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in like manner bound by the arrets réglementaires, rules of decision established in former cases. On the reorganization of the courts in 1790 an attempt was made to abrogate all power of deciding from analogy, or even by a resort to general principles of jurisprudence; and all cases not provided for by express law were to be referred to the national assembly for the purpose of having such law enacted as would be applicable to the particular case. This crude experiment was so unsatisfactory that in the Code Napoléon it was thought necessary not only to restore to the courts the power of deciding upon general principles and analogy, but it was even made penal to do otherwise (Code Napoléon, art. 4).-The courts in the United States have a general correspondence with the English judicial system. The modifications are chiefly these: 1. In the federal courts, as well as the courts of most of the states, the equity powers of the English chancery have been vested in the other courts, though the English system of equity is still substantially administered. Hence our courts may be said to have an equity and a common law side. 2. Local circuit judges have been generally substituted in place of the itinerant or nisi prius judges of England. The judges of the supreme court of the United States have each a certain territorial limit in which they respectively act as circuit judges. In the state of New York 8 judicial districts have been established, and the supreme court is constituted of 4 judges in each district, who in their respective districts are independent, resembling in that respect the French parlements, but in another respect they are all members of one tribunal, as each judge is competent to act in any district, either by voluntary arrangement with the judges of such district, or by direction of the governor. But the prevailing system in most of the states is the appointment of local judges for the trial of causes who are unconnected with an appellate tribunal. 3. In many of the states the judges are elected like other public officers by popular vote.

COURT DE GEBELIN, ANTOINE, a French author, born in Nîmes in 1725, died in Paris, May 10, 1784. He was the son of Antoine Court, and early in life officiated for a short time as a preacher. Subsequently he devoted himself to the study of ancient mythology, in which, as in many other branches of knowledge, he was deeply learned. He established himself in Paris in 1763, and between 1775 and 1784 published the 9 vols. of his great work entitled Le monde primitif, in which he traces the history of the moral and intellectual world. The work was the fruit of 20 years' severe labor, and was to have embraced several additional volumes, the preparation of which was prevented by the author's death. He sympathized deeply with the American struggle for independence, and cooperated with Franklin and others in the publication of a work advocating the American cause, entitled Affaires de l'Angleterre et de Amérique. He was the author of a defence of

animal magnetism, and of a variety of works, historical, philosophical, and political.

COURT MARTIAL, a tribunal authorized in the United States by the articles of war, and in England by the mutiny act, for the trial of all persons in the army or navy charged with military offences. According to articles 64 et seq. of the congressional act of May 29, 1880, any general officer commanding an army, or colonel commanding a separate department, may appoint a general court martial, except when such officer or colonel shall be the accuser, in which case the court shall be appointed by the president of the United States. A general court martial may consist of any number of commissioned officers from 5 to 13, but shall not be less than 18 when that number can be convened without manifest injury to the service. The commanding officer decides as to the number. Such a court has no jurisdiction over any citizen not employed in military service. The sentence of the court shall not be carried into execution until the whole proceedings have been laid before the officer commanding the troops for the time being. In time of peace, no sentence extending to loss of life, or the dismission of a commissioned officer, and either in peace or war, no sentence against a general officer, shall be carried into execution until confirmed by the president of the United States, to whom, through the secretary of war, the whole proceedings shall be transmitted. Every officer commanding a regiment or corps may appoint a court martial consisting of 3 commissioned officers, to judge offences not capital committed in his own regiment or corps. Such a court martial may be appointed also by the officers commanding garrisons, forts, or barracks. But in neither of the cases has it power to try a commissioned officer, or to inflict penalties beyond certain limitations.

COURT OF LOVE (Fr. cour d'amour), in mediæval France, a tribunal composed of ladies illustrious for their birth and talent, whose jurisdiction, recognized only by courtesy and opinion, extended over all questions of gallantry. Such courts existed from the 12th to the 14th century, while the romantic notions of love which characterized the ages of chivalry were predominant. The decisions were made according to a code of 31 articles, which have been preserved in a MS. entitled De Arte Amatoria et Reprobatione Amoris, written by André, royal chaplain of France, about 1170. Some of the troubadours were often present to celebrate the proceedings in verse, and the songs of these minstrels were not unfrequently reviewed and judged by the tribunals. Among the ladies who presided were the countess De Die, called the Sappho of the middle ages, and Laura de Sade, celebrated by Petrarch. King René of Anjou attempted in vain to revive the courts of love, and the last imitation of them was held at Rueil at the instance of Cardinal Richelieu, to judge a question of gallantry which had been raised in the hôtel de Rambouillet.

