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Rh inflicts them. These are some of the leading arguments which have been advanced in defence of the Declaration of Paris, and which no doubt actuated the authors of it.

 DECLARATOR, in Scotch law, is a form of action by which some right of property, or of servitude, or of status, or some inferior right or interest, is sought to be judicially declared (see Bell's Dictionary and Digest of the Law of Scotland.)

 DECREE, DECREET, the judgment of a court of justice, and, in English law, more particularly the judgment of a court of equity. A decree nisi is the conditional order for a dissolution of marriage made by the court for divorce and matrimonial causes, which will be made absolute after six months, in the absence of sufficient cause shown to the contrary.

 DECRETALS, in, are the answers sent by the to applications made to him as head of the, chiefly by s, but also by s, and even private individuals, for guidance in cases involving points of doctrine or discipline. In the early days of these replies came to be circulated throughout the various s, and furnished s to be observed in analogous circumstances. From the onwards they formed the most prolific source of. Decretals (undefined undefined, epistolæ, or shortly undefined, or undefined) ought, properly speaking, to be distinguished, on the one hand from s (constitutiones pontificæ), or general s ened by the undefined without reference to any particular case, and on the other hand from s (undefined), which apply only to special circumstances or individuals, and constitute no general. But this nomenclature is not strictly observed.

1em

 DECURIO, an officer in the Roman cavalry, commanding a decuria, which was a body consisting of ten men. There were certain provincial magistrates called decuriones municipales, who had the same position and powers in free and corporate towns as the senate had in Rome. As the name implies, they consisted at first of ten, but in later times the number was often as many as a hundred; their duty was to watch over the interests of their fellow-citizens, and to increase the revenues of the commonwealth. Their court was called curia decurionum, and minor senatits; and their decrees, called decreta decurionum, were marked with D. D. at the top. They generally styled themselves civitatum patres curiales, and honorati inunicipiorum senatores. They were elected with the same ceremonies as the Roman senators, and they required to be at least twenty-five years of age, and to be possessed of a certain fixed income. The election took place on the kalends of March.

 DEE, JOHN (1527-1608), a mathematician and astrolo ger, waa born in July 1527, in London, where his father was a wealthy vintner. In 1542 he was sent to St John s College, Cambridge. After five years close application to mathematical studies, particularly astronomy, he went to Holland, in order to visit several eminent Continental mathematicians. Having remained abroad nearly a year, he returned to Cambridge, and was elected a fellow of Trinity College, then first erected by King Henry VIII. In 1548 he took the degree of master of arts ; but in the same year he found it necessary to leave England on account of the suspicions entertained of his being a conjuror, which were first excited by a piece of machinery, in the Irene of Aristophanes, he exhibited to the university, re presenting the scarabseus flying up to Jupiter, with a man and a basket of victuals on its back. On leaving England he went first to the university of Louvain, where he resided about two years, and then to the college of Rheims, where he read lectures on Euclid s Elements with great applause. On his return to England in 1551 King Edward assigned him a pension of 100 crowns, which he afterwards exchanged for the rectory of Upton-upon-Severn. Soon after the accession of Mary, he was accused of using en chantments against the queen s life ; but after a tedious confinement, he obtained his liberty in 1555, by an order of council. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, Dee was asked by Lord Dudley to name a propitious day for the coronation. On this occasion he was introduced to the queen, who took lessons in the mystical interpretation of his writings, and made him great promises, which, however, were never ful filled. In 1564 he again visited the Continent, in order to present a book which he had dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian. He returned to England in the same year ; but in 1571 we find him in Lorraine, whither two physicians were sent by the queen to his relief in a dangerous illness. Having once more returned to his native country, he settled at Mortlake, in Surrey, where he continued his studies with unremitting ardour, and made a collection of curious books and manuscripts, and a variety of instruments, most of which were destroyed by the mob during his absence, on account of his supposed familiarity with the devil. In 1578 Dee was sent abroad to consult with German physicians and astrologers in regard to the illness of the queen. On his return to England, he was employed in investigating the title of the Crown to the countries recently discovered by British subjects, and in furnishing geographical descriptions. Two large rolls containing the desired information, which he presented to the queen, are still preserved in the Cottonian Library. A learned treatise on the reformation of the calendar, written by him about the same time, is still preserved in the Ashmolean Library at Oxford. From this period the philosophical researches of Dee were concerned entirely with the pseudo-science of necromancy. In 1581 he became acquainted with Edward Kelly, an apothecary who professed to have discovered the philosopher s stone, and by whose assistance he performed various incantations, and maintained a frequent imaginary intercourse with spirits. Shortly after, Kelly and Dee were introduced to a Polish nobleman, Albert Lasld, palatine of Siradia (Sieradz), devoted to the same pursuits, who persuaded the two friends to accompany him to his native country. They embarked for Holland in September 1583, and arrived at Laski s place of residence in February following. They lived for some years in Poland and Bohemia in alternate wealth and poverty, according to the credulity or scepticism of those before whom they exhibited. They professed to raise spirits by incantation. Kelly dictated their utterances to Dee, who wrote them down and interpreted them. Dee, having at length quarrelled with his companion, quitted Bohemia and returned to England, where he was made chancellor of St Paul s Cathedral in 1594, and warden of Manchester College in 1595. He afterwards returned to his house at Mortlake, where he died in 1608, at the age of eighty-one. His principal works are Propcedeumata Aphoristica, Lond. 1558; Monas Hicroglyphica, Antwerp, 1564 ; Epistola ad Fredericnrn Commandinum, Fesaro, 1570 ; Preface Afathcmatical to the English Euclid, 1570 ; Divers Annotations and Inventions added after the tenth look of English Euclid, 1570 ; Epistola praflxa Ephemc.- ridibus Joannis Feldi, a 1557; Parallaticcc Coirunentationis Praxcos-

