wish it, himself write down the complaint and answer), then collect the proofs respecting the essential facts, and, particularly, hear the witnesses himself. Hence arises the important consequence, that each party can constantly complete and correct his own statements, and is not obliged to bring together, with anxious care, in the beginning of the action, every thing which may become necessary, nor to weigh every word in a balance. No complaint can be rejected merely for informality or mistake in regard to the legal mode of bringing the action, because such defects can be remedied by order of the judge. Hence the conduct of a cause requires, in general, incomparably less time and exertion than in the common German process, and that of France, because interlocutory judgments do not take place; and the whole course of the cause is directed by decrees. The greatest advantage, however, is considered to be the little influence of mere forms, and the paramount importance which is always given to the truth. The third part of the process has nothing peculiar, as here, also, only arguments in writing take place. The remarkable character with which the Prussian judge is thus invested, has been censured by a number of the first jurists in Germany. We have not space to show the advantages of the system; the Prussians themselves are attached to it, and consider justice as strictly administered in their country. The last part of the Prussian process and the final sentence have been considered, even in Prussia, the most objectionable part of the system, and might, perhaps, be remedied by substituting for them oral public proceedings. To a free country, always more or less subject to party excitement, such a system could hardly be adapted. A curious consequence of the Prussian process is, that the career of the lawyer begins by being attached to a court, where he works under the superintendence of the judges, hears witnesses, draws up a statement of the circumstances, and afterwards becomes a judge, or some other officer of government, or one of the counsellors, the number of whom is limited in each court.

PROCESSION, in the Roman Catholic church; a solemn march of the clergy and people, attended with religious ceremonies, prayers, singing, &e., around the altars and churches, or in the streets, for the purpose of returning thanks for some divine blessing, or averting some calamity, &c. (See Pilgrimage.) Processions. as a part

of the symbolical worship of nature, were in use among the ancient heathens; thus they formed solemn processions about the fields, which had been sowed, and sprinkled them with holy water to increase their fertility, and to defend them from injuries. The festivals in honor of Bacchus, Ceres, Diana, and other divinities, among the Greeks and Romans, were solemnized with processions, in which the images of the gods were borne about ; and similar rites are still found among most heathens. (See Juggernaut.) They appear to have been introduced into the Christian church in the time of St. Ambrose (q. v.), bishop of Milan, in the fourth century. In Protestant countries, processions, as well as pilgrimages, have ceased.

PROCESSION OF THE HOLY GHOST. (See Creed, and Ghost, Holy.) PROCIDA, Giovanni di. (See Sicilian Vespers.)

PROCONSUL and PROPRETOR. The administration of the Roman provinces was originally intrusted to pretors (q. v.), but at a later period, to proconsuls and propretors, with their assistants, the questors (q. v.) and legates (q. v.). The consul and pretor received the name, the former of proconsul, the latter of propretor, at the expiration of their offices, when they went into the provinces, as govern

ors.

After the Roman empire had been extended over many countries, it was provided by a law of C. Sempronius Gracchus, that, at the consular and pretorial comitia, the senate should distribute the provinces into two provincias consulares, and six prætorias, for which the consuls and pretors should cast lots or divide them among themselves by agreement, a few days after their entrance upon office, after the expiration of the term of which, they became the governors of the provinces allotted to them. The duties of these provincial magistrates were the administration of justice, the supervision of other affairs of the province, and the command of the troops which were sta tioned in it. The term of office was usually a year, sometimes two, and rarely three or more. Within thirty days after his return to Rome, the provincial gov ernor was bound to make a report of the acts of his government and of the state of the province. If he had permitted any acts of injustice or oppression, he could be impeached therefor; as for extortion (repetundarum), peculation or embezzlement of the public money (peculatus), or for abuses in regard to the army (crimen

majestatis). Notwithstanding these precautions, the provinces were subjected to various oppressions and exactions. (See Province.)

PROCOPIUS, of Cæsarea; a Greek historian, a native of Cæsarea, in Palestine; imperial counsellor of Anastasius, also of Justin and Justinian, and secretary to Belisarius, whom he attended in his expeditions, of which he wrote the history; a senator and prefect of Constantinople, where he is supposed to have died, about 560. His works are, a History of his Own Times, in eight books, the first two relating to the Persian war, the two following to the war with the Vandals, and the remaining four to the Gothic war; and a History of the Edifices built or repaired by Justinian. A kind of scandalous chronicle of the court of Justinian, including a most degrading account of the personal history of the emperor, the empress Theodora, and many other individuals, and entitled Anecdota, has been attributed to him by some writers. His works were published at Paris (1662, folio).

PROCRIS; daughter of Erechtheus and wife of Cephalus. (q. v.)

