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 PIERCE and congress adjourned without making any provision for the support of the army. The president immediately issued a proclamation calling an extra session to convene on Aug. 21, when the army bill was passed without any proviso, and immediately afterward congress adjourned. Pierce's message on the assembling of congress in December was chiefly devoted to the subject of Kansas, and in its citation of events and expressions of praise it took strong grounds against the free-state party of the country. Soon after the close of his adminis- tration, March 4, 1857, Mr. Pierce visited Ma- deira, and afterward made a protracted tour in Europe, returning home in 1860. During the civil war he made in Concord a speech, still known as the " mausoleum of hearts speech," expressing sympathy with the confederates. The life of Franklin Pierce, to the period of his nomination as candidate for the presidency, was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, his col- lege classmate (Boston, 1852). PIERCE, George Foster, a bishop of the Metho- dist Episcopal church, South, born in Greene co., Ga., Feb. 3, 1811. He graduated at Frank- lin college in 1829, and began to study law, but entered the Georgia conference at Macon in 1830. With the exception of the year 1834, during which he was stationed in Charleston, S. C., he labored in the regular ministry in his native state till 1838-'9, when he became first' president of the Georgia female (now Wesley- an) college in Macon. While here he edited jointly with P. Pendleton the " Southern Lady's Book." In 1848 he was elected president of Emory college, Ga., and continued in that of- fice until his election to the episcopacy at the general conference in Columbus, Ga., in 1854. His present residence (1875) is at Sparta, Ga. He is the author of "Incidents of Western Travel," edited by T. O. Summers (1857). PIERER. 1. Joliann Friedrich, a German pub- lisher, born in Altenburg, Jan. 22, 1767, died there, Dec. 21, 1832. He began the study of law, but afterward studied medicine, and set- tled as a physician in his native city. In 1801 he founded the Liter arisches Comptoir, a book- selling establishment, which he gave up in 1816 to F. A. Brockhaus, but resumed in 1823, giv- ing it the name Literatur- Comptoir. He as- sisted in the edition of the EncyHopadisches Wdrterbucli, edited by his son. He founded the Medicinische Nationalzeitung (1798) and the Allgemeine mediciniscTie Annalen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1800), and published an edition of the works of Hippocrates (Altenburg, 1806). II. Heiorich August, son of the preceding, born in Altenburg, Feb. 26, 1794, died May 12, 1850. In 1811 he studied medicine at Jena, and in 1813 joined the army, rose to the rank of ma- jor, and resigned in 1831. In 1824 he became editor of the Encyklopadisches Worterbuch (26 vols., Altenburg, 1824-'36), and afterward, having taken charge of his father's publishing house in his own name, published a new edi- tion (34 vols., 1840-'46). His sons and suc- PIGEON 503 cessors, Victor and Eugen, published a third edition under the title of Universal- Lexicon (17 vols., Altenburg, 1849-'52), a fourth in 1857- '65, and a fifth in 1869 et seq. A sixth was commenced in 1873 at Oberhausen by Adolph Spaarmann, successor of the Pierers, but sus- pended, and resumed in 1875. P1ERPONT, John, an American poet, born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785, died in Med- ford, Mass., Aug. 27, 1866. He graduated at Yale college in 1804, and in 1805 went to South Carolina as a private tutor. Returning to Con- necticut in 1809, he studied law in the school at Litchfield, and settled at Newburyport, Mass., where he delivered before the Washington be- nevolent society his poem of " The Portrait." He afterward unsuccessfully tried mercantile pursuits in Boston and Baltimore. In 1816 he published at Baltimore "Airs of Palestine," a poem, and soon after began the study of the- ology, completing his course in the Harvard divinity school. In 1819 he was ordained min- ister of the Hollis street Congregational church in Boston. He was an ardent advocate of va- rious reforms, which led to his retirement from his church in Boston in 1845. He then be- came pastor of the Unitarian church in Troy, N. Y., and in 1849 of the first Congregational church in Medford, Mass., which charge he re- signed in 1856. On the outbreak of the civil war in 1861 he entered the army as chaplain of a Massachusetts regiment, but soon received an appointment in the treasury department at Washington, which office he retained until his death. In 1840 he published "Airs of Pales- tine, and other Poems." At the Litchfield cen- tennial celebration of 1851 he delivered a long poem. He published several school readers, and about 20 sermons and addresses. PIGAULT-LEBRCN, a French author, whose real name was CHARLES ANTOINE GUILLATJME PIGAULT DE L'PINOY, born in Calais, April 8, 1753, died at La Celle Saint-Cloud, July 24, 1835. He was treated with great rigor by his father, an influential magistrate, who connived with the local authorities in announcing his son's death because he had married a girl of the working classes. An appeal to parliament resulted only in the confirmation of his death by that body, when he assumed the surname Lebrun. He was one of the most successful as well as most licentious writers of his day. His more important works (part of which he translated into Spanish) are comprised in his (Eumes completes (20 vols., Paris, 1822-'4). He also published Histoire de France abregee d Vusage des gens du monde (8 vols., 1823-'8), extending to the death of Henry IV. PIGEON, an extensive family of rasorial birds, by some ornithologists raised into an order, characterized by a short, straight, compressed bill, with the apical half vaulted and strong, and the base comparatively weak and covered with a fleshy membrane in which the nostrils are placed ; wings moderate ; tarsi more or less long and robust, and the toes long, divided, and