COURTEN, WILLIAM, an English manufacturer and merchant, born in London in 1572, died there in May, 1636. His father had been a tailor at Menin, in the Netherlands, and escaping with difficulty from the persecution of the duke of Alva, had arrived in London in 1568. The Courten family were engaged in the manufacture of French hoods, then much in fashion, and at the death of the parents about the end of Elizabeth's reign, the sons were opulent merchants in silks and linens. In 1631 William and Peter received the honor of knighthood, when their returns amounted to £150,000 a year. They made large loans both to James I. and Charles I., and had a claim upon the crown of over £200,000. The first severe loss which Sir William Courten suffered was occasioned by Lord Carlisle, who seized as a grant from the crown the island of Barbados, on which the former had built a factory, as a place discovered and protected by himself. His agents at Amboyna, in the Spice islands, were subsequently murdered by the Dutch, and all his property there destroyed. Engaging in the Chinese trade, the loss of two richly laden ships completed his disasters, reducing him to poverty a short time before his death.-WILLIAM, last male descendant of the Courten family of merchants, born in London in 1642, died at Kensington Gravelpits in 1702. Educated by his wealthy relatives, he began early to travel and to display a love of natural history. He resided and studied at Montpellier, and when of age returned to England to claim the shattered fortune of his family. After a long lawsuit he changed his name for that of William Charleton, and retired to Montpellier, where he lived for 25 years, enjoying the society of Tournefort and Sir Hans Sloane. He returned again to England, and took chambers in the Temple, where he lived during the last 14 years of his life. Locke was one of his intimate friends. He made a large collection of coins, precious stones, and various curiosities in medallic and antiquarian history; and his industry is proved by his catalogue, which embraces 46 volumes. His antiquarian collection, which he left to Sir Hans Sloane, now belongs to the British museum.

COURTOIS, JACQUES, or CORTESI, JACOPO. See BORGOGNONE.

COURTRAI, or COURTRAY (Flemish, Kortryk), a town, capital of the arrondissement of the same name, in the province of West Flanders, Belgium, 75 m. from Brussels; pop. in 1857 of the arrondissement 136,505, and of the town 22,216. It is situated on the river Lys, an affluent of the Scheldt. It is handsomely built; contains several fine edifices, including a town hall, 2 fine churches, an exchange, a college, and 2 orphan asylums. In one of the churches (Notre Dame) is Vandyke's great painting, the "Elevation of the Cross." The inhabitants are actively engaged in the linen manufacture. The fine linens known under the name of Courtrai cloth are made in the neighboring districts. The flax culture in the neighborhood of Courtrai has a

world-wide reputation. There are also large bleaching grounds and manufactories of thread lace and silk lace. The town was the Cortoriacum (afterward written Curtricum) of the Romans. It was near Courtrai that the famous battle of spurs was fought (1302), so called from the number of spurs collected from the French knights who fell in it. The name of Courtrai frequently occurs in the history of the Netherlands; it was often taken by the French, who finally destroyed its fortifications in 1744.

COUSIN, JEAN, a French painter, sculptor, and engraver, born about 1501 at Soucy, near Sens, died about 1589. His paintings on glass, many of which were executed in churches, royal palaces, and princely residences, are still highly valued, some having been preserved, as the "Legend of St. Eutopius" and the "Sibyl consulted by Augustus," in the cathedral church of Sens. A large specimen of his oil paintings on canvas, the "Last Judgment," is in the Louvre. He is the author of two treatises, Le livre de perspective, and La vraie science de la portraiture. He is reckoned by many as the founder of the French school of painting.

