VOLNEY, Constantine Francis de Chasseboeuf, Count de, was born in Anjou on the 3rd February, 1757. As the vulgar and ridiculous name Chasseboeuf annoyed Volney's father, that of Boisgirais was chosen instead; but the son afterwards adopted the name of Volney as more euphonious. A small property inherited from his mother enabled him at an early age to settle in Paris, where he studied medicine, science, and philosophy. Afterwards history and the Oriental languages attracted him. A considerable increase of fortune kindled in him the desire to visit the most famous lands of the East. In gratifying this desire, however, pleasure was subordinated to something higher and more serious; and not content with being an intelligent observer, Volney availed himself of the opportunity to extend the range of his linguistic pursuits. On his return he prepared his "Travels in Syria and in Egypt during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785." It has gone through numerous editions, and is still in its kind unsurpassed. Volney abstains as much as possible from obtruding his personality and from narrating his adventures; but, in systematic order, he presents facts suggestive and instructive, and admirably blends a picture of the temporary with the chronicle and delineation of that which is eternally true. A man of liberal ideas rather than an ardent politician, Volney gladly hailed the dawn of the French revolution, and shrank with horror from its lurid noon. He proposed in a pamphlet that conquest of Egypt, which Bonaparte for a moment achieved, and of which the French still dream as a means of extending their sway in the Mediterranean. Volney was elected a member of the national assembly, but brought to the task of legislation the weight of his name, the solidity of his judgment, rather than potency of speech. In 1791 appeared his "Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Europe," a work of which the literary are much more conspicuous than the philosophical merits. Shortly before the Reign of Terror Volney resided in Corsica. During that reign he was the preacher of peace, of mercy, and of rational progress. As the foe of the anarchists, Volney was by the anarchists detested. He was thrown into prison, but was, by the fall of Robespierre, saved from the guillotine. He was afterwards appointed professor of history in the Normal school; but his career as a traveller was not yet at an end. Casting the professor's gown aside, he took a voyage to America. He was again in France before the conspiracy of Sieyès and Bonaparte against the directory on the 18th Brumaire, which was the prelude to Bonaparte's dictatorship. Volney applauded this bold and decisive step; and having become a senator under the Empire, was ultimately raised to the rank of Count. On the downfall of the empire, Louis XVIII. placed Volney in the chamber of peers. He died on the 25th April, 1820. Two of his most important works are his "Description of the Climate and Soil of the United States," and his "Researches on Ancient History." The former has a permanent value for its sagacity, its accuracy, its clearness, its cyclopædic completeness. Of the "Researches" we must say, that though most learned and elaborate, they can attract only the student to whom chronology and the aids of history, rather than history itself, are interesting. Volney was the last representative of that limpid, elegant, graceful style which Voltaire carried to perfection.—W. M—l.
VOLPATO, Giovanni, a celebrated Italian engraver, was born at Bassano in 1738, and brought up as a tapestry worker. Having taught himself to engrave, he published some prints under the name of Renard, which met with so much success that he placed himself under Bartolozzi, with a view to practise engraving as a profession. He went to Venice, where he engraved some plates from the Venetian masters. He afterwards settled at Rome, where he was employed by Gavin Hamilton to engrave several plates after Raphael, Da Vinci, Correggio, &c., for his "Schola Italica Picturæ." He was next employed by a society to engrave a set of seven large plates from the great works of Raphael in the stanze of the Vatican, including the School of Athens, the Dispute of the Sacrament, &c. He engraved besides some of Michelangelo's Prophets and Sibyls; the Farnese Gallery of A. Carracci; a series of fourteen views in the Museo Pio-Clementino; and several etchings of Roman scenery. He died in 1803. Until surpassed by his son-in-law, Raphael Morghen, Volpato was the best engraver of his time in Italy.—J. T—e.
