Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/910

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CAL
858
CAL

and Paris; bought St. Cloud for the queen; sustained the stocks by secret advances; assured the credit of the caisse d'escompte, which shortly before his accession had stopped payment; and established a sinking fund for the redemption of the national debt upon a very judicious plan. For a time the country seemed saved, and the ladies of the court delighted to speak of Calonne as the enchanter. He was compelled, however, to adopt the usual system of loans, and at last, perceiving national bankruptcy inevitable without some great change, determined to attempt a new arrangement of taxes. His plan was at once just and daring. It involved the establishment of a land tax from which no class should be exempted, and a removal of restrictions on internal commerce. Calonne submitted his financial statement to the assembly of notables, 22nd February, 1787. He declared the deficiency to have been accumulating under Terray, Turgot, Clugny, and Neckar; and admitted that the annual deficit amounted to a hundred and fifteen million francs; and that since his accession (from 1783 to 1787), in three years and two months, three hundred and eighty million francs had been borrowed. He, therefore, called on the privileged classes to consent to taxation rather than impose additional burdens on the unprivileged people. The opposition was violent in the extreme. Neckar had declared when he left office a surplus of four million francs, and therefore opposed Calonne to justify himself; while the nobility, clergy, and magistrates made common cause against a scheme which would subject them to those public taxes from which they had been previously exempt. The court was frightened by the ferment, and abandoned Calonne, who was disgraced, and finally took refuge in London. Although Calonne was vehemently accused, by Mirabeau especially, of having exaggerated the deficiencies under his predecessors, for the purpose of concealing his own corruption, yet in fact he left office nearly destitute, and only restored his fortune by his marriage with madame d'Harvelay, the widow of a rich banker who had been his early friend. When the Revolution broke out, Calonne supported the cause of the noble refugees, whose only hope was in influencing foreign courts; journeying on their behalf from country to country, and freely spending for them the best of his means. He wrote several able pamphlets in defence of his policy, but finally abandoned political life, employing himself in the peaceful study of the fine arts until his death in Paris, October 29th, 1802. The judgment of his countrymen upon him is, that while he possessed high administrative ability, and could grasp broad plans and small details with admirable precision, yet that he had not the wisdom which matures thought, the prescience which divines obstacles, or the capacity to direct parties with that orderly discipline which prepares executive success; and thus, while he had power to raise the storm, he had no spell wherewith to lay it.—L. L. P.

CALOVIUS, Abraham, a Lutheran divine and controversialist, born at Morungen in the duchy of Brunswick in 1612. In 1650 he became professor of divinity at Wittemberg, where he distinguished himself in a controversy with Calixtus. His party were named Calovians. He died in 1686, leaving numerous works, chiefly controversial. He is remembered as an able opponent of the Socinians.—J. B.

CALPHURNIA, the fourth wife of Cæsar. In consequence of a dream she had the previous night, she endeavoured to detain her husband at home on the fatal ides of March.

CALPRENEDE, Walter de Costes, a dramatist and romance writer, born in Perigord in 1612. He held a position of honour at the French court. The tragedies of "Mithridates," and "The Earl of Essex," are the chief of his plays; but his fame rests upon his very voluminous romances of "Cassandra," "Cleopatra," and "Pharamond." He died in 1663.—J. B.

CALPURNIUS, Titus. Little is known of Calpurnius, except that he was born in Sicily, towards the end of the third century. A sort of biography has been made for him by assuming that everything he has stated of the imaginary characters of some eclogues—in which he has imitated Theocritus and Virgil—is true of himself. Of several of the eclogues themselves the authorship is doubtful. Gibbon makes use of a passage in one of them in proof of the character of the sports in the amphitheatre in the year 284 after Christ, as the evidence of an eyewitness.—J. A., D.

