one of the earliest English cultivators of German literature, was born in that city in 1765. His father was largely engaged in the export trade, and a unitarian. Part of Taylor's education was received at the boarding-school of the unitarian minister, Mr. Barbauld, whose more celebrated wife bestowed particular attention upon her husband's clever pupil. An only child, he was intended by his father to succeed to the business, and was sent abroad to acquire the knowledge of foreign languages so desirable commercially. In his studies on the continent Taylor thought more, however, of literature than of commerce. A second visit to the continent familiarized him with German, and gave him a taste for German poetry and speculation. On his return his father, a wealthy man, allowed him to devote himself to his favourite studies, and he began to contribute papers to periodicals. Early in 1796 he published his version of Burger's Lenore, the recitation of which led to the production of that of Sir Walter Scott, one of the earliest of the great romancer's literary enterprises. As life wore on, literature, which he had cultivated as an amusement, became in some measure a necessity; for his father's fortune was, by various events, gradually destroyed. The Monthly Review and the Monthly Magazine were the periodicals to which Taylor chiefly contributed his numerous papers, all of them marked by vigour, originality, and considerable knowledge; but often startling their readers by the eccentricities of their style and thinking, and by their defiant heterodoxy. In 1802 he became for two years editor of the Sheffield Iris. In 1806 he published his version of Lessing's Nathan the Wise, one of three masterpieces of German dramatic poetry which he translated—the other two being Göthe's Iphigenia and Schiller's Bride of Messina. In 1813 appeared his "English Synonyms Discriminated," an ingenious and interesting, though often fanciful performance; and in 1823 his edition, with a memoir, of the collective works of his old school-fellow. Dr. Sayers. In 1828-30 he published the "Historic Survey of German Poetry, interspersed with various translations;" a collection, with additions and retrenchments, and some attempt at fusion, of his scattered contributions on German topics to periodicals. It was criticized severely, though not without appreciation of Taylor's various sterling qualities, by Carlyle in the Edinburgh Review. He died in 1836. Mr. Robberds of Norwich published in 1843 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich, including a correspondence with Southey, who had become the friend of Taylor in 1798, before their opinions on politics and religion grew so utterly dissimilar as was afterwards the case.—F. E.
TAYLOR, William Cooke, LL.D., miscellaneous writer and compiler, was born in 1800 at Youghal, where his father was a manufacturer. He was educated at a school in his native town, of which he afterwards became an assistant, and for the use of which he wrote or compiled his first book, a Classical Geography. In his seventeenth year he entered Trinity college, Dublin, where he studied with distinction, graduating B.A. in 1825, and ten years afterwards his alma mater bestowed on him the degree of LL.D. Not long after leaving college he seems to have adopted literature as a profession, and attained a reputation as an unusually skilful and intelligent compiler. Among his compilations were a History of the Civil Wars of Ireland, 1831, contributed to Constable's Miscellany; the History of Mahommedanism, 1834; the Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, 1846; and the Memoirs of the House of Orleans, 1849. His chief original work was his "Natural History of Society," 1840. In 1842 he addressed to his friend and patron, the archbishop of Dublin, his interesting "Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire in a series of Letters." Dr. Taylor was active with his pen as a champion of free' trade during the anti-corn-law league agitation, and after its close he was appointed by Lord Clarendon statistician to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He died of cholera at Dublin in September, 1849.—F. E.
