Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/337

 CHASLES 329 Maryland convention sent him as one of five delegates to the continental congress of 1774, and he continued a member of successive con- gresses until the end of 1778. In 1776 he went with Charles and John Carroll on a mission to Canada, which he was the more ready to un- dertake, because the Maryland convention was inclined to half-way measures and refused to instruct its delegates to vote for the declara- tion of independence. On his return he can- vassed the state, brought public opinion to bear on the convention, and having thus caused the passage of the desired resolution, returned to Philadelphia in season to vote for indepen- dence. He was appointed on most of the im- portant committees in congress, where his in- dustry was unwearied. The last two or three years of the war he spent at home in the prac- tice'of law. In 1783 he went to England as commissioner of Maryland, to recover funds invested previously to the war in the bank of England. He remained there nearly a year, and succeeded in putting the claim so far in the way of adjustment that subsequently $650,000 was paid over to that state. In 1786 he re- moved to Baltimore, and in 1788 was appoint- ed chief justice of a newly established criminal court there, and in 1791 chief justice of the general court of Maryland. Between these dates he was a member of the Maryland con- vention for considering the federal constitution, which he did not think sufficiently democratic. His course on the occasion of a riot in 1794 characterizes the man. He had caused the ar- rest of two popular men as ringleaders. They refused to give bail, and the sheriff was appre- hensive of a rescue should he take them to prison. " Call out the posse comitatus, then," said the judge. "Sir," was the reply, "no one will serve." "Summon me, then; I will be the posse comitatus, I will take them to jail." Such was the state of the public mind that the grand jury, instead of presenting the rioters, presented the judge for holding a place in two courts at the same time. He simply told them that they had meddled with topics be- yond their province. In 1796 Washington appointed him an associate justice of the su- preme court. In 1804 the house of representa- tives, at the instance of John Randolph, im- peached him for misdemeanor in the conduct of several political trials, particularly those of Fries and Callender, convicted of seditious li- bels five years before. The senate discharged him, March 5, 1805, a majority being in his favor on five of the eight charges, and a ma- jority against him on the residue. After his discharge, he resumed his seat on the bench, which he retained until his death. CHASLES, Michel, a French mathematician, born at Epernon, Nov. 15, 1793. After the completion of his studies in 1814 at the poly- technic school of Paris, he removed to Char- tres, where he obtained a professorship in 1825. He subsequently returned to Paris, where in 1841 he was appointed professor of geodosy and machinery in the polytechnic school, and in 1846 of superior geometry, a chair espe- cially established for him in the faculty of sci- ences. In 1851 he became a member of the academy. In 1867 he reported to that body his possession of alleged autograph letters of Galileo, Pascal, and Newton, containing start- ling revelations, and claiming for Pascal the merit of Newton's most celebrated discov- eries. These letters were part of about 27,000 which Chasles purchased from a M. Irene Lu- cas for 140,000 francs, including about 2,000 pretended to have been written by Rabelais, and others by Mary Stuart, Shakespeare, Dante, Petrarch, and Julius Csesar, and by em- perors, poets, saints, and statesmen of various countries and eras. Though these documents were spurious, with the exception of about 100, Chasles, Elie de Beaumont, and Balard regard- ed the whole of them as genuine, and Charles Dupin insisted upon their being published by the government. Lucas was sentenced, Feb. 23, 1870, to two years' imprisonment for for- gery and fraud. The principal works of Chasles are : Apercu historique sur Vorigine et le deve- loppement des methodes en geometric (Paris, 1837 ; German translation by Sohncke, Halle, 1839) ; Sur V attraction des ellipsoides (1837 et seq.); Histoire de Varithmetique (1843); Sur ^attraction des corps de forme quelconque (1845) ; Traite de geometric superieure (1852 ; German translation by Schnuse, Brunswick, 1856) ; and Traite des sections coniques (1865 et seq.) CHASLES, Victor Enphemion Philarete, a French author, cousin of the preceding, born at Main- villiers, near Chartres, Oct. 8, 1798, died in Ven- ice, Aug. 3, 1873. In 1815, while a printer's apprentice, he was arrested on charge of en- tering into a political conspiracy. Having been released through the influence of Cha- teaubriand, he went to London, and entered the employment of Valpy, the classical pub- lisher, and during seven years acquired great familiarity with English literature, and after- ward on the continent with that of Germany. Later he visited other parts of Europe and the United States. Having returned to Paris in 1823, his contributions to periodicals and the Journal des Debats gave him the reputation of an accomplished literary critic. In 1827 he shared with Saint-Marc Girardin an academi- cal prize for his essay on French language and literature in the 16th century. In 1837 he was appointed director of the Mazarin library, and in 1841 professor of the Germanic languages and literature in the college de France. In 1870 he returned to this chair, after having filled for some time that of the languages and literature of southern Europe, during the exile of the regular incumbent, Edgar Quinet. His Etudes de litterature comparee treats, in about 20 separate volumes (1847-'64), of the litera- ture of antiquity, of the middle ages, of Spain and Italy, of the English revolution, of the lit- erature and civilization of England, of the Uni-