COUSIN, VICTOR, a French philosopher, born in Paris, Nov. 28, 1792. His father was a clockmaker, a faithful disciple of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and a revolutionist. The first public school that he attended was the Charlemagne lyceum, in which he was noted for his severe studies and gained the highest prizes. Especially interested in rhetoric, the imitative arts, and music, he determined to make literature his vocation, and as a distinguished student his name was in 1810 placed first on the list of pupils admitted into the newly organized normal school. He became assistant Greek professor in this school in 1812, master of the conferences in 1814, held at the same time a chair in the Napoleon lyceum (Bourbon college), and during the Hundred Days was enrolled in the élite corps of royal volunteers. Meantime his attention had been diverted from belles-lettres to philosophy. The attractive lectures of Laromiguière, one of the society of Auteuil, and the most graceful of the followers of Condillac, first interested him in sensationalism or ideology, the reigning philosophy of the 18th century. The spirit of the age was, however, set against this system; Napoleon had denied to it the power of showing any thing grand in human nature or destiny; and the reaction against it was animated by the religious enthusiasm of the Catholics De Maistre and De Bonald, by the loyal and poetical sentimentalism of Châteaubriand, and was spread through literature and art by Mme. De Staël and Quatremère de Quincy. In philosophy Laromiguière indicated a point of departure from it by admitting the active and voluntary force of sentiment in alliance with the passive and receptive faculties of the understanding; but the first who openly revolted from the authority of Condillac was Royer-Collard, who developed in France the spiritual theories of the Scotch school, and of whom Cousin was the favorite pupil. When at

the close of 1815 the former was raised to civil office under the restoration, Cousin became his successor as deputy professor of philosophy in the Sorbonne, and for 5 years he lectured both at the university and the normal school. From the speculations of Maine de Biran concerning the will, he derived the germs of his ideas of personality, causality, and liberty; and his earliest courses followed the system of Reid, and were devoted in general to an exposition of ideal truth. The vacations of 1817 and 1818 he spent in Germany, acquainting himself with the literature and thinkers of that country; and the metaphysics of Kant tinged the lectures delivered after his return. In 1820, in consequence of the royalist reaction in the state, his views of free agency were thought to have a political intent, and his course was indefinitely suspended. Two years later the normal school was closed by a royal ordinance. The leisure thus afforded he occupied in prosecuting his editions of Proclus (6 vols. Paris, 1820-'27), of Descartes (11 vols. Paris, 1826), and his translation of Plato, with summaries, on which he employed, like Raphael, the labor of his pupils subject to his own revision (13 vols. Paris, 1825-40). He also took charge of the education of a son of Marshal Lannes, and in 1824 visited Germany with his pupil. He was arrested at Dresden, on suspicion of being an accomplice of the carbonari, was taken to Berlin, where he suffered a captivity of 6 months, and was visited in prison by Hegel, whose philosophy was then predominant in Germany. He also became intimately acquainted with Schleiermacher and Schelling. Returning to Paris, he published in 1826 the first series of his Fragments philosophiques (followed by a series of Nouveaux fragments in 1828), favored the increasing liberal party, and in 1827, when the Villèle ministry was supplanted by that of Martignac, he was restored to the chair of philosophy in the Sorbonne, with Guizot and Villemain for colleagues. The successful triumvirate at once attracted audiences to the university unexampled in numbers and enthusiasm since the time of Abelard. Stenographic reports of their lectures were also distributed throughout France. Cousin had already unfurled the banner of eclecticism in the preface to his Fragments philosophiques, and he now fully developed the theory that 4 pure systems of philosophy have alternately prevailed, each of which is the perversion of a truth, and that the human mind can cease to revolve in the circles of past error only by uniting the elements of truth contained in each system, so as to form a composite philosophy superior to all systems. He found in the East, in Greece, in medieval scholasticism, and in all modern speculations, only different phases of sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism. With equal delight and skill in metaphysical exercises, his forte lay in developing a system from its central principle till it took in the universe in its consequences. His eloquence was at once impetuous and grave, his style and splendid language recalled the stateli