PROCRUSTES; a celebrated robber of Attica, who had two bedsteads, one short and the other long. The monster placed his short guests in the long bed, and then, under pretence of fitting the bed to the occupant, stretched the latter till he died. If his guest was tall, Procrustes placed him in the short bed, and reduced him to the proper dimensions by cutting and clipping. Theseus finally served him as he had served others.

PROCTOR (from procurator), in the doctors' commons. (See College of Civilians.) In the English universities the proctors are two officers chosen from among the masters of arts, to superintend the scholastic exercises, to enforce the statutes, and to preserve the public peace. PROCURATOR, among the Romans; an agent, an overseer of an estate; at a later period, the title of a provincial officer, inferior to the governor (see Province, and Proconsul), who managed the revenue. In some of the small provinces, or in a part of a large province, the procurator discharged the office of a governor, and had the power of punishing capitally, as was the case with Pontius Pilate, in Judæa, which was attached to the province of Syria. In the civil law, the procurator, or proctor, answers to the attorney in the common law. (See Advocate of the Crown.)-Procurator, or proctor, in monasteries, is the conventual, to whom is in

trusted the care of the temporal concerns. -Procurator di San Marco was the title of the chief officers or senators in the Venetian republic. Besides the nine actual procuratori, from among whom the doge was chosen, there were also many titular procurators, who paid a great sum for this title, which was much coveted by the Venetian patricians on account of the rank it conferred.

PROCUREUR GÉNÉRAL, PROCUReur du Ror. (See Advocate of the Crown.) PRODICUS. (See Sophists.)

PRODUCTION. (See Political Economy.) PRETUS; twin brother of Acrisius, king of Argos. They quarrelled with each other in their mother's womb. Acrisius banished Protus from Argos. He fled to Jobates or Amphianax, king of Lycia, married his sister, and, by his aid, conquered the city of Tirynthus, and founded a small kingdom. Here Bellerophon (q. v.) took refuge with him. His daughters, the Protidæ, wandered about through Argolis and Arcadia, having become mad, either on account of their contempt of the mysteries of Bacchus, or of their derision of the statue of Juno. According to later traditions, they imagined themselves cows, and wandered through the fields with wild lowings; the same frenzy seized the other women of Argos also. Melampus cured them, and received a part of the kingdom. Perseus changed Protus into stone, by showing him the head of Medusa.

PROFANE; an epithet applied, in ancient times, to uninitiated persons who were not allowed to be present at the sacred services, particularly those of Ceres and Bacchus, but were obliged to remain outside of the temple. The Romans used the word in a wider sense, applying it to the vicious, in general. When every thing was prepared for the sacrifice, the priest exclaimed, Profani sacris exeste. The word was afterwards used by Christians in contradistinction from sacred, as profane literature. It was also applied to persons who treat sacred things with irreverence.

PROFESSED. (See Jesuits.)

PROFESSION; the act of taking the vows by the member of a religious order, after the novitiate is finished. (See Monastic Vows.)

PROFILE; in general, the view of an object from one of its chief sides, at which more or less of the other side is hidden from the eye; in particular, the contour of the human face, viewed from one side. The traits of character are often expressed with peculiar strength in the profile. A

face which, when seen directly in front, attracts us by its rounded outline, blooming color, and lovely smile, is often divested of its charm, when seen in profile, and strikes only as far as it has an intellectual expression. On the other hand, it is often the eye alone which expresses the character strongly. It requires practice to judge accurately in viewing a profile, in which the marked often strikes too strongly, the soft too slightly. Only where great symmetry exists, connected with the preponderance of the intellectual over the sensual, will the profile appear finer than the front face. In the profile the facial angle appears. (See Facial Angle.) It is comparatively easy for the artist to draw a likeness in profile, yet he must be careful not to exaggerate the peculiar traits, lest he approach caricature, nor to weaken them, lest he detract from the expression of the face. As the profile indicates more particularly the intellectual character of man, it is natural that in children it should be insignificant. In 1818, professor Blumenbach received, from the present king of Bavaria, a skull of an ancient Greek, found in a tomb of Magna Græcia. It may be considered as a model of the antique Greek profile, in respect of beautiful form. The nose is connected in a straight line with the forehead, and thus would contradict the theory recently started, that the profile, exhibited in works of ancient Greek art, was not an imitation of nature, but, as De Pauw asserts, merely a style adopted arbitrarily in various schools. In the case of buildings, mountains, &c., the outline, viewed from one side, is also called the profile. In regard to the profile of a mountain, which is a subject of much importance to the engineer, we may remark, that every mountain admits three different views; one, from the summit or one of the declivities; another, from the opposite declivity; and a third, from the adjacent country, when it is seen in profile.

