a military life. The Keiths were among the Scotch tories who accepted the accession of George I., and became disaffected when they discovered that they were to be excluded from office under the new dynasty. On his way to London to ask for a commission, Keith met his elder brother returning disappointed. Irritation and the influence of their mother, a Roman catholic lady, led the two to join their cousin, the earl of Mar, in the unsuccessful rising of 1715. After its disastrous close Keith escaped to France, whence in 1716 he went to Spain to offer his services in the expedition planned by Alberoni for the invasion of Scotland, and the restoration of the Stewarts. The expedition failed; and after a second time lurking as a fugitive in the highlands, he reached Madrid. He had seen some active service in the Spanish army; when finding in 1728 that further promotion was made conditional on his abjuration of protestantism, he proceeded to St. Petersburg with a letter of recommendation from the king of Spain to the czar. Appointed a major-general in the Russian army, and receiving the command of a regiment of guards, he rose to considerable military eminence. In the war with the Turks (1736-37) he was the first to enter the breach at Oczakow, where he was wounded so severely that he was sent to Paris to be cured. He distinguished himself in the war with Sweden (1741-44), and at the peace was sent as Russian envoy extraordinary to Sweden, receiving on his return the baton of a marshal. Wearying of Russia he offered his services to Frederick the Great, who gladly accepted them, made him a field-marshal, and in 1749 governor of Berlin. Brave, honourable, intellectual, Keith became the friend of Frederick. On the breaking out of the Seven Years' war, Keith accompanied the king of Prussia on the march into Saxony, and entered Dresden with him. Employed in various military and diplomatic operations of importance during that war, he fought at Losowitz and Rossbach, and conducted the sieges of Prague and Olmütz. His career was closed at the battle of Hochkirchen, fought between the Prussians and Austrians on the 14th October, 1758. He had been already wounded an hour before, when a second ball stretched him lifeless on the ground, fighting bravely against a superior force. The enemy respected him because he had always been merciful, and buried his corpse, which Frederick afterwards removed to Berlin, giving it a splendid funeral. "Probus vixit; fortis obiit" was the answer sent by his brother to an application for an epitaph. Frederick celebrated the virtues of his friend in a poetical epistle. Memoirs of Field-marshal Keith were published in 1759. He is the subject of one of Varnhagen von Ense's lucid and interesting biographies, Leben des Feldmarschall Jakob Keith, Berlin, 1844. A fragment of an autobiographical memoir of Field-marshal Keith, 1714-34, was published by the Spalding Club in 1843.—F. E.
KEITH, Patrick, a Scottish botanist, was born in 1769, and died in Kent on 25th January, 1840. He was educated at the university of Glasgow, and afterwards took orders in the Church of England. He was for many years vicar of Stalisfield in Kent. He devoted his attention to physiological botany, and published a work on the subject in 2 vols. 8vo, in 1816. He also published a botanical lexicon, and was the author of several botanical papers in the Linnæan Transactions. He also gave contributions to the Philosophical Magazine and the Annals of Natural History.—J. H. B.
KEITH, Robert, a bishop of the Scotch episcopal church and a learned scholar and antiquary, was a lineal descendant of William, third Earl Marischal, and was born in 1661. He was educated at Aberdeen; in 1703 he was appointed tutor to Lord Keith and his brother; in 1710 he entered into holy orders in connection with the Scotch episcopal church, and soon after became domestic chaplain to the earl of Errol, whom he accompanied to the continent. On his return to Scotland in 1713 he was elected minister of an episcopalian congregation in Ireland. In 1727 he was consecrated titular bishop of Caithness and Orkney, and in 1733 was transferred to Fife. In the following year Bishop Keith published his "History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland," 1 vol. folio. In 1754 appeared his "Catalogue of Scottish Bishops." He died in 1757 in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His works display considerable research and learning, but are strongly tinctured with Jacobite and high-church prejudices.—J. T.