VOL. VI.-2

ness of the old French classics, and his enthusiastic discourse ran within an hour over nature, humanity, Deity, philosophy, history, religion, destiny, industry, society, and great men. The students, accustomed to the calm dissertations of the sensationalists, followed with admiration his adventurous flight through all truths and all errors. The speculations and strange technology of the German philosophical development from Kant to Hegel he was the first to unfold to French audiences, giving popular expression to theories of the absolute. His lectures derived additional interest from the political temper of the time, a liberal audience gladly discovering political allusions in the words of a liberal professor. It was at this period that Cousin enjoyed his highest reputation as an expositor of philosophical ideas. At the revolution of 1830 he took no part in the 3 days' struggle, but immediately after dedicated a volume of Plato to the memory of one of his pupils who had fallen in the fight. Under the new régime he might have entered with Guizot, Villemain, and Thiers into the chamber of deputies, but chose to adhere to his philosophical studies, declaring politics to be only an episode in his career. He soon became counsellor of state, member of the royal council of public instruction, officer of the legion of honor, titular professor in the Sorbonne, member of the French academy to succeed Baron Fourier (1830), and of the academy of moral and political sciences at its foundation (1832), director of the reestablished normal school, and peer of France. As the recognized head, too, of what was termed the official philosophy, he was exposed to constant and contradictory attacks from the clergy and the opposition. He reorganized the system of primary instruction in France, arranged the admirable plan of studies which is still retained in the normal school, and visited Prussia (1833) and Holland (1837) to observe the institutions of public instruction in those countries, concerning which he published full and valuable reports, which were translated into English by Mrs. Austin. He urged that national instruction should be associated with religion and founded on the Christian principle, and maintained that education which is not specially religious is likely to be hurtful rather than beneficial, since it opens new avenues to immoral tendencies without providing efficient checks. This view he illustrated with great learning on the subject in speeches delivered in the chamber of peers. In 1840 he entered as minister of public instruction into the cabinet of Thiers, which lasted but 8 months, in which time he made the programme of philosophical studies in the lyceums, and suggested other improvements, of which he gave an apologetic account in the Revue des deux mondes for Feb. 1841. In 1844 he gained his greatest parliamentary distinction by his speech in the chamber of peers in defence of the university and of philosophy, which was published in a volume. Though surprised by the revolution of 1848, he gave it his aid, and began the series of publications undertaken by

the institute at the request of Gen. Cavaignac to confirm the morale of the people. He issued a beautiful popular edition of Rousseau's Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard, and in short treatises entitled Philosophie populaire and Justice et charité combated the doctrines of socialism. Since 1849 he has disappeared from public life. After 1830, when he ceased for the most part to deliver academic lectures, he became one of the writers for the Journal des savants, and for the Revue des deux mondes, in which many of the articles composing his volumes of Fragments de philosophie ancienne, Fragments de philosophie scholastique, Fragments de philosophie moderne, Fragments littéraires, and other collections, first appeared. His other chief philosophical publications are, an introduction to the history of philosophy (1828), a history of philosophy in the 18th century (1829), a translation of Tennemann's history of philosophy (1829), a treatise on the metaphysics of Aristotle (1838), lectures on the philosophy of Kant (1841), lectures on moral philosophy delivered between 1816 and 1820 (1840-'41), a work entitled Du vrai, du beau, et du bien (1853), and editions of the Sic et Non of Abelard (1836), of the works of Maine de Biran (1834-41), of the Pensées of Pascal (1842), of the works of André (1843), and of the works of Abelard (1849). All of his editions are remarkable for the thoroughness with which the text has been revised from original MSS., and many of them contain documents from old libraries which had not before been discovered. One of the most acceptable fruits of his research is the recovery of the original MS. of the Thoughts" of Pascal, where, through the erasures, corrections, interpolations, and reconstructions, the reader is introduced into the laboratory of Pascal's eloquence. The biography of Jacqueline Pascal (1844) is founded chiefly on inedited or unknown documents.-As a philosopher, the plan of Cousin has been to publish systems, and from systems to deduce philosophy. The most characteristic feature at once of his method and his results is his theory of the reason. The reason, in his view, has spontaneous consciousness of absolute truths, and furnishes to the mind ideas of infinite objects which could not be formed by any power of abstraction from observation of particular, finite, and contingent things. To know these ideas is the aim of philosophy, and the reason would be perfectly cognizant of them if it were not misled by the senses, passions, and imagination. There is something true in every system of philosophy, since error can never reach to utter extravagance. This element of truth exists in the reason, and may be found by impartial examination of the consciousness, and of the history of humanity. From the drama of changing systems, which is the history of philosophy, let the truth which constitutes the positive side of every system be taken, exclusive of whatever constitutes its negative and false side. The ideas thus obtained will furnish a spectacle of the universal consciousness, and will be the sum of eclec

