measure of the leaguers, and even went the length of regretting that the prince of Condé and the king of Navarre had not been assassinated. When Henry IV.'s party came into power, several of his books were burned by the public executioner. One of them—"The Banquet of Arète," in which he represents the conversion of Henry as insincere, and argues that his right to the crown has been forfeited by his heresy, produced at the moment considerable effect. On Henry's obtaining possession of Paris, Dorleans was among the proscribed, and he remained in exile for nine years. He returned with some seditious object, was taken and imprisoned, but after three months liberated by the king. Henry's generosity attached Dorleans to his interest, and during the regency of Marie de Medicis, he published a work in her defence, which contains a warm panegyric on Henry. Dorleans is sometimes mentioned as a poet. His chief poem is a translation or imitation of part of the Orlando Furioso.—J. A., D.
DOROW, Wilhelm, a German antiquarian and miscellaneous writer, was born at Königsberg, March 22, 1790, and died at Halle, December 16, 1848. After having seen some service in the war of liberation, he entered upon the diplomatic career, but was dismissed from office after the death of Prince Hardenberg. He then travelled in Italy, where he caused excavations on a large scale to be made in Etruria, and acquired a great number of Etruscan antiquities for the Berlin museum. Amongst his writings may be mentioned—"Opferstätten und Grabhügel der Germanen und Römer am Rhein," 2 vols.; "Denkmäler alter Sprache und Kunst;" "Voyage Archéologique dans l'ancienne Etrurie," 1829; "Erlebtes aus der jahren 1813-20;" and "Denkschriften und Briefe."—K. E.
DORPH, Niels Vinding, born in 1783. From 1809 till 1833 he held various offices in the schools of Denmark, and ultimately became head-master of Horsens. After giving up this post he was, during 1856-57, director of the Theatre Royal, Copenhagen. He died in 1858. Dorph was the author of some physiological works, but is best known by his translation of classical plays for the use of the theatre. His translations of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes are rendered with skill and care.—(Nordisk Con. Lex.)—M. H.
D'ORSAY, Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count, the most brilliant and accomplished of modern dandies, was born on the 4th September, 1801. His mother was a daughter, by a morganatic marriage, of the king of Wurtemberg; his father was a general in the French army, who, after the fall of Napoleon, entered the service of the Bourbons. Clever, handsome, an adept in all athletic exercises—an artist by nature and by education—the young D'Orsay was placed in the army, and became a garde-du-corps of Louis XVIII., or, as we should say, entered the guards. The position was an uncongenial one, less from any indisposition on the young man's part to a military career, than from a dislike of the Bourbons; for his heart was from the first, and remained almost to the last, firmly attached to the Bonapartist cause. Count D'Orsay's first visit to England was paid in the years 1821-22, when he accompanied to London his sister and her husband, the duke de Guiche (now duke de Grammont and French ambassador at Rome), who, in course of the emigration of the noblesse at the time of the French revolution, had been brought when young to England, educated there, and served in an English regiment of dragoons. Such a connection introduced Count D'Orsay at once to the highest fashionable circles of the great metropolis. His gifts and genius did the rest. His success, personal and social, was immense, and metropolitan dandyism did him loyal and voluntary homage. It seems to have been during this visit that he made the acquaintance of Lord and Lady Blessington (see Blessington, Marguerite, countess of) both of whom formed a strong attachment to him, and invited him to accompany them in a continental tour. In the course of it he made (1823) the acquaintance of Lord Byron, who speaks of him as a "cupidon déchainê," and to whose perusal he confided a diary of his residence in England, which impressed the author of Don Juan with a strong sense of admiration for the young Frenchman's knowledge of English society in particular, and of wonder at his premature knowledge of the world in general. Count D'Orsay made a sketch of Lord Byron, and they parted never to meet again. His companionship during this tour strengthened his original hold on Lord Blessington, and, with equal want of judgment and feeling, his lordship insisted that the young Frenchman should marry one or other of his two daughters (it did not matter which); and with her who