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treatise on the rudiments of analysis, which has been considered as the best introduction to Euler's works, and was translated into English, in 1801, by the reverend John Colson, professor of mathematics at Cambridge. It gained her so much reputation, that she was appointed, in her 32d year, professor of mathematics at the university of Bologna. Her deep study of this science seems to have cast a gloom over her spirits. She secluded herself altogether from society, retired to the strict order of blue nuns, and died in her 81st year, 1799. Her sister, Maria Theresa, set to music several cantatas, and the 3 operas, Sophonisba, Ciro in Armenia, and Nitocri, with applause.

AGNOETE. (See Monophysites.) AGNOMEN, in ancient Rome; a name or epithet given to a person by way of praise or dispraise, or from some remarkable event in his history. Such names remained peculiar to the person, and not descendible to his issue. Thus one of the Scipios obtained the A. of Africanus, and the other of Asiaticus, from their achievements in Asia and Africa. The Romans often had three names besides the A.; the prænomen, corresponding to our Christian name, distinguishing the individual from others of the same family; the second, or nomen, marked his clan; and the third, or cognomen, expressed his family; to these the A., e. g. Atticus, Cunctator, Germanicus, &c. was added.

AGNUS DEI (Latin; the Lamb of God). 1. A prayer of the Romish liturgy, beginning with the words Agnus Dei, generally sung before the communion, and, according to the regulation of pope Sergius I, in 688, at the close of the mass. 2. A round piece of wax, on which is impressed the figure of the sacred Lamb, with the banner of the cross, or of St. John, with the year and name of the pope. The pope consecrates and distributes a great number of them. It was originally customary, in the churches of Rome, to distribute the remains of the Paschal taper, consecrated on Easter eve, in small pieces, among the people, who burned them at home, as an antidote against all kinds of misfortune. But when the number of candidates became too large to be all satisfied, the above expedient was adopted. A. D. is also the name of that portion of the mass, which is introduced, in Roman Catholic churches, at the distribution of the host.

AGows, in geogr.; the inhabitants of a province of Abyssinia. They are, in their

manners, ferocious, and in their religion, superstitious. They are heathens, and adore the spirit residing in the Nile. (See Abyssinia.) Bruce's Trav. vol. i. 401. vol. iii. 527.

AGRA; a province of Hindostan Proper, situated between 252 and 28° N. lat.; the capital of which, of the same name, is in the possession of the British. Several rajahs, allies of the British, possess the western and north-western district. The part of the province south of the Chu bul is under the dominion of the Mahrattas. No part of Hindostan affords a richer soil; grain of all kinds, sugar, indigo and cotton are yielded with little labor in all the British districts. Formerly the province was also famous for its silks. It furnishes superior horses. It contains 6 millions of inhabitants. A., the city, N. lat. 27° 12', and E. lon. 77° 56', is connected with the whole of the modern history of India. The Mahometans call it Akbarabad. It is ornamented with splendid edifices, of which the Taje Mahal, or Crown of Edifices, an unrivalled tomb to the memory of the empress of Shah Jeliau, who died 1632, is the most famous. This is wholly built of the finest white marble. General lord Lake took A. in 1803, from the Mahrattas. A. is 137 miles from Delhi, and 830 from Calcutta.

AGRARIAN LAWs; laws enacted in ancient Rome for the division of public lands. In the valuable work on Roman history by Mr. Niebuhr, it is satisfactorily shown, that these laws, which have so long been considered in the light of unjust attacks on private property, had for their object only the distribution of lands which were the property of the state, and that the troubles to which they gave rise were occasioned by the opposition of persons who had settled on these lands without having acquired any title to them. These laws of the Romans were so intimately connected with their system of establishing colonies in the different parts of their territories, that, to attain a proper understanding of them, it is necessary to bestow a moment's consideration on that system.-According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, their plan of sending out colonists, or settlers, began as early as the time of Romulus, who generally placed colonists from the city of Rome on the lands taken in war. The same policy was pursued by the kings who succeeded him; and, when the kings were expelled, it was adopted by the senate and the people, and then by the dictators.

There

were several reasons inducing the Roman government to pursue this policy, which was continued for a long period without any intermission; first, to have a check upon the conquered people; secondly, to have a protection against the incursions of an enemy; thirdly, to augment their population; fourthly, to free the city of Rome from an excess of inhabitants; fifthly, to quiet seditions; and, sixthly, to reward their veteran soldiers. These reasons abundantly appear in all the best ancient authorities. In the later periods of the republic, a principal motive for establishing colonies was to have the means of disposing of soldiers, and rewarding them with donations of lands; and such colonies were, on this account, denominated military colonies. Now, for whichever of these causes a colony was to be established, it was necessary that some law respecting it should be passed, either by the senate or people; which law, in either case, was called lex agraria, an agrarian law, which will now be explained. An agrarian law contained various provisions; it described the land which was to be divided, and the classes of people among whom, and their numbers, and by whom, and in what manner, and by what bounds, the territory was to be parcelled out. The mode of dividing the lands, as far as we now understand it, was twofold; either a Roman population was distributed over the particular territory, without any formal erection of a colony, or general grants of lands were made to such citizens as were willing to form a colony there. The lands which were thus distributed were of different descriptions; which we must keep in mind, in order to have a just conception of the operation of the agrarian laws. They were either lands taken from an enemy, and not actually treated by the government as public property; or lands which were regarded and occupied by the Roman people as public property; or public lands which had been artfully and clandestinely taken possession of by rich and powerful individuals; or, lastly, lands which were bought with money from the public treasury, for the purpose of being distributed. Now, all such agrarian laws as comprehended either lands of the enemy, or those which were treated and occupied as public property, or those which had been bought with the public money, were carried into effect without any public commotions; but those which operated to disturb the opulent and powerful citizens in the possession of the

