Brescia towards the middle of the seventeenth century, where his father, Antonio, obtained considerable repute as an organ-builder. He held the office of maestro di capella at the church of S. Petronio in Bologna, in which city he established a music-school that became justly famous for the eminent pupils it produced. In 1685 Colonna engaged in a controversy with Corelli on the importance of contrapuntal purity, the profound knowledge he brought to bear upon which, greatly enhanced his consideration among the musicians of the time. His first publication, his series of short Psalms for eight voices for the entire year, appeared at Bologna in 1681, and was followed by ten other extensive collections of ecclesiastical music. He produced one opera, "Amilcare," performed at Bologna in 1693; and he published an oratorio, "La Profezia d'Eliseo," but produced other works of the same class that were not printed. He wrote, according to the custom of his time, independent accompaniments for instruments to his choral compositions, and it is alleged that Handel imitated him in the construction of his scores; but since Colonna was not peculiar in that combination of resources, Handel cannot justly be said to have derived from this esteemed master what he shared with his contemporaries.—G. A. M.
COLQUHOUN, Janet, wife of Sir James Colquhoun, Bart., of Luss, and daughter of Sir John Sinclair, Bart., the celebrated author of the Statistical Account of Scotland, was born in London in 1781. Imbued at an early age with religious feelings of uncommon depth and fervour, Lady Colquhoun, till her latest moments, continued to be a rare example of all the christian virtues, and what more particularly entitles her to notice in these pages, one of the most active and liberal promoters of missionary enterprise, both at home and abroad, of which her country could boast. With an earnest desire to consecrate her personal gifts to the spread of evangelical religion, but with no ambition of literary distinction. Lady Colquhoun published at first anonymously, and afterwards, by the request of her father and her husband, with her name, several little works of practical religion, which attained, as they deserved, an extensive circulation. Her liberality to the poor; her munificent gifts to the church; the assistance she rendered to ministers and students whose straitened circumstances excited her compassion; her labours as a teacher among the children of her tenants; her attentions to the sick wherever she chanced to be resident; enshrine her memory in the hearts of thousands as that of one of the most amiable and beneficent of women. Lady Colquhoun died in 1846. A well-known memoir of her from the pen of Dr. Hamilton of London was published in 1849.—J. S., G.
COLQUHOUN, Patrick, a well-known writer on economics, statistics, and criminal jurisprudence, was born at Dumbarton in 1745. At the age of sixteen he went to Virginia, where he engaged in commercial pursuits. He returned home in 1766, and settled as a merchant in Glasgow, and ultimately attained the dignity of lord provost of that city. He was the founder of the Glasgow chamber of commerce, and was most zealous and active in promoting the manufacturing and commercial interests of the country. In 1789 he removed to London, where he published in 1796 his most celebrated work, entitled "A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis," &c. His last work, which appeared in 1814, was "A Treatise on the Population, Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire." In 1797 Mr. Colquhoun received the degree of LL.D. from the university of Glasgow. He resigned his office as a police magistrate in 1818, and died in 1820.—J. T.
COLSTON, Edward, an English merchant and philanthropist, was born in Bristol in 1636. He acquired in the Spanish trade a large fortune, which he laid out in works of benevolence. He erected and munificently endowed several charitable institutions in his native city; gave six thousand pounds for the augmentation of sixty small livings, and liberal donations to several of the London hospitals. He had no near relations, and never married, alleging that he had all the poor widows in Bristol instead of a wife, and their orphans instead of children. This benevolent "merchant prince" died in 1721, and was buried in the church of All Saints, Bristol.—J. T.
COLTON, Charles Caleb, born about the year 1780, was the son of the Rev. Barfoot Colton, canon residentiary of Salisbury. He was educated at Eton and at King's college, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1801. M.A. in 1804, and in due course obtained a fellowship. For many years he held a curacy at Tiverton in Devonshire, to which he had been presented by his college; and in 1818 he succeeded to the united living of Kew and Petersham. In 1820 he created a considerable sensation in the literary world by the publication of "Lacon, or many things in few words," one of the most valuable works in the English language. Shortly afterwards appeared "Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron, and the Tendencies of Don Juan." Colton was a man of ready susceptibility, but very infirm in principle, eccentric in manner, extravagant in his habits, and irremediably addicted to gambling. Having contracted debts to a large amount—chiefly for diamonds and jewellery, and for wines—a fiat of bankruptcy was struck against him; wherein he was sued as the Rev. Charles Caleb Colton, late of Princes Street, Soho, wine merchant. Bewildered by the number and gravity of his pecuniary obligations, Colton secretly embarked for the United States. Returning to Europe after a sojourn of some years in America, he took up his abode in Paris, where he became acquainted with the habitués of the gaming saloons of the Palais Royal, and so successful was he in his speculations that, in the course of a year or two, he acquired a considerable fortune, but it was soon dissipated. After a life chequered by nearly every phase of good and of adverse fortune, preferring suicide to the endurance of a painful surgical operation, he blew out his brains at Fontainebleau in April, 1832; and this was the act of him who, in his "Lacon," proclaims this aphorism—"The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit heaven."—E. B., L.
COLUMBA or COLUMBKILLE, one of the most important personages in Irish ecclesiastical history, was born at Gartan, in the county of Donegal in Ireland, on the 7th December, a.d. 521. Through both his parents he was descended from princely ancestors, his father, Fedilm, being a member of the reigning families of Ireland and British Dalriada, and his mother, Eithne, a descendant from an illustrious provincial king. This union of noble races no doubt contributed to the extended influence which he subsequently acquired when education, piety, and zeal, were superadded. He was baptized by the name of Colum, one then common in Ireland. The appellation of Cille, "of the cell," appears to have been added in consequence of the frequency of his coming from the cell in which he read his psalms to meet the neighbouring children. Columba was early placed under the tutelage of an ecclesiastic, "spectabilis vitæ presbyter," in his native district, where he remained till he attained a sufficient age for higher instruction, when he went to Moville, at the head of Strangford Lough, and became a pupil of the famous bishop St. Finnian or Finnan, where he received deacon's orders. Thence he proceeded to Leinster, where, after remaining for a time under the instruction of a learned scholar, called Gemman, he entered the monastic seminary of St. Finnian of Clonard, and was there associated with a class of students who afterwards attained great celebrity as fathers of the Irish church. Having finished his studies, he was ordained a priest, and commenced those labours by which his fame was established. In his twenty-fifth year he founded the monastery of Derry, and in the year 553 that of Durrow; and during the interval between that and his departure from Ireland, he founded a vast number of monastic establishments, stated at one hundred by Ussher, and three hundred by O'Donnel. He travelled through the whole country, awakening the people to piety, and restoring the churches which had fallen into decay. In 563 he passed over with twelve attendants to the west of Scotland, possibly on the invitation of the provincial king, Conall, to whom he was allied by blood, as his biographer, Adamson, relates an interview between them, and the Irish annals record the donation of the island of Hy or Iona as the result of the king's approval. Hy seems at the time to have been under the joint jurisdiction of the Picts and Scots, and the conversion of the former to christianity was a grand project for the saint's missionary exertions. Accordingly, as soon as he had expelled the Druids, and erected a monastery and church, he visited King Bruidhe at his fortress near Loch Ness, won his esteem, effected his conversion, and eventually succeeded in planting christianity throughout the district. Bruidhe's consent to the occupation of Hy established Columba's right to the island, and conduced to the stability of the monastic institution which he founded there. From this he extended his labours through the western isles of Scotland, erecting churches, forming christian communities, and supplying religious teachers. There is even reason to believe that to Columba is due the honour of