VOLTA, Alessandro, an Italian physicist, the discoverer of that form of electrical action which bears his name, was born at Como in 1745, and died at Pavia on the 6th of March, 1826. From 1774 until his death he was professor of physics in the university of Pavia. He laboured assiduously in the experimental study of electricity from 1769 onwards, and made various useful discoveries and inventions in connection with it; amongst the latter was the well-known "electrical condenser." In 1789 Galvani accidentally observed the convulsive motion in the limbs of frogs, produced by contact with two different metals; but he mistook the nature of the phenomenon, and called its cause "animal electricity." The true laws of the form of electric action which Galvani had observed were soon afterwards discovered by Volta, who showed the arrangement of two metals and a solvent fluid that is necessary for its production, and thus invented the Voltaic (less properly called the Galvanic) pile, or battery. He first explained his discoveries in a paper read to the Royal Society of London in 1792, for which in 1796 that body awarded him the Copley medal. In 1801 he was awarded a gold medal by the French Institute, of which he was elected a member; and on the establishment of the French empire, Napoleon made him a count and senator. His collected works were published at Florence in 1816.—W. J. M. R.
VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet de, born at Châtenay, near Sceaux, 20th February, 1694; died, 30th May, 1778. This great and brilliant writer, whose works fill seventy volumes, may well be named as, if not the first, one of the foremost of those men of vivid intelligence whose writings gave both impulse and direction to that course of events in France, and throughout Europe, which is still in progress, and is apparently far from having reached its final issue. Himself not, in its best sense, a philosopher, his quick intelligence outstripped the philosophy of his times: himself not a poet, if we assign to the word the meaning which it carries with the readers of Dante, Spencer, Milton, or Byron, yet, as a poet-dramatist, he obtained the unmeasured applauses of the French people. As a writer of history, if he did not, strictly speaking, originate the modern historic method, he stands quite unrivalled on the ground which he took, far in advance of the obsolete method. As the destructive assailant of the profligate hypocrisy of the Romish church of his times, and of its blind and infatuated intolerance, he won a triumph, in consideration of which a mitigated condemnation of the malignant assault which he made upon Christianity itself might perhaps be pleaded for in his behalf. But on this ground, sparkling wit—inflamed, infuriated, by the rancour of his temperament—hurried him forward to excesses touching upon insanity; and in the view of posterity he stands forward—"facile princeps"—in the pandemonium of blasphemy.
The name Voltaire was assumed by him in after life, derived from family property. His family name, as above, was Arouet. His father, François Arouet, held office as treasurer of local revenues; his mother, Margaret Aumart, was of a noble family of Poitou. The infant was of so feeble a constitution that the baptismal rites were deferred for some months. A similar instance is noted by Condorcet in the case of Fontenelle; nevertheless both of these illustrious men attained a great age. Other parallel instances might be named. His father's position and competent means secured for this, his second son, the advantages of a good education; and although his classical acquirements were not such as to give him a place among eminent scholars, they were fairly adequate to the occasions of his literary course; and in fact his extraordinary aptitude always enabled him to overleap whatever difficulties might come in his way. His instructors were the tutors in a Jesuit college. One of these, his master, uttered the prediction, it is said, that the youth would become the Coryphæus of deism, as opposed to christianity and the doctrines of the church. A friend of the family, the Abbé Châteauneuf, like Raynal and other noted ecclesiastics of the time, did not hesitate, in the course of familiar conversation, to throw off the mask, and to avow in a sportive style his own unbelief. The youth caught these suggestions, and thence took his direction for life as an opponent of orthodoxy and the church. The saloons of Paris welcomed one who gave such promise of literary eminence; and in these circles the young Voltaire made acquaintance with the most noted of those who, indignant at the licentious hypocrisy which triumphed at the court at Versailles, and which did the pleasure of the jesuits in crushing the jansenists, devoted their talents and genius to the work of removing the foundations of all religious belief. Such was the early training of Voltaire; and it was no marvel if he thought himself engaged in a worthy enterprise. To remove him