lands which they unjustly occupied, and to place colonists (or settlers) on them, were never promulgated without creating great disturbances. The first law of this kind was proposed by Spurius Cassius; and the same measure was afterwards attempted by the tribunes of the people almost every year, but was as constantly defeated by various artifices of the nobles; it was, however, at length passed. It appears, both from Dionysius and Varro (de Re Rustica, lib. 1), that, at first, Romulus allotted two jugera (about 14 acre) of the public lands to each man; then Numa divided the lands which Romulus had taken in war, and also a portion of the other public lands; afterwards Tullus divided those lands which Romulus and Numa had appropriated to the private expenses of the regal establishment; then Servius distributed among those who had recently become citizens certain lands which had been taken from the Veïentes, the Cærites and Tarquinii; and, upon the expulsion of the kings, it appears that the lands of Tarquin the Proud, with the exception of the Campus Martius, were, by a decree of the senate, granted to the people. After this period, as the republic, by means of its continual wars, received continual accessions of conquered lands, those lands were either occupied by colonists or remained public property, until the period when Spurius Cassius, twenty-four years after the expulsion of the kings, proposed a law (already mentioned), by which one part of the land taken from the Hernici was allotted to the Latins, and the other part to the Roman people; but, as this law comprehended certain lands which he accused private persons of having taken from the public, and as the senate also opposed him, he could not accomplish_the passage of it. This, according to Livy, was the first proposal of an agrarian law; of which he adds, no one was ever proposed, down to the period of his remembrance, without very great public commotions. Dionysius informs us, further, that this public land, by the negligence of the magistrates, had been suffered to fall into the possession of rich men ; but that, notwithstanding this, a division of the lands would have taken place under this law, if Cassius had not included among the receivers of the bounty the Latins and Hernici, whom he had but a little while before made citizens. After much debate in the senate upon this subject, a decree was passed to the following effect: that commissioners, called decem

virs, appointed from among the persons of consular rank, should mark out, by boundaries, the public lands, and should designate how much should be let out, and how much should be distributed among the common people; that, if any land had been acquired by joint services in war, it should be divided, according to treaty, with those allies who had been admitted to citizenship; and that the choice of the commissioners, the apportionment of the lands, and all other things relating to this subject, should be committed to the care of the succeeding consuls. Seventeen years after this, there was a vehement contest about the division, which the tribunes proposed to make of lands then unjustly occupied by the rich men; and, three years after that, a similar attempt on the part of the tribunes would, according to Livy, have produced a ferocious controversy, had it not been for the address of Quintus Fabius. Some years after this, the tribunes proposed another law of the same kind, by which the estates of a great part of the nobles would have been seized to the public use; but it was stopped in its progress. Appian says, that the nobles and rich men, partly by getting possession of the public lands, partly by buying out the shares of indigent owners, had made themselves owners of all the lands in Italy, and had thus, by degrees, accomplished the removal of the common people from their possessions. This abuse stimulated Tiberius Gracchus to revive the Licinian law, which prohibited any individual from holding more than 500 jugera, or about 350 acres, of land; and would, consequently, compel the owners to relinquish all the surplus to the use of the public; but Gracchus proposed that the owners should be paid the value of the lands relinquished. The law, however, did not operate to any great extent, and, after having cost the Gracchi their lives, was by degrees rendered wholly inoperative. After this period, various other agrarian laws were attempted, and with various success, according to the nature of their provisions and the temper of the times in which they were proposed. One of the most remarkable was that of Rullus, which gave occasion to the celebrated oration against him by Cicero, who prevailed upon the people to reject the law. From a careful consideration of these laws, and the others of the same kind on which we have not commented, it is apparent, that the whole object of the Roman agrarian laws was, the lands