tic philosophy. If the question be raised concerning the authority of the reason, and the certainty that its ideas are universal truths, Cousin, in order to answer, passes from psychology to ontology. Human reason, he says, is not a part of the human personality, but is in its nature impersonal, absolute, and infallible, the logos of Pythagoras and Plato, a mediator between God and man. Its qualities are those precisely opposed to individuality, namely, universality and necessity, and its spontaneous ideas rightly understood are revelations of a world unknown to man. This theory finds its completion in theodicy. As every phenomenon implies a substance, as our faculties, volitions, and sensations imply a person to whom they belong, so absolute truths have their last foundation in an absolute being, and ideal truth, beauty, and goodness are not mere abstractions, but are the attributes of the infinite Being whom we call God. Eclecticism is rightly regarded by Cousin in his work on the true, the beautiful, and the good, the last expression of his opinions, less as a doctrine than as a banner, as less an instrument of philosophy than of morality, as less effective to discover truth than to advance virtue. He has suppressed the words in his Fragments philosophiques in which he affirmed the system of Schelling to be true, though Schelling had then declared for "either Bruno or absolute unity;" and with less reliance upon metaphysics, he maintains the spirit and tendency of all his speculations to promote that philosophy which began with Socrates and Plato; which the gospel spread through the world; which Descartes subordinated to the severe forms of modern genius, and which always contributes to subject the senses to the mind, and to elevate and ennoble man.-His latest publications have been histories and biographies illustrating French society in the 17th century. In the stately proprieties and careful speaking and writing which distinguished the period of the Fronde and of the hôtel de Rambouillet he finds admirable examples of conversation, festive entertainments, heroic actions, noble sentiments, and great characters. His series of studies on Madame de Longueville (1853), Madame de Sablé (1854), Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Hautefort (1856), and that entitled La société Française au XVII' siècle, d'après lo Grand Cyrus de Mlle. de Scudéry (1858), have the same elevation of thought and sentiment, the same poetical and eloquent style, which mark his discussions and histories of philosophy; and like many of these, also, they abound in dates, citations, documents, and annotations.-The principal American editions of Cousin's philosophical writings are the "Introduction to the History of Philosophy," translated by Henning Gottfried Linberg (Boston, 1832); the "Elements of Psychology," from his lectures, by C. S. Henry (Hartford, 1834; last edition, New York, 1856); selections from his works, with introductory and critical notices, in Ripley's "Philosophical Miscellanies" (Boston, 1838);

his "Course of Modern Philosophy," by O. W.-in various charities. One of the most imWight (New York, 1855); and his "Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good," also by O. W. Wight (New York, 1857).

COUSTOU, the name of 3 French sculptors. I. NICOLAS, born in 1658, died in 1733. His masterpiece is the "Descent from the Cross," in the church of Notre Dame, at Paris. II. GUILLAUME, brother of the preceding, born in 1678, died in 1746. Among his best works is a marble statue of Cardinal Dubois. III. GUILLAUME, son of the foregoing, born in 1716, died in 1777. His fame rests upon the statues of Mars and Venus, which he executed for Frederic the Great.

COUTELLE, JEAN MARIE JOSEPH, a French engineer, born at Mans in 1748, died there, March 20, 1835. Franklin's invention of lightning rods made a great impression upon his mind, and the first instrument of the kind in Mans was to be seen in his house. He devoted himself particularly to the improvement of air balloons. For some time he commanded the aĕrostatic corps which accompanied the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, and afterward he followed Bonaparte to Egypt, but his balloons were destroyed at the battle of Aboukir.. He was promoted to the rank of colonel, but in 1816 he was removed from active service. The celebrated work on Egypt, published by the French government, contains 2 essays of his, one on the topography of Mt. Sinai, and the other on the meteorology of Cairo.

