of William II. (2nd October, 1650) gave supremacy to the republican party, became pensionary of Dort; and in 1652, when only twenty-seven years of age, was chosen, at first provisionally, afterwards absolutely, grand-pensionary of Holland. Some friends wished him to decline the office, calling to mind the fate of a predecessor of blinded political sentiments, who had lost his head. "I know not how we can pass through this world," replied De Witt, "without exposing ourselves to much trouble and danger, and since the thing is so, what cause so honourable as that of our country?" For twenty years—1652-1672—John De Witt was virtual chief magistrate of Holland, and his name remains as one of the few who have served no solitary personal end in the discharge of high public office. When De Witt became pensionary the republic was at war with England, and his first efforts were directed towards the establishment of peace. The difficulties were great; but De Witt concluded a peace with Cromwell, and managed the matter so skilfully that a secret article excluding any prince of Orange from the offices of stadtholder and admiral was demanded by the English protector himself. De Witt's perfect singlemindedness and evident freedom from any personal ambitions, enabled him now to render good service in healing internal dissensions. He was chosen arbitrator of the differences between the nobility in various provinces, and happily terminated many disputes. No man believed anything dearer to De Witt's heart than his country, and he seemed to rise above envy itself when, at the conclusion of his second five years of office, he was unanimously re-elected, September 15, 1663. He entered now upon financial reforms, and readjusted a disordered treasury. He lived as an ordinary citizen while wielding a power almost supreme, and often walked without any attendant. He contented himself with a most moderate salary; for the first ten years his office brought him little more than £300, and afterwards £700 per annum. A present of 100,000 gilders was intended for him by the states, but he engaged the deputies of his town of Dort to oppose it, in order to avoid the envy that would have attended such a present, and the vanity that might have been attributed to a formal and public refusal. A skilful diplomatist, he bore witness to the fact that falsehood is unnecessary for diplomatic success. His only artifice was silence. When he did speak he was frank and sincere, but used a quiet silence where meaner natures would have had recourse to falsehood. Another war with England having broken out, De Witt gave a striking proof of that daring capacity which rises to the rank of genius, in himself navigating the fleet from the Texel by a passage professional seamen declared impracticable. During this war the Dutch fleet under Cornelius De Witt entered the Thames and burnt the ships at Chatham. Peace with England having been re-established, De Witt succeeded in obtaining the assent of the states to the perpetual edict, abolishing for ever the office of stadtholder. Without this he did not believe the liberty of the states secure from the ambition of the house of Orange. That his opposition to the claims of this family had no personal origin, is nobly evident from the care he took of the young prince (afterwards William III. of England), whose education, as a posthumous child, had devolved upon the states, and was chiefly intrusted to De Witt. The king told Bishop Burnet that De Witt gave him very just notions of everything relating to the states; for he did not know but that some time or other he would be set over them, and therefore he intended to render him fit to govern well. De Witt's foreign policy was next directed towards checking the career of Louis XIV., who had invaded the Spanish Netherlands, and he brought about the triple alliance and the famous treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Misfortunes now, however, came thick and fast upon the great republican statesman. The triple alliance was severed, and England and France united against Holland. De Witt found it impossible to get the prompt assent of the different states to furnish proper supplies; the Orange party were fast growing in strength; the Calvinistic clergy became formidable antagonists of the Arminian chief; until at last the perpetual edict was repealed, and William of Orange became stadtholder and admiral. No accusation was too foul for the enemies of De Witt to spread among the people; and ill tongues never paused until they had driven around him an angry mob in the streets of the Hague. His brother Cornelius had been previously cast into prison, and tortured on a false charge of attempting to poison the prince of Orange; and when John visited him, the mob broke into the cell, where they found the pensionary sitting on the bed reading his bible, while his brother was resting his tortured limbs. The two noble brothers were forced into the streets and barbarously murdered, the one in the forty-seventh, the other in the forty-ninth year of his age. John De Witt covered his face with his cloak as he fell, and his last words were—"Well, men! well, citizens!—even thus from age to age have perished the greatest and the best."—L. L. P.
DEWLET, Gherai II., khan of the Crimea, succeeded in 1699 his father Selim Gherai who had rendered himself famous in the wars of the Porte against the Russians. The son acquired a name in the same service, and Charles XII. of Sweden found him a zealous auxiliary in urging the sultan to hostilities with Peter the Great. It was by him that the Swedish monarch was afterwards taken prisoner. He died in 1724, the latter part of his reign being shadowed by misfortunes.—W. B.
DEXTER, Samuel, an eminent American lawyer and statesman, was born at Boston in 1761, and graduated with the highest honours at Harvard college in 1781. His father, a merchant of Boston, and a leading patriot in the revolutionary period, founded a lectureship of biblical criticism at Harvard. The son studied law at Worcester, and began the practice of it at Boston, where he soon attained the highest professional eminence. From a series of triumphs at the state bar his reputation soon carried him to the supreme court at Washington, where he usually spent the winters of each year, being engaged in most of the important causes, and finding few rivals and no superior among all the leaders of the bar from the various states, who were there collected. Earnest in his convictions, and remarkably independent of party influences, in his conduct, he was soon deeply engaged in politics. He was a representative in congress in 1793-95, and a senator of the United States in 1799 and 1800. President Adams appointed him secretary of war in 1800; secretary of the treasury in 1801; and for a time he was acting secretary of state. He was also offered, but declined, a foreign embassy. An earnest federalist in the earlier part of his career, he acted strenuously with that party in opposing the commercial and foreign policy of Jefferson's administration; but he refused on conscientious grounds to act with the federalists in many of their movements, and was therefore twice selected by the democrats as their candidate for the governorship of the state. In 1815 President Madison requested him to accept an extraordinary mission to the court of Spain, but he declined the offer. In truth he had always preferred the practice of the law to public office. On his return from Washington in the spring of 1816, he was taken ill at Athens, New York, and died there, May 4, aged fifty-five, leaving a high reputation as a great lawyer, an eloquent advocate, and an independent christian gentleman.—His son Dexter born in 1793; died in 1857—was also a distinguished lawyer, and cultivated both literary and artistic pursuits with remarkable success.—F. B.
DEYLING, Salomon, was born at Weida-in-Voigtland in Saxony, September 14th, 1677. His parents, poor peasants, had not the means of sending him to school; but so eager was the boy to acquire knowledge, that when scarcely eight years old he began walking every day to the grammar school of a town seven miles distant, the master of which kindly gave him lessons in Latin and Greek. In 1699 he went to the university of Wittenberg, where he managed to live by cleaning shoes and running errands for his wealthier fellow-students; and having obtained his degrees with great distinction, he accepted a post as tutor in a family in Silesia. After a few years thus passed he returned to Wittenberg to give public lectures; became next, in 1704, archdeacon of Plauen, then rector of Pegau, and finally, incumbent of the church of St. Nicholas, or "Nicholaikirche," at Leipzig, where he died August 5th, 1755. His chief works are—"Institutiones jurisprudentiæ pastoralis," Leipzig, 1734, three editions; "Observationes sacræ, in quibus multa scripturæ dubia solvuntur," 4 vols. ib., 1708-36, second ed. 1740-48; "Observationes miscellaneæ," ib., 1736; "Observationes exegeticæ," ib., 1732, second ed. 1735.—F. M.
DEYSTER, Louis van, a Flemist artist, born at Bruges in 1656; died in 1711; studied under J. Maes. he travelled a long time in Italy in company with his friend Van der Eckhoute, whose sister he ultimately married. On his return to Bruges he experienced the coldest neglect, but at length succeeded in