belonging to the state, the public lands or national domains, which, as already observed, were acquired by conquest or treaty, and, we may add also, by confiscations or direct seizures of private estates by different factions, either for lawful or unlawful causes; of the last of which we have a well-known example in the time of Sylla's proscriptions. The lands thus claimed by the public became naturally a subject of extensive speculation with the wealthy capitalists, both among the nobles and other classes. In our own times, we have seen, during the revolution in France, the confiscation of the lands belonging to the clergy, the nobility and emigrants, lead to similar results. The sales and purchases of lands, by virtue of the agrarian laws of Rome, under the various complicated circumstances which must ever exist in such cases, and the attempts by the government to resume or re-grant such as had been sold, whether by right or by wrong, especially after a purchaser had been long in possession, under a title which he supposed the existing laws gave him, naturally occasioned great heat and agitation; the subject itself being intrinsically one of great difficulty, even when the passions and interests of the parties concerned would permit a calm and deliberate examination of their respective rights.From the commotions which usually attended the proposal of agrarian laws, and from a want of exact attention to their true object, there has long been a general impression, among readers of the Roman history, that those laws were always a direct and violent infringement of the rights of private property. Even such men, it has been observed, as Machiavelli, Montesquieu and Adam Smith, have shared in this misconception of them. This erroneous opinion, however, has lately been exposed by the genius and learning of Niebuhr, in his Roman History above mentioned, a work which may be said to make an era in that department of learning, and in which he has clearly shown, that the original and professed object of the agrarian laws was the distribution of the public lands only, and not those of private citizens. Of the Licinian law, enacted about 376 B. C., on which all subsequent agrarian laws were modelled, Niebuhr enumerates the following as among the chief provisions: 1. The limits of the public land shall be accurately defined. Portions of it, which have been encroached on by individuals, shall be restored to the state. 2. Every

to produce, in the greatest plenty and perfection, those vegetables which are useful to man, and to the animals which he has subjected to his dominion. This art is the basis of all other arts, and in all countries coeval with the first dawn of civilization. Without agriculture, mankind would be savages, thinly scattered through interminable forests, with no other habitations than caverns, hollow trees or huts, more rude and inconvenient than the most ordinary hovel or cattle-shed of the modern cultivator. It is the most universal as well as the most ancient of the arts, and requires the greatest number of operators. It employs seven-eighths of the population of almost every civilized community.-Agriculture is not only indispensable to national prosperity, but is eminently conducive to the welfare of those who are engaged in it. It gives health to the body, energy to the mind, is favorable to virtuous and temperate habits, and to knowledge and purity of moral character, which are the pillars of good government and the true support of national independence. With regard to the history of agriculture, we must confine ourselves to slight sketches. The first mention of agriculture is found in the writings of Moses. From them we learn that Cain was a "tiller of the ground," that Abel sacrificed the "firstlings of his flock," and that Noah "began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard." The Chinese, Japanese, Chaldeans, Egyptians and Phoenicians appear to have held husbandry in high estimation. The Egyptians were so sensible of its blessings, that they ascribed its invention to superhuman agency, and even carried their gratitude to such an absurd excess as to worship the ox, for his services as a laborer. The Carthaginians carried the art of agriculture to a higher degree than other nations, their contemporaries. Mago, one of their most famous generals, wrote no less than twenty-eight books on agricultural topics, which, according to Columella, were translated into Latin by an express decree of the Roman senate.-Hesiod, a Greek writer, supposed to be contemporary with Homer, wrote a poem on agriculture, entitled Weeks and Days, which was so denominated because husbandry requires an exact observance of times and seasons. Other Greek writers wrote on rural economy, and Xenophon among the number, but their works have been lost in the lapse of ages.The implements of Grecian agriculture were very few and simple. Hesiod mentions a plough, consist

ing of three parts-the share-beam, the draught-pole and the plough-tail; but antiquarians are not agreed as to its exact form; also a cart with low wheels, and ten spans (seven feet six inches) in width; likewise the rake, sickle and ox-goad; but no description is given of the mode in which they were constructed. The operations of Grecian culture, according to Hesiod, were neither numerous nor com plicated. The ground received three ploughings-one in autumn, another in spring, and a third immediately before sowing the seed. Manures were applied, and Pliny ascribes their invention to the Grecian king Augeas. Theophrastus mentions six different species of manures, and adds, that a mixture of soils produces the same effect as manures. Clay, he observes, should be mixed with sand, and sand with clay. Seed was sown by hand, and covered with a rake. Grain was reaped with a sickle, bound in sheaves, threshed, then winnowed by wind, laid in chests, bins or granaries, and taken out as wanted by the family, to be pounded in mortars or quern mills into meal.-The ancient Romans venerated the plough, and, in the earliest and purest times of the republic, the greatest praise which could be given to an illustrious character was to say that he was an industrious and judicious husbandman. M. Cato, the censor, who was celebrated as a statesman, orator and general, having conquered nations and governed provinces, derived his highest and most durable honors from having written a voluminous work on agriculture. In the Georgics of Virgil, the majesty of verse and the harmony of numbers add dignity and grace to the most useful of all topics. The celebrated Columella flourished in the reign of the emperor Claudius, and wrote twelve books on husbandry, which constituted a complete treatise on rural affairs. Varro, Pliny and Palladius were likewise among the distinguished Romans who wrote on agricultural subjects. With regard to the Roman implements of agriculture, we learn that they used a great many, but their particular forms and uses are very imperfectly described. From what we can ascertain respecting them, they appear more worthy of the notice of the curious antiquarian, than of the practical cultivator. The plough is represented by Cato as of two kinds-one for strong, the other for light soils. Varro mentions one with two mould-boards, with which, he says, "when they plough, after sowing the seed, they are said to ridge." Pliny