CALUSO, Thomas Valpergo, a celebrated Piedmontese author, born at Turin in 1737; died in 1815. He was educated at the Nazareno college in Rome. After assuming a monkish habit, he was successively member of the council, director of the astronomical observatory, and professor of Greek and the oriental languages in the university of Turin. He presented to the library of that institution a large collection of Hebrew and Arabic MSS., and some valuable works of the fifteenth century. Caluso was member of the legion of honour, of the Academy of Turin, correspondent of the French Institute, &c. He wrote thirty-six works, which have been divided into three classes—poetry, mathematics, and oriental literature.—T. J.

CALVART, Denis. This distinguished painter was born at Antwerp in 1555. His style was rather Bolognese than Flemish. He started as a landscape painter; but anxious to attain to the higher walks of his art, he proceeded to Bologna to study the figure in the school of Prospero Fontana. He copied carefully the works of Corregio and Parmegiano, and afterwards travelled to Rome with Lorenzo Sabattini to perfect himself in architectural and anatomical drawing. Returning to Bologna, he opened an academy which earned a considerable fame. Albano, Guido, and Domenichino were among the pupils of Calvart. He was learned in his art, and watched over the studies of his pupils, and aided their progress with an untiring zeal. His own works are careful and pleasing, especially in the composition and draperies. The figures are something strained and mannered. "The Hermits," in the Palazzo Ranuzzi; "The Holy Family" in the church of St. Giuseppe; and "St. Michael" in the church of St. Petronio at Bologna, are among his best works. He died in 1619 at Bologna.—W. T.

CALVEL, Etienne, a French agriculturist, died in 1830. He devoted his attention to agriculture and horticulture, and published numerous works on these subjects. Among others, he wrote treatises on the cultivation of forest-trees and of fruit-trees, of melons, of beet-root, and of the white mulberry.—J. H. B.

CALVERT, George and Cecil. See Baltimore.

* CALVERT, George Henry, an American man of letters, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1803. His grandfather, Benedict Calvert, a descendant of the Baltimore family, though a loyalist in the revolutionary contest, was an intimate friend of General Washington. Mr. Calvert graduated at Harvard college in 1823, and then went to Europe and studied at Göttingen, where he imbibed a taste for German literature, which coloured many of his subsequent productions. After his return to America he edited a newspaper for a while, and in 1832 published "Illustrations of Phrenology." Among his later writings are—a "Volume from the Life of Herbert Barclay," 1833; a translation of Schiller's Don Carlos, 1836; "Count Julian, a tragedy," 1840; a translation in part of the Goethe and Schiller Correspondence, 1845; "Scenes and Thoughts in Europe," first series in 1846 and a second in 1852. He was chosen mayor of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1853.—F. B.

CALVERT, Sir Harry, General, a distinguished British officer who entered the army in 1778. Having served in America and Holland, he was created a baronet in 1818. He did much for the improvement of the army, took an active part in establishing the royal military colleges, and founded the royal military asylum at Chelsea. He died in 1826.

CALVERT, Leonard, the first governor of Maryland in America, was the second son of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore.—(See Baltimore.) He arrived in the colony at the head of two hundred emigrants in 1633 or 1634, commissioned to attempt the formation of an English barony on the shores of the Chesapeake, founded on the feudal principles both of rank and property. Several manorial grants were accordingly made to different settlers, but they at length all disappeared before the democratic spirit of the new settlement. The proprietary form of government remained till the American revolution; but the people gradually acquired the same rights and liberties as in the other colonies. The population increased but slowly, and the governor was in frequent trouble with the authorities of Virginia, who laid claims to a part of his territory; and after the breaking out of the civil war in England, he had much to suffer from the disaffection of a portion of the colonists. In 1643 he went to England to confer with his brother, the proprietary, and on his return in the following year, he found that the disaffection had been fomented in his absence by agitators from abroad. An insurrection soon after took place which obliged him to take refuge in Virginia for nearly two years. In 1646 he returned to St. Mary's with an armed force, and easily acquired possession