born at Culross about 1525, and studied at St. Andrews. He was an early adherent of the Scottish reformation and a member of the first general assembly of the Kirk. He rose to be provost of Trinity college, and afterwards vicar of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, and is said to have excommunicated the bishop of Orkney, by whom Mary was married to Bothvell. In 1571 he was appointed by the regent a senator of the college of justice, and in 1601 was commissioned by the general assembly to revise the Psalms. After the accession of James I. to the throne of England, Pont published, in 1604, a treatise, "De unione Britanniæ," a political dialogue, which is said to contain curious pictures of the Scottish life of the period. He died in 1606.—Pont, Timothy, eldest son of the preceding, is remembered as one of the earliest contributors to the geography of Scotland. In his zeal for Scottish geography he explored the less accessible parts of the country, and the results of his researches formed the basis of the "Theatrum Scotiæ" in Blaeuw's Atlas. Little or nothing is known of his biography. There are memoirs of both the Ponts in Chambers' Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotchmen.—F. E.
PONTANO, Giovanni (Latin, Jovianus Pontanus), a distinguished Latin writer, born at Cereto, Umbria, in December, 1426; died in 1503. He was a soldier and statesman as well as scholar, and rose to be viceroy to the king of Naples, Ferdinand I., having previously been preceptor to his son and successor, Alfonso. Taking offence, however, at not obtaining a barony, he satirized the king in a dialogue named "Asinas," and indecently welcomed the French invaders led by Charles VIII. in 1495. It is uncertain whether, after the retirement of the French, he retained his honours. Pontano was a man of loose morals, and his orthodoxy is called in question. As a writer he is accounted by many the best Latin poet of the age, Julius Cæsar Scaliger saying that he possessed nerve, harmony, grace, and simplicity, though wanting in moderation; other critics are less laudatory. He restored the only copy of Catullus then known; and the long list of his works includes a history of the wars of Ferdinand I. against John of Anjou, in which the author himself served. It does not stand high in repute for accuracy. Pontano was the first modern who revived the opinion of Democritus, that the milky way is a congeries of small stars.—W. M. R.
PONTANUS, John Isaac, a learned writer of the seventeenth century, was born at Elsinore in 1591. Although thus a native of Denmark, he was Dutch by parentage, and at an early period removed to Holland, where he spent the remainder of his life. Pontanus held the post of historiographer to the Danish sovereign, in which capacity he wrote his "Rerum Danicarum Historia," published in 1631; a "Life of Frederick II.," king of Denmark, and other historical treatises. He was also the author of various works of a geographical and topographical character, but hardly of sufficient importance to merit notice. Pontanus died at Harderwyk in 1640.—J. J.
PONTAS, John, born at St. Hilaire de Harcourt, December 2, 1638, was vicar of St. Genevieve, and afterwards for twenty-five years sub-penitentiary of Paris. His principal works were "A Dictionary of Cases of Conscience," of which the best edition is that of 1741; "Scriptura sacra ubique sibi constans," in which the apparent contradictions in the Pentateuch are reconciled; and "Les entretiens spirituels pour instruire, exhorter, et consoler les Malades." He died in 1728.—D. W. R.
PONTAULT. See Beaulieu.
PONTE, Giovanni da, an eminent Venetian architect, was born at Venice in 1512. His most famous work was the bridge of the Rialto, for which his designs were selected in preference to the designs of Palladio and Scamozzi. This noble bridge, which crosses the grand canal by a single arch of ninety-four feet span, has always been considered one of the chief architec-
