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was founded, and he then received the appointment of professor of jurisprudence. To fit himself for the chair, in the autumn of 1827 he settled at Bonn, then the residence of Niebuhr, Brandis, Schlegel, Arndt, Welcker, and Mackeldey, and he remained there throughout the winter. He returned to England well acquainted with the writings of some of the most eminent of the continental jurists. His lectures were well received by a few distinguished men; but the subject was not recognized as a necessary branch of legal study, and evidently did not supply that kind of knowledge best calculated to promote practical success in the legal professions. A. believed the position of a German professor of law to be the most enviable in the world; and with a small but sure income, he would have devoted his great powers to the exclusive cultivation of the subjects discussed in his lectures. But, unfortunately, no provision was made for the chair of jurisprudence beyond class fees, and in the absence of students, A., in 1832, was reluctantly compelled to resign his appointment. In the same year, he published his Province of Jurisprudence Determined, a work, at the time, little appreciated by the general public, and the small success it met did not encourage him to undertake other publications on the allied subjects. In the estimation of competent judges, however, it placed its author in the highest rank among writers on jurisprudence. In 1833, he was appointed by lord Brougham a member of the criminal law commission. The post was not much to his taste, as he did not believe that the public received any advantage from such bodies, in the efficacy of which for constructive purposes he put no faith. 'If they would give me £200 a year," he said, "for two years, I would shut myself up in a garret, and at the end of that time I would produce a complete map of the whole field of crime and a draft of a criminal code." These, he thought, a commission might with some profit revise and amend. A. was afterwards appointed a member of a commission to inquire into the grievances of the Maltese. He returned to England in 1838, not in good health, and was advised to try the springs at Carlsbad. During his stay in Bonn he had been delighted with the respect the Germans manifest for knowledge, their freedom of thought, and the simplicity of their habits. With his slender means, decent existence in England was scarcely possible, and he removed with his family to Germany, living at Carlsbad in summer, at Dresden and Berlin in winter. The revolution of 1848 drove him back to England, and he then settled at Weybridge, where he d. in Dec., 1859, universally respected for the dignity and magnanimity of his character. His lectures on the principles of jurisprudence had remained in manuscript and imperfect. Since his death they have been prepared for the press by his widow, and published between 1861 and 1863, under the title of Lectures on Jurisprudence, being a Sequel to "The Province of Jurisprudence Determined," etc. On this work his fame now rests.

A.'s great merit consists in his having been the first English writer who attached precise and intelligible meaning to the terms which denote the leading conceptions underlying all systems of jurisprudence. With a very perfect knowledge of the methods of Roman and English law, he displayed genius of the highest order in devising a novel system of classification for the subject-matter of his science. The work he did is incomplete, but it forms a sure foundation to future laborers in the same field. It is universally recognized as an enduring monument of learning and genius, and it entitles its author to take rank with Hobbes and Bentham, as one of the three Englishmen who have made contributions of importance to the philosophical study of law. A. said of himself that his special vocation was that of "untying knots"-intellectual knots; and it was so. He set himself to the task of exposing the errors hid under the phrases and metaphors current among writers on law, and this he accomplished with such skill and subtlety as to make his works models of close and sound reasoning. In education, they now perform a most important part-that of disciplining the mind of those who devote themselves to the study of law and of the mental sciences generally in the difficult art of precise thought; and in this way they exercise an influence it is scarcely possible to overestimate on the rising generation of lawyers, publicists, and statesmen.-See Memoir of A. prefixed to the Lectures on Jurisprudence, and an article on A. in J. S. Mill's Dissertations and Discussions.

AUSTIN, JONATHAN LORING, 1748-1826. He was b. in Boston, a graduate of Harvard, joined in the revolution, and was secretary of the Massachusetts board of war. In 1777, he was one of the commissioners sent to Paris to announce the capture of Burgoyne. Franklin employed him as an agent in England, and on his return in 1779, he was rewarded by congress. The next year he sailed for Spain as agent of the colonies, but was captured and taken to England, though soon afterwards liberated. He was secretary and treasurer of the new state of Massachusetts.

AUSTIN, MOSES, 1761-1822; a Connecticut pioneer in Texas. He took his family to the west in 1798, and from 1800 to 1820 was engaged chiefly in lead-mining. While at Bexar, Texas, he got permission from the Mexican commandant to colonize 300 families, and soon began the work, which was more fully carried out by his son.

AUSTIN, SAMUEL, D.D., 1760-1830; b. Conn.; a Congregational clergyman, who graduated at Yale; studied theology, and was ordained in 1786 as pastor of a church at Fairhaven. In 1790, he took charge of the First church in Worcester, Mass., and in 1815 was chosen president of the university of Vermont, where he remained six years. He

Australia.

returned to Worcester in 1825. In the closing years of his life he was slightly deranged. He published several religious works.

