to thank the constituent assembly for having recognized Corsica as an integral part of the French dominions. He was shortly after chosen to represent Ajaccio in the French legislative assembly. On the dissolution of this assembly in 1792 Pozzo returned to Corsica, and in conjunction with Paoli vigorously exerted himself to free his country from the domination of France and to place it under the protection of Great Britain. Their efforts were successful for a time, and Pozzo was nominated president of the board of control appointed to assist the British envoy, Sir Gilbert Elliot. When Corsica was ultimately obliged to submit to France, Pozzo took refuge first at Naples, then at Elba, and subsequently came to England, where he remained upwards of eighteen months. At this period he formed an intimate connection with the French refugees, and entered on that diplomatic career in which he acquired such celebrity. He went to Vienna in 1798, and laboured zealously to form a coalition against France. On the rupture of the peace of Amiens in 1803, Pozzo entered into the service of Russia, in which he spent nearly the whole of the remainder of his life. As the diplomatic agent of the czar he repaired again and again to the Austrian and Prussian courts, and even visited Constantinople in order to rouse the spirit of resistance to the ambitious designs of Napoleon. His counsels were far-sighted and sagacious, and his efforts unwearied, but for a time they were completely unsuccessful. After the peace of Tilsit, Di Borgo obtained the czar's permission to leave Russia and returned to Vienna, where he exerted himself with such energy and skill against France, that on the conclusion of peace in 1809 Bonaparte demanded that his inveterate enemy should be delivered up to him. Pozzo on this withdrew from Austria, and after travelling through Turkey and Syria he proceeded to London in October, 1810. There he remained, honoured and consulted by the government, until the French invasion of Russia in 1812, when he was recalled by the czar, and by his masterly diplomacy effectually aided in overthrowing the power of Napoleon. The accession of Bernadotte to the coalition against France was attributed to Di Borgo's counsels; it was he who advised the march of the allied armies upon Paris; kept the czar steady to the cause; insisted that no terms ought to be made with Napoleon; and recommended that the Bourbons should be restored, and the dethroned emperor sent out of Europe. He was present as Russian commissioner at the battle of Waterloo, where he received a wound. On the downfall of his enemy, over whom he triumphed with vindictive exultation, Pozzo returned to Paris, where he resided for many years in the character of Russian ambassador, and took a prominent part in all the negotiations and intrigues of which the French capital was the centre. He declined an offer from Talleyrand to take office in the French ministry, but shortly after accepted the rank of a count and peer of France, conferred upon him by the Duke de Richelieu. In 1835, on the breaking out of the war in the East, he was sent on a mission to London, where he remained upwards of two years, employing all the resources of his subtle and sagacious intellect to promote the designs of Russia. His health, however, gave way, and he returned to Paris, where he died on the 17th of February, 1842, in his seventy-fourth year.—J. T.
POZZO, Modesta, an authoress who assumed the name of Moderata Fonte, born at Venice in 1555; died in childbed, 1592. She passed a portion of her youth within convent walls, then returning to the world married her fellow-citizen, Filippo Giorgi, and spent twenty years as his wife. It is said that her astonishing memory enabled her to repeat, word for word, a discourse heard but once; no wonder then that she easily acquired the Latin language. Amongst her compositions are—a poem entitled "Il Floridoro;" another on the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord; and a work which, treating of the merits of women, impugns the intellectual superiority of men.—C. G. R.
