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VIL the choice of Messinopolis or Serres. Here the worthy knight died in 1213, leaving a family which contributed various members to the aristocracy of mediæval Greece, and the elder branch of which was not extinct till 1400. The work which has immortalized Villehardouin is a precise, clear, and interesting recital of the events which he witnessed in the East. It is entitled "De la Conqueste de Constantinople," and embraces a period of nine years from 1198 to 1207. It has all the merit which belongs to the concise yet comprehensive narrative of a sincere, chivalric warrior, and a prudent counsellor. Many editions and translations have been printed of this work, the original language of which, being the oldest French prose extant, is unintelligible to the majority of readers. The latest edition appeared in 1838.—R. H.  VILLÈLE,, a French statesman, born at Toulouse in 1773. At an early age he entered the marines, and went to St. Domingo in 1789, where he remained a year. He resigned his commission, and went to the island of Bourbon when the Revolution broke out. He returned to France in 1807, and in 1815 was elected deputy of the department of the Haute-Garonne. In 1820 he was elected vice-president of the chamber of deputies, and in the following year was appointed minister of finance by Louis XVIII., when he was the chief promoter of the French expedition to Spain, in order to prop up that falling monarchy. He was next appointed president of the council of state. The king died in 1824, but Villèle held his office under Charles X. till 1828, when he and his ministry became so unpopular that they were obliged to resign, Villèle was then created a peer of France, and retired to his chateau, in the neighbourhood of Toulouse. He died in 1854.—W. J. P.  VILLEMAIN,, formerly minister of public instruction and peer of France, was born at Paris in 1790, and educated at what is now the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He was studying for the bar when he attracted the attention of De Fontanes, the early patron of Guizot, who procured him a professorship. He had acquired considerable literary distinction by the composition of essays, "crowned" by the French Academy, and had been in 1816 appointed professor of French eloquence at the Sorbonne, when in 1819 he published his first book, the "Histoire de Cromwell," a superficial performance, but noteworthy from the date of its appearance. In 1822 appeared his translation of Cicero's treatise de Republica, then recently discovered by Cardinal Mai. Under the second Restoration he received various posts from the government, but he was disgraced in 1827 for taking a prominent part in protesting against the re-establishment of the censorship. His popularity, however, increased, and his lectures at the Sorbonne in the years immediately preceding the revolution of 1830 were, like those of Guizot and Cousin, attended by admiring crowds. Among his lectures of this period (published as "Cours de littérature Française, tableau du XVIIIᵐᵉ siècle"), are some on English subjects, remarkable for their happy blending—rarer then than now—of biography with criticism. Entering the chamber of deputies early in 1830, he joined the liberal party. He was appointed minister of public instruction in the Soult ministry of 1839, and again in that formed by Guizot in October, 1840. He had now to grapple with the education question and the "religious difficulty," long the subject of fierce dispute between the liberals and the clergy. After four years of toil and trouble, his health failed, and he retired from public life. Of his more recent works one of the most striking is "Tableau de l'eloquence Chretienne, au IVᵉ. siècle." He also wrote a "Life of Gregory the Great." His death occurred in March, 1867.—F. E.  VILLEMOT,, was born at Chalons-sur-Saône in 1650. From Lyons, where he had spent about thirty years as curé de la Guillotiére, he went to Paris through the influence of the Abbé de Gouvernet, and became confessor to Madame de Louvois, widow of the well-known statesman of that name. He died at Paris in October, 1713. He had the reputation of being a good orator and a zealous priest; but it was his "New System, or New Explanation of the Movements of the Planets" that made him generally known. This work, which was published at Lyons in 1707, made a great sensation, and received the approbation of several eminent astronomers of the time. It was translated from the original Latin into French, by M. Falconet of the Académie des Belles-Lettres.—R. M., A.  