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OAT OATES,, the inventor of a terrible fiction, the Popish plot of 1678, by which many innocent victims perished on the scaffold. He was born about 1620, the son of a riband weaver, who had belonged to the sect of anabaptists. Titus was educated at Merchant Taylors' school, London, and at Cambridge university, and became a clergyman of the Church of England. His disorderly life drew down upon him the censure of his spiritual superiors, and being compelled to quit his benefice, he led an infamous and vagabond life. At one time he professed himself a Roman catholic, and lived on the continent in the colleges of English jesuits. In those seminaries he heard much wild talk about the best means of bringing England back to the true church, and being dismissed from the college at St. Omer, he conceived a project by which he retrieved his fortunes and took bitter revenge on the Roman catholics. The tale he told was so improbable that it would have produced little effect in England but for the uneasiness excited in the public mind by the bigoted Romanism of James, duke of York, and the corrupt government of his brother King Charles. Oates swore that the pope had intrusted the government of England to the jesuits, who had by commissions under the seal of their society appointed catholic clergymen, noblemen, and gentlemen to all the highest offices in church and state. The papists, he said, proposed setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames. They were to rise at a signal and massacre all their protestant neighbours. A French army was at the same time to land in Ireland. All the leading statesmen and divines were to be murdered. The king was to be assassinated, either stabbed, poisoned, or shot with silver bullets. The public mind was so sore and excitable that these lies found credit with the vulgar, and two circumstances occurred which led reflecting men to suspect there might be some foundation for Gates' story. Edward Coleman, a busy Roman catholic intriguer, was one of the accused, and among his papers were found passages which expressed hopes for his church in the then attitude of English affairs. Other papers which he had destroyed might, it was thought, have contained particulars of the plot which Oates revealed. At the same time Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey, an active magistrate who had taken Oates' depositions, was discovered about a month afterwards, October 17, 1678, murdered. The popular fury was immediately roused to the highest pitch. Men of various rank and station accused by Oates were tried, condemned, and executed. Many noblemen were imprisoned. Catholic peers were excluded from parliament, and a new test act was passed. The cruel tide of persecution did not slacken, till the execution of Viscount Stafford excited much sympathy and the reaction of public feeling. Oates who had lived at Whitehall, attended by a guard and in the enjoyment of a pension of £1200 a year, was dismissed and his pension reduced. Tried for defaming the duke of York, he was fined £100,000, and in default of payment was cast into the king's bench prison. On the accession of James he was tried for perjury, and condemned to the pillory and a whipping so severe that it is clear the judges intended it should be unto death. The stolid man survived this terrible infliction. The unjust form of his sentence nearly occasioned a conflict between the house of lords and the house of commons, when in 1689 Oates, after three and a half years' imprisonment in a cell at Newgate, was released, and allowed by King William III. a pension of £300 a year. He lived on in discontent until 1705, having before his death left the Church of England for the sect of the baptists, by whom, however, he was expelled.—(See Macaulay's England.)—R. H.  OBERLIN,, a distinguished antiquary, was born at Strasburg 7th August, 1735, and devoted himself to classical learning in the university of his native town, where he afterwards was promoted to the chair of philology, the duties of which office he ably discharged till his death on the 10th October, 1806. His editions of Horace, Tacitus, and Cæsar are held in high esteem; and his "Rituum Romanoram Tabulæ" for a long time served as a class-book. He also published a greatly improved edition of the Glossarium Germanicum Medii Ævi by Scherz, and an excellent description of the Museum Schoepflinianum. Among his other writings we note the "Literarum omnis ævi fata," and the "Alsatia Literaria."—K. E.  OBERLIN,, pastor of the Ban-de-la-Roche. This admirable man though comparatively little known during his long and useful life, now stands in the foremost rank of those who have been the ornaments and benefactors of their race. He was born at Strasburg on the 31st August, 1740. His father was a professor in the gymnasium of that city, and was noted for his abilities and probity. His son "Fritz" at an early age displayed the remarkable courage and firmness of character which distinguished him in after life. Though he showed a decided turn for military life, and was educated with a view to that calling, he ultimately preferred the sacred office, and at the age of twenty-seven accepted the appointment of pastor to the Ban-de-la-Roche, which he held till his death in 1826, a period of nearly sixty years. The people of his secluded valley were at that time sunk in the most abject ignorance and misery, and every attempt to improve their habits was met with stupid opposition, which on more than one occasion attempted the life of the reforming minister. Oberlin, however, was not a man to be daunted, or to despair of the triumph of truth and kindness over blind prejudice. Hoping more from the education of the young than from any immediate efforts to improve the grown-up people, he directed his energies to the establishment of schools, and succeeded by great exertions and personal sacrifices in erecting a schoolhouse in each of the five districts of his wide and scattered parish, and in furnishing the schools with teachers qualified by his own assiduous instruction. In these schools the older children were taught not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the elements of physics, astronomy, geometry, geography, history, the different races of mankind, their religions and forms of government, with the duties of public officers, and the usual forms of accounts, bills, and other documents used in trade. Singing was taught in all the schools, and drawing to the elder classes. To Oberlin belongs also the credit of having originated infant schools, and brought them to a state of efficiency which has never been surpassed, rarely equalled elsewhere. While the pastor neglected nothing that active and enlightened benevolence could devise for the moral and spiritual benefit of his flock, he was equally alive to their secular advancement. The potato crop, which formed their principal food, had dwindled to a fourth of its proper produce; and the road connecting the valley with Strasburg being impassable during nine months in the year, the failure of the home supply reduced the whole parish to a state approaching to famine. The necessity of opening a regular communication with Strasburg, the only accessible market-town, was early impressed upon Oberlin's attention, and he endeavoured to rouse the villagers to exertion, but in vain. They admitted that a good road to market would be a great advantage, but the thing was one of the pastor's new schemes, and could never be completed. At length the pastor, weary of vain exhortation, grasped a pick-axe, and marching off with a few of the more courageous of his parishioners, called to the rest to follow if they wanted the road made. Thus inspirited, the people followed their enthusiastic leader, and in 