KEITH, Sir Robert Murray, K.B., a distinguished diplomatist, was born in 1730, and was the eldest son of General Sir Robert Keith of Craig in Kincardineshire, who was under-secretary for foreign affairs, and ambassador at Venice and St. Petersburg. Having been educated for the military profession, he served for several years in a highland regiment which was employed by the states of Holland, and subsequently acted as adjutant-general and secretary to Lord George Sackville, who commanded the English contingent of the allied army under Prince Frederick of Brunswick. On the resignation of Lord George, Keith obtained the office of major in a highland corps which had recently been raised for the war in Germany, and, though composed entirely of raw recruits, by their conspicuous gallantry gained great distinction, along with their young commander, in the campaigns of 1760 and 1761. After the disbandment of this corps in 1762, Keith was unemployed for some years; but in 1769 he was appointed by the elder Pitt, British envoy to the court of Saxony. He was subsequently transferred to the court of Denmark, and was fortunately residing at Copenhagen when the Danish queen, Caroline Matilda, sister of George III., was made the victim of a vile conspiracy, and would in all probability have been put to death, but for Keith's spirited interference.—(See Christina VII.) His firm yet prudent conduct met with the approbation of the British court, and the king himself sent him the order of the bath as a reward for his services. In 1772 Sir Robert was appointed ambassador at the court of Vienna; six years later he was a second time appointed to this important post, and earned for himself the reputation of an able and high-minded diplomatist. He closed his career with the pacification concluded between Austria, Russia, and Turkey, which was greatly promoted by his exertions; and died in 1795 in the sixty-fifth year of his age.—(See Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir Robert Murray Keith, K.B., 2 vols., 1849.)—J. T.
KELAART, Edward, a botanist, was born at the Cape of Good Hope in 1819, and died at sea on his way from Ceylon to Britain on the 31st of August, 1860, at the age of forty-one. He prosecuted the study of medicine, and took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh, where he early became a fellow of the Botanical Society. He afterwards went to Gibraltar, and published "Flora Calpensis," or description of Gibraltar plants. He was afterwards located in Ceylon, and drew up a "Fauna Zeylonica." He was a zealous naturalist, and devoted his attention to botany and zoology.—J. H. B.
KELLER, Christoph. See Cellarius.
KELLER, Jakob (in Latin Cellarius), was born in 1568 in Suabia, and in 1588 entered the order of jesuits. He taught the belles-lettres, philosophy, and moral and scholastic theology. In 1615 he held a discussion with the Lutheran minister. Jacobus Heilbrunner, who had published a book on the falsification of the fathers by the papists. In 1601 he issued a work, vindicating the catholics against the accusations of the Calvinists as to the murder of tyrants. In 1616 he published a "Defence of the fundamental truth of the Roman church" in reply to Heilbrunner's Papatus Acatholicus, and other works of his came out afterwards on the same subjects. Some of his writings appeared under feigned names; but most of them are of a controversial character. He is said to be the author of "Mysteria Politica," a work which, Bayle says, made a great noise. To him also is attributed the "Admonitio ad Ludovicum XIII. regem Franciæ," which has been improperly claimed for Eudæmono-Joannes, and which appeared in 1626. Both the "Admonitio" and the "Mysteria" were burned at Paris by the hangman. Keller died in 1631 at Munich.—B. H. C.
KELLER, Jean Balthazar, an eminent Swiss sculptor and bronze founder, was born at Zurich in 1638. He was brought up as a goldsmith, but having studied sculpturesque design, joined his brother, who was a cannon-founder at Paris. Jean Keller soon came to be regarded as an able designer, and as the most skilful founder of his time. To him were intrusted the execution of several of the bronze statues for the garden of Versailles, and various works for the royal palaces; but his most important undertaking was the casting of Girardon's colossal equestrian statue of Louis XIV., which was universally regarded as the greatest achievement of its kind in modern times. This immense work, which with its bronze pedestal was twenty-one feet high, and weighed sixty thousand pounds, was cast by Keller at once, or in a single jet, and with entire success. An account of the process was published by G. Boffrand. The statue was erected in the Place Vendôme, but was destroyed by the populace in 1792; it is now only known by the engraving of it by
