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 410 VOS voss 1619 finally expelled him from Holland as a heretic. He lived two years in concealment, but an asylum was offered by the duke of Hoi- stein to him and the Arminians, and on a tract of land given them they built the town of Friedrichstadt. Vorstius wrote many contro- versial works, and some few devotional, prin- cipally in Latin, but also in German and Dutch. VOS, Martin do, a Flemish painter, born in Ant- werp about 1530, died there in 1603 or 1604. He studied in his native city under his father, Peter de Vos, a native of Leyden, and under Francis Floris, and in Venice under Tintoretto. There are upward of 600 prints after his de- signs. He chiefly excelled in religious paint- ings, the best in the museum of Antwerp being " The Triumph of Christ," " Oassar's Penny," and "St. Luke painting the Portrait of the Virgin." VOSGES (Ger. Vogesen or Wasgan), a chain of mountains in N. E. Franco and the German Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine, forming a con- tinuation of the Jura chain. They separate the Rhine from its W. affluent the Moselle, run N. along the borders of Alsace on the east, and of the French departments of IIaute-Sa6ne,Vosges, and Meurthe-et- Moselle, and of .German Lor- raine on the west, forming the W. boundary of part of the basin of the Rhine, the correspond- ing E. boundary being formed by the Black Forest The Hardt in Rhenish Bavaria is a N. prolongation of the chain, and the Faucilles connect it with the plateau of Langres and the C6te d'Or in the southwest. The rivers Mo- selle, Meurthe, Saar, 111, and Ognon have their sources in these mountains. The average height is from 8,000 to 4,000 ft., and the rounded tops, covered with snow for several months, are called balloons, the principal being the Ballon de Guebviller (Gebweiler), nearly 4,700 ft. high, Ballon d'Alsaoe, and Ballon de Ser- vance. The mountains are generally divided into the upper, central, and lower Vosges. They are well wooded, and have mines of iron, lead, rock salt, and especially copper, and nu- merous mineral and thermal springs. Goitre and cretinism are prevalent. VOSGES, a N. E. department of France, formed from the S. portion of the ancient province of Lorraine, bordering on Menrthe- et-Moselle, Haute-Marne, Haute-Sa6ne, and Al- sace-Lorraine ; area, 2,266 sq. m. ; pop. in 1872, 892,988. It has the Vosges mountains on the east and the Faucilles in the south, and is drained by the Moselle, Meurthe, Mouse, and Saone. The climate is temperate in the low- lands and cold in the mountains. The soil in the valleys is fertile. The principal crops are potatoes, hops, flax, hay, and fruits. Many medicinal plants are cultivated. In the moun- tains are forests of oak, ash, &c. There are manufactures of iron and steel, cutlery, and paper. The exports are principally timber, pork, and cheese. The canton of Schirmeck, containing 12 communes, and six other com- munes, with an aggregate population of 21,- 017, were annexed in 1871 to Germany. The department is divided into the arrondissements of Epinal, Mirecourt, Neufchateau, Rernire- inont, and St. 1)16. Capital, Epinal. VOSS, Johann Heinrieh, a German scholar, born at Sommersdorf, Mecklenburg, Feb. 20, 1751, died in Heidelberg in March, 1826. He be- came in 1769 a private tutor, and in 1772 went to Gottingen as associate editor of the Mvsen- almanach, and was a prominent member of the Hainbund. He studied there under Ileyne, with whom he often differed, which resulted in life-long enmity. In 1775 he joined Clau- dius at Wandsbeck, near Hamburg; in 1777 married the youngest sister of Boje, his for- mer associate editor; and in 1778 became rec- tor of the gymnasium at Otterndorf in Han- over. After a protracted controversy with Lichtenberg, a friend of Heyne, on account of Voss's manner of writing Greek names, he published in 1781 his great translation of the Odyssey, which has ever since been the stan- dard German version of that poem. In 1782 he became rector of the gymnasium of Eutin. Here he wrote many elegant original poems, and in 1789 published his edition of Virgil's Georgics with a German version, and a com- mentary, of which Niebuhr declared that it left nothing for future commentators to do. In 1793 ho published his transition of the Iliad, followed by a revised edition of the Odyssey, which, though perhaps more correct than the previous version, was not so popular. He now devoted himself to the study of Gre- cian mythology, mostly in opposition to Heyne's views; and his researches were embodied in his Mythologische Briefe (2 vols. 8vo, Konigs- berg, 1794). In 1797 'he edited the Eclogues of Virgil, accompanied by a translation and a commentary. In 1799 he published a transla- tion of the ^Kneid. His original poems, inclu- ding the famous idyllic narrative Luise, were collected in four volumes in 1802. His health failing, he now resigned his ottice, received a pension of 600 tlmlers, lived for some years in retirement at Jena, and in 1803 published in the Allgemcine Literaturzeitung of that city the famous review of Heyne's edition of Ho- mer, which created a great sensation. The elector (afterward grand duke) of Baden hav- ing invited him to Heidelberg with an offer of a pension of 1,000 florins, he removed thith- er in 1805, and produced improved editions of his works, besides numerous new ones, among which were translations of Horace, Hesiod, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Tibullus, Lygdamus, Aristophanes, and Aratus. When 68 years old he began, in conjunction with his sons Hein- rieh and Abraham, a translation of Shake- speare, which was not completed at the time of his death. The conversion of his friend Count Friedrich Stolberg to Roman Catholi- cism led to his essay Wu ward Fritz Stolbern tin Unfreier (1819), in which he attacked the Roman Catholics and the Protestant mystics of Germany. This produced a widespread con-