PRADIER, James, an eminent French sculptor, was born at Geneva in 1792. He studied sculpture in Paris under Lemot, and gained the grand prize of Rome in 1813. He remained at Rome five years, dividing his time between the study of the antique, the life, the works of Canova, and the production of original pieces. From his return to Paris in 1819 Pradier held a foremost place among the sculptors of France. In his later years his popularity was almost unbounded. He executed many religious pieces, Pietàs, Virgins, a colossal "Christ on the Cross." statues of saints, &c., for churches and private persons, and many monumental and portrait statues and busts—including the tomb of Napoleon I., Marshal Soult, &c.; but his popularity rested mainly on his Venuses, Phrynes, Odalisques, and other classical or semi-classical subjects which permitted the free exhibition of his remarkable skill and facility in representing the female form. Pradier's style, always sensuous, often verges on the voluptuous and the meretricious. But he was a great master of the chisel, more than equalling his model Canova in the delicacy, softness, and texture of his flesh, and the ease, play, and finish of his forms. Pradier gained the medal of the first class in 1817, and again in 1848; was created knight of the legion of honour in 1828, and officer in 1834; and in 1827 was elected a member of the Institute, succeeding to the chair of his teacher Lemot. He died June 5, 1852.—J. T—e.
PRADT, Dominique de, Abbè, was born at Allanches in 1759. At the time of the convocation of the states general in 1789, he sat among the clerical deputies as the representative of the clergy of Normandy. Involved in the ruin which overwhelmed the church and the throne, De Pradt fled to Hamburg; and soon afterwards commenced the series of his political writings by a treatise entitled "An Antidote to the Congress at Rastadt;" this was published in 1798. His next publication, "Prussia and her Neutrality" was written in 1799, to show the impolicy of Prussia's standing aloof from the coalition which Austria and other powers had entered into against the French republic. However, after the 18th Brumaire and the installation of Napoleon as first consul, De Pradt hailed the rising sun, and was appointed grand almoner. In 1801 he was induced by the revolutions in Hayti and disturbances in Spanish America to write his third pamphlet, "The Three Ages of Colonies." He gradually rose high in the favour of Napoleon; was created a baron of the new empire; and made successively bishop of Poitiers and archbishop of Malines. On the breaking out of the war with Russia in 1812, he was sent as ambassador to the diet of Poland. His account given in the "Histoire Vindicatoire" of his interview with Napoleon at Warsaw, while on his return to Paris after the destruction of his army, is highly graphic and interesting. It is absurdly misrepresented in Rose's Biographical Dictionary, where it is stated that Napoleon "reproached him with treachery, and divested him of his embassy." Nothing of the kind occurred; the meeting was perfectly amicable; and although Napoleon made out an order for the abbè to return to Paris, it is evident that this was a mere official formality, for the lances of the pursuing Cossacks would in any case have rendered such a move imperative. De Pradt remained at Malines till after the fall of Napoleon. In 1816 he published "The Congress of Vienna." He resigned his rights to the archdiocese of Malines into the hands of the kings of Holland, and thenceforward lived at Paris. Under Charles X. he sided and wrote against the ultramontane party and the jesuits. He died in 1837.—T. A.
PRAED, Winthrop Mackworth, poet and politician, was born in London in 1802. He belonged to a good Devonshire family in the neighbourhood of Teignmouth; his father was a serjeant-at-law, "connected with Praed's bank." Educated at Eton, he showed himself a promising classic, and was the principal contributor to the Etonian, the short-lived periodical founded in 1820 by Mr. Charles Knight (q.v.) From Eton he went to Trinity college, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself at the Union, having the young Macaulay for a rival in debate, and gained prize upon prize for verse, Greek and English. "Macaulay and Praed," said at the time kindly and discerning Christopher North in the Noctes, "have written very good prize poems. These two young gentlemen ought to make a figure in the world." Like Macaulay, Praed contributed extensively to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and among his contributions are verses of some mark. Like Macaulay, too, he went to the bar, and entered parliament, enlisting, however, in the tory party. During 1830 and 1831 he represented St. German's, a Cornish borough disfranchised by the reform bill, which threw him out of parliament until 1835, when he was returned for Yarmouth. In 1834, in Sir Robert Peel's short ministry, he was secretary to the board of control, and in 1835 he was appointed recorder of Barnstaple and deputy high steward of the university of Cambridge. He was succeeding in parliament (where he was a keen opponent of the whigs) as in his profession, and great hopes had been formed of him, when in 1838 he was compelled by ill health to retire from public life. He died of consumption in July, 1839. Praed had a singular facility in the composition of polished and pointed verse. The contributor of an appreciative