VILLENA,, a celebrated Spanish nobleman, scholar, and author, was born in 1384, and was descended in the paternal line from the royal house of Arragon, and in the maternal from that of Castile. In early life, he says, he was addicted to the arts and sciences, rather than to knightly exercises or political pursuits. As his family had been dispossessed of the marquisate of Villena, Henry III. gave him, as some sort of compensation, the earldom of Caregas, and afterwards procured him to be elected grand-master of Calatrava, one of the greatest dignities in the kingdom. But after Henry's death the knights refused obedience to him, as having been obtruded on them, and dispossessed him after a trial which lasted six years. He now resided principally at the court of Castile, where he laboured zealously to advance the cause of Spanish literature. In 1412, however, he accompanied his kinsman Ferdinand the Just, king of Sicily, to Barcelona, when he went to receive the crown of Arragon, and there, at Ferdinand's request, presided at the consistory of troubadours, and wrote an allegorical drama, in which Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace were the principal characters. He returned to Castile in 1414, and spent the last twenty years of his life at his estate of Iniesta in poverty and studious retirement. He died at Madrid, whither he had gone on a visit in 1434—the last of his noble family. Besides poetry, history, and polite literature, Villena cultivated the mathematics, alchemy, and astrology—a circumstance which in that superstitious age gained him the character of a necromancer. On this account his fine library was seized after his death by the orders of Juan II., king of Castile, and sent for examination to Lope de Barrientos, bishop of Cuenca, and confessor to the king. "Barrientos," says a contemporary writer, "liking better to walk with the prince than to revise necromances, committed to the flames upwards of a hundred volumes without having examined them any more than the king of Morocco, or understood a jot of their contents more than the dean of Ciudad Rodrigo. There are many in the present day," he continues, "who become learned men by pronouncing others fools and magicians, and what is worse, make themselves saints by stigmatizing others as sorcerers." This preposterous indignity done to the memory of one of the best and most remarkable men that Spain has ever produced—"the ornament of his country and of the age," as he was styled—was bewailed both in prose and verse by many contemporary authors. Even yet, strange to say, Villena's name is associated in the popular mind with dealings in the black art. In the Cuentos y Poesias Populares Andaluces (a collection of folk-lore published by Fernan Caballero in 1861), is told the story or legend of the Crimson Rock, where the marquis of Villena studied with the devil. "Every day the devil took a black board, and the lesson appeared written out at the Crimson Rock; and in this way the marquis learned so fast that he came to know more than his master, and the devil grew so jealous that he let the board fall, meaning to kill the marquis; but the marquis smelled fire, so he slipped aside in the nick of time, and the board only caught his shadow, so that the marquis was left without one ever after." This legend, curious in itself and in its history, is also interesting as containing the same idea which Chamisso has illustrated so exquisitely in Peter Schlemihl, or the shadowless man. Villena, besides a translation of Dante in Spanish prose, and another of the Æneis of Virgil into verse, was author of "Arte Cisoria," or the art of carving; "Arte de Trobar, or the Gaya Sciencia," a treatise on the art of poetry; and of the "Trabajos de Hercules," or the labours of Hercules, besides the drama above mentioned, but which is now lost. The "Trabajos de Hercules" is one of the rarest books in all literature, though there were editions of it in 1483 and 1499, and probably another in 1502.—R. M., A.  VILLENA,, Marques de, favourite of Henry IV. of Castile, surnamed the Impotent, had gained a complete ascendancy over that monarch before he came to the throne. Immediately after the succession of Henry, Villena began to show his inordinate ambition. He soon became the most powerful man in the kingdom, having the entire confidence of the king, and being supported by the sycophants of the court. But the nobles, who were jealous of his power, began to murmur, and having banded themselves together resolved to seize the person of the king, and govern the kingdom in his name. The wily minister, however, now affected to be of their party, and for the moment mitigated their indignation and disaffection; but it was only for a moment. The league of the nobles, strengthened by the accession of the king of Arragon, at length presented to Henry a kind of grand remonstrance, containing a list of grievances. The king at once suspected the fidelity of Villena, who was openly accused 