should become Countess D'Orsay, a magnificent dowry was to be given. Amiable and good-hearted, but thoughtless and inconsiderate, as well as unprovided with any large share of the world's goods. Count D'Orsay, in an evil hour, consented. The lot fell upon the present Countess D'Orsay, the Lady Hainalte Gardiner, then a girl of fifteen. The marriage took place in 1827. Lord Blessington died in 1829; and, a few years afterwards, we find the count and countess D'Orsay separated, and the husband living in close vicinity to Lady Blessington—then beginning to be a leader of London society—at her house in Leamore Place, May Fair. With Lady Blessington's removal to Kensington Gore, Count D'Orsay took up his residence under her roof, and performed all the duties of a host to the brilliant circle which the countess assembled around her. The king of dandies was also the king of good fellows, and the wit and bonhommie of Count D'Orsay were perhaps, in their way, elements as indispensable to the social success of Kensington Gore, as were the beauty, fascinations, and talents of the countess of Blessington herself. The present emperor of the French, with Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. D'Israeli, were among the staunchest frequenters of Gore House and firmest friends of Count D'Orsay's; and from his influential French connections the count was enabled to be of great political use to the then pretender to the throne of France. But from Kensington Gore there was absent, whatever and whoever else might be present, the one humble deity, who, according to the moralist, brings all others in her train—prudence. The magnificent fortune which Count D'Orsay received with his wife was squandered; and for the last few years of his residence at Kensington Gore he was in constant fear of arrest. It deserves to be remembered, that during this period he endeavoured to provide honourably for some of his wants by the exertion of his talents as a draughtsman and a sculptor. Several of our chief notabilities, the duke of Wellington among the rest, sate to him for statuettes, or for spirited crayon sketches. It is also creditable to him, that in his deepest distress he refused to dispose of, to publishers, that diary descriptive of a long-vanished period of London life, which had elicited the praises of Lord Byron, and for which he might have procured almost any price. At last the crash came. An execution was put into Kensington Gore; and as, in the April of 1849, Count D'Orsay had to fly to Paris, whither he was soon followed by the countess of Blessington. He met with less kindness from his former friend, the prince-president, than from the ex-king, Jerome, and his son. Once more thrown upon himself, he fitted up a large studio, where he painted and modelled, and received the visits of all the celebrities of the French metropolis. At length, in the spring of 1852, he was attacked by the spinal malady which proved fatal to him. His relations with the present emperor of the French seem to have ceased since the coup d'état, of which he had vehemently expressed his disapproval. But yielding to the pressing solicitations of friends, the prince-president bestowed on him at the eleventh hour the post of "directeur des beaux arts." It was too late. The post was scarcely bestowed when it was vacated by the death of its recipient on the 4th of August, 1852, at the comparatively early age of fifty-one. When the news reached him, the prince-president is reported to have said, "I have lost my best friend." No occupant of the throne unfilled since the abdication of Beau Brummel had been so universal and popular a favourite with London society as Alfred Count D'Orsay; and his kindness of heart, his intellectual and artistic gifts, as well as his power of social fascination, lifted him far above the sphere of ordinary, or even of extraordinary dandyism. He has been more than once portrayed in fiction; notably as the Count Mirabel of "Henrietta Temple," which Mr. D'Israeli dedicated to him in 1836. Ample details respecting his career and character are scattered throughout the pages of Mr. R. R. Madden's "Life and Literary Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington," London, 1855.—F. E.
DORSCH, Peder, a clergyman of Fredericia at the time when that place was stormed by Wrangel in October, 1659. Whilst the city was being plundered by the lawless and cruel soldiery, Dorsch stood at the altar of his church in his character of pastor, and being ordered to pray for the king of Sweden, he boldly replied—"I have only one God to pray to, and one king to pray for!" When they threatened to burn his parsonage, he made no attempt at resistance, nor yet at escape, but simply