TAYLOR, Zachary, General, twelfth president of the United States of America, was born in 1784, the third son of a colonel who had fought with distinction in the revolutionary war, and who in 1785 removed from Virginia to Kentucky. Taylor's education in an unsettled district was scanty, but he was early noted as an adventurous and daring boy, fond of playing at soldiering. In 1808 he entered the United States army as first lieutenant in the 7th regiment of infantry. As Captain Taylor he was placed in command of Fort Harrison, a stockade on the river Wabash, where with fifty soldiers he repelled an attack made by four hundred and fifty Indians, and for his gallantry was brevetted major. He commanded various posts in the west, doing his obscure duty diligently and actively from 1816 to 1832, when he was made a colonel, and served with distinction under General Scott in the Black Hawk war. In 1836, with the breaking out of the Seminole war, he received the command of a column, and for gaining the battle or engagement of Okeechobee (25th December, 1837) he was made a brigadier-general by brevet. He commanded the troops in Florida from 1838 to 1840, when he was placed in command of the first department of the army, which included the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. He held this position, when in May, 1845, just before the annexation of Texas, he was directed to enter that region with his troops and prepare to repel any attack on the part of Mexico. In the following year, with the war between Mexico and the United States, he assumed the offensive, crossed the Rio Grande, and besides fighting successfully minor engagements, stormed Monterey (23rd September, 1846), and on the 22nd and 23rd of February, 1847, gained with six thousand men at Buenavista a complete victory over Santa Anna and twenty thousand Mexicans. While General Scott from the sea-coast was completing the defeat of the Mexicans, Taylor remained till November, 1847, at Monterey in inaction, of which he grew weary, and he returned to the states. The exploits and character of "Rough-and-ready," as his countrymen termed him, had made him extremely popular, and by the convention of his party, the whigs at Philadelphia, he was selected as their candidate for the presidency, and in November, 1848, was elected, with Millard Fillmore for vice-president, in opposition to the democratic candidates, Generals Cass and Butler. Inaugurated president 4th March, 1849, he died very suddenly at Washington, 9th July, 1850.—F. E.
TCHISCHOV, Alexander Semeonovitch, a Russian author and statesman, born in 1754; died in 1840. He was educated as a cadet in the imperial naval college at St. Petersburg, and made several voyages as an officer of the imperial navy. While at sea, about his twentieth year, he had conquered one of the greatest difficulties to a Russian officer—a command of his own language. "It was then," says Tchischov, "most delicious to find myself able to express, in something like true Slavic strains, the most refined conceptions of any foreign author, ancient or modern." He began his literary career by translating in 1778 the Juvenile Library of Campi, and the following year the Pastorals of Gessner. His version of Tasso's La Gerusalemme Liberata is highly creditable to his taste and scholarship, and is a great improvement on the original translation by Idanov, St. Petersburg, 2 vols. As a dramatist Tchischov was behind the age. His best play, "Nevolnitchestvo" (Slavery), is a work of no permanent worth. His practical treatises on nautical subjects, however, may long maintain their ground in the libraries of seafaring men. Among these are his valuable translation of Romme's Scientific Seamen, 1795, St. Petersburg, 2 vols.; a Nautical Dictionary, in three languages, English, French, and Russian, 1798, St. Petersburg, 2 vols.; a Collection of Nautical Observations, 1800; a Historical Notice of Russian Shipping, 1801. In 1802 Tchischov drew up the best Russian treatise on the old and new Russian style, with synoptical tables for exercises, and the accentuation of Russian words—a classical work which throws light on every branch of the Slavonic tongues, including Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Wendish, Slaviac, and Illyrian; St. Petersburg, 2 vols. This work, translated into German, was the forerunner of Eichoff's Vergleichung der sprachen von Europa und Indien, oder Untersuchung der wichtigsten Romanischen, Germanischen, Slavischen, und Celtichen sprachen (Comparison of the languages of Europe and India, or Investigation of the principal Romanic, Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic tongues). In 1806 Tchischov was appointed president of the Russian Academy, and drew up in Russ the Transactions of that society. In 1810 he was chosen to organize the admiralty, was made secretary of state in 1812, and minister of public instruction in 1824, in the room of Prince Golitzin. He retired from public life in 1828, regarded by his sovereign as one of the ablest statesmen of the age, and by his countrymen as a sound and genuine Russian writer. This high estimate of his character and abilities itself constitutes a claim to notice.—Ch. T.
TCHMELNITZKY, Nicolay Ivanovitch, a Russian comic poet, born at St. Petersburg in 1789; died in 1846. At the age of seventeen he entered the foreign office as interpreter, and was despatched to several foreign courts as a cabinet messenger. In 1812 he was appointed aid-de-camp to General Kootoosov,
