* VIOLLET-LE-DUC, Eugène Emmanuel, an eminent French architect and writer on architecture, was born at Paris, January 27, 1814. He was a pupil of M. A. Leclère. During 1836-37 he studied the ancient remains of Italy and Sicily; and afterwards those of the middle ages in Central France. He has since devoted himself exclusively to mediæval architecture, and particularly to the French Gothic of the thirteenth century. For several years he has been the most distinguished champion and leading exponent of French Gothic; and he has exercised a much greater influence on English architects and archæologists than any other contemporary foreign Gothic architect has done. M. Viollet-le-Duc was in 1840 appointed inspector of works at the Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, and has since been charged officially with the erection and restoration of a great number of Gothic buildings—his labours being of course chiefly, but by no means exclusively, directed to ecclesiastical structures. Among the secular buildings erected by him are the Hôtels de Ville of Narbonne and St. Trétouin. His principal restorations have been the costly works at Nôtre Dame de Paris, at first in conjunction with M. Lassus, but subsequently alone; the abbey church of Vezelay , Nôtre Dame de Châlons-sur-Marne; the churches of St. Père, Montréale (Youne), Poissy, St. Nazarre de Carcasonne; the cathedrals of Sens, Amiens, Laon, &c. But M. Viollet-le-Duc is more widely known out of France by his writings than by his constructions. Of these the chief is his great "Dictionnaire Raisonné de l'Architecture Française du XIᵉ au XVIᵉ Siècle;" a work of the utmost value to the student, and of which the sixth volume was published at the end of 1862. Simultaneously with this has appeared a companion dictionary, "Du Mobilier Français de l'époque Carlovingienne a la Renaissance," of less general interest, but also of great value. The "Essay on the Military Architecture of the Middle Ages," which originally appeared in the great dictionary, was afterwards published separately, and has since been translated into English by Mr. Macdermott, 1 vol. 8vo, 1860. Another important work of M. Viollet-le-Duc is his "Entretiens sur l'Architecture," 2 vols. 8vo, 1858, &c., with an atlas of plates in 4to; it forms the substance of an intended course of lectures on the theory and practice of architecture, which his professional engagements prevented him from carrying out. Besides these he has published several monographs descriptive of Nôtre Dame de Paris, the chateaus of Pierrefonds and De Coucy, the city of Carcasonne; a series of "Letters from Germany," and a great many papers in architectural and archæological journals; and he has exhibited a large number of designs. M. Viollet-le-Duc is one of the three inspectors-general of places of public worship in France, and architect to the government. He was made knight of the legion of honour in 1849, and officer in 1858.—J. T—e.
VIRET, Pierre, a distinguished reformer of the second rank, was born in 1511 at Orbe in the canton of Berne, and finished his studies in the university of Paris. Here he formed a warm friendship with Farrel, in whose religious convictions he shared, and whom he afterwards accompanied to Geneva to take part in the labours and dangers of introducing the Reformation into that city. His life was twice in great peril—from poison, and from the blows of an assassin. In 1536 he became the first protestant pastor of Lausanne, where his persuasive eloquence and gentleness of character gave him a strong hold of the people. In 1541 he supplied the place of Calvin in Geneva, during the absence of the latter at the conferences of Worms and Ratisbon. Calvin on his return was anxious to retain him as his colleague, but Viret preferred to return to Lausanne, where he continued to labour for many years. His constitution was feeble, and had never fully recovered from the effects of the attempts made upon his life in Geneva; and in 1561 he was induced, from considerations of health, to exchange Switzerland for the south of France, where he resided and preached successively at Nismes, Montpelier, and Lyons. Driven from Lyons in 1565 by an edict of Charles IX. against all protestant preachers not natives of France, he was invited to Bearn by Jeanne D'Albert, queen of Navarre, where he preached for some time; and also at Ortes, where he died in 1571, in his sixtieth year. His publications were very numerous in Latin and French; as many as twenty-nine are enumerated by Niceron, several of which were translated into English in the time of Elizabeth. He was fond of throwing his works into the form of dialogue, such as his "Disputations Chrétiennes, divisées par dialogues, avec une epitre de J. Calvin," Geneva, 1544; "Disputations Chrétiennes touchant l'etat des tréspassés, faites par dialogues," 1552. In several works he adopted the method of ridicule against the church of Rome, as in "La Physique Papale," 1552; "La Necromancie Papale," 1553; "Satire Chrétienne de la Cuisine Papale," 1560; which is described by a French biographer "as a singular book, and the most rare of all the works of Viret." His powers as a theologian may be better judged of from his treatise, "De Vero Verbi Dei, sacramentorum, et ecclesiæ ministerio," 1553, in folio.—P. L.