COUTHON, GEORGES, a French revolutionist, a lawyer by profession, born near Clermont in 1756, guillotined July 28, 1794. He was a member of the constituent assembly, and afterward of the convention, moved the resolution which decreed the arrest of the Girondists, and officiated as commissioner in Lyons, where he ordered the most beautiful buildings which had belonged to the royalists to be destroyed. He was noted for his violence, and for his fanatical devotion to Robespierre, whose fate he shared.

COUTTS, ANGELA GEORGIANA BURDETT, an English philanthropist, born April 25, 1814. She is the youngest daughter of the late Sir Francis Burdett, and on her mother's side a granddaughter of the wealthy banker, Thomas Coutts. Her early prospects were not brilliant, as her father's family was a large one, and her grandfather's fortune, which had been left to his widow (the actress, Miss Mellon, whom he married late in life), had apparently been diverted into another channel by the marriage of the latter with the duke of St. Albans. The duchess, however, having no children of her own, determined that the fortune of her first husband should revert to his family, and made Miss Angela Burdett her heiress, on condition that she should assume the name of Coutts. In 1837 Miss Burdett Coutts succeeded to this vast property, estimated at between 2 and 3 millions sterling, and since that time has dispensed large sums annually-amounting probably to her entire income

portant of these was the building and endowment, in 1847, of a church, with a parsonage and schools attached, the site of which in Rochester row, Westminster, one of the neglected parts of London, was selected by the late Dr. Blomfield, bishop of London, who also acted on other occasions as her agent or almoner. The outlay for this work amounted to £30,000. She has also endowed a bishopric in Adelaide, South Australia; and in 1858 appropriated £15,000 for a similar purpose in British Columbia.

COUTURE, THOMAS, a French painter, born at Senlis, Dec. 21, 1815, was a pupil of Gros and of Paul Delaroche. His principal work, the "Romans of the Decadence," first exhibited at Paris in 1847, is now in the gallery of the Luxembourg palace. His pictures are remarkable for vitality and broad effects of color. In 1855 he exhibited "The Falconer," and has since been employed upon 3 new pictures, called "Volunteer Enrolments," the "Return of the Crimean Troops," and "Baptism of the Impes rial Prince,"

COVENANTERS. See CAMERONIANS.

COVENTRY, a city, municipal and parliamentary borough of Warwickshire, England, on the Sherbourne, 10 m. N. N. E. of Warwick, and 94 m. by the London and northwestern railway N. N. W. of London; pop. in 1851, 36,812. In conjunction with some adjacent villages it was formed into a separate county by Henry VI., but an act of parliament in 1842 united it with Warwickshire. Its name, a corruption of Conventre, or "convent town," came from a Benedictine priory, founded in 1044 by Leofric, lord of Mercia, and his lady Godiva, of which the cellar, 225 feet long by 15 feet wide, still exists. The ancient part of the city has narrow, ill paved, and crooked streets, built up with antiquated houses; the modern part is laid out with great neatness, filled with handsome and comfortable dwellings, and supplied with gas and water. There are 3 ancient and 3 modern churches, and several chapels. Among the educational establishments is a free school, founded in the time of Henry VIII. by John Hales, having an income of £950 per annum, 2 fellowships at Oxford, 1 at Cambridge, and 6 exhibitions at either university. There are 6 endowed and various private schools, a government school of design, mechanics' institute, 2 libraries, a convent of the sisters of charity, hospital, dispensary, savings bank, theatre, county hall, drapers' hall, barracks, and a great number of charitable foundations. St. Mary's hall, a venerable building of the 15th century, with a principal room 63 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 34 feet high, has a curiously carved roof, and a large painted window. It was built for the Trinity guild, but is now used for public celebrations, meetings, &c. The manufactures of Coventry were celebrated at a very early date. At the commencement of the 15th century an active trade was carried on here in woollen cloths, caps, and

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