AUSTIN, Mrs. SARAH, wife of John Austin, is well known as the translator of many of the best contemporary French and German works. She belonged to the Taylors of Norwich, a family remarkable for the men and women it has produced distinguished by literary and scientific ability. A faithful and devoted wife, she spent a great many years with her husband abroad, and she enjoyed the friendship of many of the most eminent persons in continental society. Mrs. A. translated from the German, Characteristics of Goethe, by Falk, etc., with notes (1833); Fragments from the German Prose Writers, with notes (1841); and The Story without an End, by F. W. Carove (several editions). She also translated from the German, Ranke's Popes of Rome and his History of Germany during the Reformation. Such is the excellence of these works, that they have been commended by the best judges as deserving to retain a place in English historical literature. Mrs. A. translated from the French, M. Cousin's Report on Public Education in Prussia (1834), and M. Guizot's work on The English Revolution (1850). She published in 1839 a work On National Education; and in 1857, Letters on Girls' Schools and on the Training of Working-women. From 1861 to 1863, she was engaged in editing her husband's lectures from his manuscripts, a duty she discharged with very great ability. She d. at Weybridge, on the 8th of Aug., 1867.

AUSTIN, STEPHEN F., d. Dec., 1835; son of Moses, and head of the Texan colony founded by his father. The colony occupied the site of the present city of Austin. Though much annoyed by Indians, he made it successful, and it received many accessions until the Americans became so numerous that they held a convention in Mar., 1833, to form a government for themselves. Without heeding the Spanish population, they agreed upon a plan, and A. took it to Mexico to receive its ratification, but there were so many revolutions on foot that he did not get a hearing. Then he sent a letter to Texas, recommending the Americans to unite all the settlements and municipalities and organize a state. This cost him three months' imprisonment, and longer surveillance; but in 1835 he returned to Texas and took command of the small revolutionary army. He induced Sam Houston to take the chief command, while A. went as commissioner to the United States, and prepared the popular mind to receive the new republic of the lone star. Before his mission was successful he returned to Texas, where he died. AUSTIN, WILLIAM (or BILLY); the half-witted boy of Deptford who was reputed to be the son of queen Caroline; though she was legally acquitted of the charge, she kept him near her. In 1830, he was sent to a lunatic asylum in Milan, and came back to England in 1845, and was ordered to a private asylum in London.

AUSTRALASIA, a term etymologically equivalent to Southern Asia, but according to usage different. While Southern Asia vaguely means the lower regions of that continent, A. definitely indicates those large, or comparatively large, islands which, lying between the Malayan or Indian archipelago and Polynesia proper, are at once rounded off in collective position from the former, and distinguished in individual magnitude from the latter. The islands in question are chiefly Papua or New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Ireland, and New Britain-all to be again noticed in their places. Though the name is not in general use, yet it seems necessary to a satisfactory system of geographical classification. In its entire extent, A. cannot be much less than Europe. The British colonies of A. formed a federal council in 1885. Some authors regard A. as equivalent to Oceanica.

AUSTRALIA, the s. w. division of Australasia. By some, it is strictly defined to be an island--as, indeed, may either of the masses of land called the old and the new worlds -while by others it is loosely described as a continent. It is bounded on the w. by the Indian ocean; on the n. by Torres strait; on the e.. by the Pacific; and on the s., by Bass's strait. It extends in s. lat. from 10° 39' to 39°11'; in e. long. from 113° to 153° 16'; while its longest dimensions, as incidentally noticed under the head of AMERICA, may be said to run respectively on a meridian and a parallel. The parallel in question is that of about 25°, nearly the mean lat. of A.; and the meridian is that of 142° or 143°, nearly the mean long. of Australasia—a meridian, too, which, when produced in either direction, seems to mark out both Tasmania and Papua as geological continuations of Australia. In English measure, the greatest breadth from n. to s. is upward of 2,000, and the greatest length from e. to w. nearly 2,600 miles. Of the resulting rectangle of 5,200,000 sq.m., A. comprises more than a half, perhaps four sevenths, or, in all, about 2,970,000 sq.m.-half the area of South America, as the next larger continent, or ten times that of Borneo, as the next smaller island.

In the mutual relations of itself and the ocean-a point of vast importance to so large a mass of land-A. is decidedly inferior to every one of the grand divisions of the globe. It is not indented by the sea, as is North America on the e., or Asia on the e. and s., or Europe on all sides but one. Again, as to navigable channels between the coast and the interior, A. is not to be compared even to Africa with its Nile and its Zambezi, its Niger and its Congo, its Gambia and its Senegal, and its many smaller arteries of communication besides.

Among the indentations of the coast, the gulf of Carpentaria, on the n.e., the only one of considerable magnitude, does, it is true, penetrate inward about 500 m. from

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