VIRGIL (Publius Virgilius Maro), the renowned Roman poet, was born b.c. 70, at Andes in Cisalpine Gaul, a village which is believed to have occupied the site of the modern Pietola, near Mantua. His mother seems to have been the daughter of a travelling merchant, who possessed a farm there; and his father was probably a faithful servant, whose good offices won for him the hand of the daughter and the charge of the patrimony. Their circumstances enabled them to give their son an excellent education, the term of which was probably lengthened by a certain delicacy of constitution, disqualifying him for laborious physical exertions, yet stimulating the activities of his inquisitive mind and his enjoyment of study. At Cremona, till he assumed the toga virilis at the age of sixteen, then for a short period at Milan, and latterly at Naples, where he attended the prelections of Parthenius Nicenus, he wrought eagerly among the treasures of Grecian literature, and made himself acquainted also with those works in which Nævius, Plautus, Ennius, and Pacuvius, followed by Cæcilius, Terence, Afranius, Catullus, and Lucretius, had laid the foundations of Latin poetry, and taught the language of the Roman conquerors to imitate the graces of Hellenic genius and refinement. Nor were graver studies neglected by the youthful Mantuan. The attention which he paid to medicine and astronomy is evidenced by frequent allusions in his writings, which also contain interesting references to the metaphysical speculations of that age—none more so than the passage in the fourth book of the Georgics, where he notices the opinion that the wonderful habits of the bees prove them to be possessed of a portion of the divine intelligence, and then adds—
" Pervasive Deity is everywhere,
In earth, in ocean-tracts, in depths of air:
From him the cattle, and the flocks, and men,
And every kind of savage beasts, obtain
That vital breath, which, at their birth bestowed,
At length takes freedom, and returns to God:
There is no death; life flits away on high,
To dwell among the stars, and heir the sky."
But there was more of the poet than of the metaphysician in the soul of the young man, who ere long returned from Naples to gratify his thirst after knowledge and his literary tastes in the retirement of his parental home. There, amid the beauties of Italian scenery, and the simple habits of a pastoral people, he cultivated that genial admiration of fields and woods and streams, which glows on the pages of the Eclogues and Georgics; while his varied reading made him familiar with other lands and wider interests, assimilated his style to the best models of classic elegance, and stirred in him that sympathy with the old heroic legends which qualified him to be the author of the Æneidan epic. His first efforts in the service of the muses, however, scarcely gave promise of the fame which he subsequently acquired. If the Culex, the Ciris, the Copa, and the other minor poems that have been ascribed to him, were really from his pen, they exhibit the early products of a mind which gained slowly the full command of its energies and resources. He was about thirty years of age when he composed the "Bucolica," a series of pastoral eclogues, which present some features of resemblance to the Idylls of Theocritus. But the rustic element is less prominent, and they have a much larger infusion of the political and the mythological in their structure. They laid the foundations of their author's celebrity. The elegance of the style, the harmony of the versification, the rich fancy and the learning displayed in them, could not fail to attract the attention and applause of his countrymen. Meanwhile his friends, Varus and Gallus, had acquired an influence in the state, which they gladly exerted for the advancement of his interests; and other circumstances brought him into intercourse with still more prominent personages of that day. The accomplished Asinius Pollio had been appointed governor or military commissioner in Transpadane Gaul, where the veterans who had won for the second triumvirate the decisive battle at Philippi were to be rewarded with an allocation of lands. One