The last view is the best for obtaining a correct estimate of the angle of declivity, and representing it in a plan. The profile of a mountain is of importance to the architect, the farmer, and to the soldier, in the building of roads and aqueducts, in the cultivation of the soil, in the march and especially in the disposition of troops, particularly of artillery, which is more or less difficult according to the greater or less steepness of a country. In architecture, the importance of the profile of heights has been long understood; but, in the military art, it was first fully understood in modern times,

that a correct view of the country is of the greatest importance, alike to the artillerist, the engineer, and the general officer; and much precision has been obtained, by taking the horizontal level, shown by standing water, as a basis, by a comparison with which, or with its parallels, the angle of every declivity must be determined. Small differences are generally neglected, and the declivity marked only in divisions of five degrees. Major Lehmann, who has highly distinguished himself by his labors in this branch, has gone still further; he has invented a projection, so that what could formerly only be represented by drawing the profile of a mountain, viz. the angle of the declivity, and the kind of troops it will allow to act, is rendered immediately evident by a projection, in which the observer is supposed to be stationed perpendicularly over the object represented. He obtains this end by making the lines, which represent the declivity of a mountain on a plan, blacker and closer together, if the declivity is great, and finer and farther apart, if it is slight. Total white represents a perfect plain; total black a declivity of 45° as the steepest that can be met with, unless it be a wall of rock, and consequently impassable; fine widely separated lines indicate a slope of 5°; broader and closer lines one of 10°; still closer lines one of 15°, and so on for every 5°, to 45°. The whole is founded on mathematical principles, and on the fact, that, to an observer, the declivity in a landscape will appear shaded in proportion to its inclination, while a level plain will appear in the strongest light, without shade. Plans projected in this manner are of the greatest service in the field, because they appear to a practised eye like a perfect picture. It is even possible to draw the profile of a mountain from a plan well executed in Lehmann's manner.

PROGNE, PROCNE. (See Philomela.)

PROGNOSIS; the foretelling the event of diseases from particular symptoms. Those symptoms which enable the physician to form his judgment of the cause or event of a disease are called prognostics.

PROGRESSION, in arithmetic and algebra; a series of numbers advancing or proceeding in the same manner, or according to a certain law, &c. Progression is either arithmetical or geometrical.

Arithmetical progression is a series of three or more quantities that have all the same common difference; as 3, 5, 7, &c., which have the common difference 2.

Geometrical progression is a series increasing by a common multiplicator, so that each term contains the preceding a certain number of times.

PROHIBITIVE SYSTEM. (See Political Economy.)

PROJECTILE; a heavy body, which, being put in motion by an external force impressed upon it, is dismissed from the agent and left to pursue its course; examples of projectiles are a stone thrown from the hand, a bullet from a gun, &c. The theory of the motion of projectiles is a part of higher mechanics, and is of great importance in the science of gunnery. Bodies may be projected perpendicularly, horizontally or obliquely, and are acted upon both by the force of projection and the force of gravity; the path which they describe must therefore depend upon the ratio of these forces. Besides these two elements, a third is presented by the resistance of the medium (as, for instance, the air) through which the projectile is driven. When the direction of the projecting force is perpendicular, the path of the projectile is a right line; if it be downward, the motion is accelerated by the force of gravity; if upward, it is retarded, and finally annihilated, and the body then falls by its mere gravity. But in the case of horizontal or oblique projection, when the direction of the projecting force and that of the force of gravity form an angle with each other, the result is a curvilinear motion; and, according to the laws of falling bodies, discovered by Galileo, the path of the projectile, setting aside the resistance of the air, is a parabola. The principles deduced from the laws of Galileo constitute the theory of the parabolic motion of projectiles, in which they are considered as moving in a non-resisting medium. The problem to determine the effect of the resistance of the air is, however, of great practical importance, and was first solved by Tempelhof in his Bombardier Prussien. (See the articles Mechanics, and Parabola.)

PROJECTION, in perspective, denotes the appearance or representation of an object on the perspective plane. (See Perspective.)

PROJECTION OF THE SPHERE IN PLANO is a representation of the several points or places of the surface of the sphere, and of the circles described upon it, according to the places which their images occupy, upon a transparent plane placed between the eye and the sphere, or such as they appear to the eye placed at a given dis

tance. The principal use of the projection of the sphere is in the construction of planispheres, maps and charts, which are said to be of this or that projection, according to the several situations of the eye and the perspective plane, with regard to the meridians, parallels, and other points or places so represented. The most usual projection of maps of the world is that on the plane of the meridian, which exhibits a right sphere, the first meridian being the horizon. The next is that on the plane of the equator, which has the pole in the centre, and the meridians the radii of a circle, &c. The projection of the sphere is usually divided into orthographic and stereographic, to which may be added gnomonical. thographic projection is that in which the surface of the sphere is drawn upon a plane cutting it in the middle; the eye being placed at an infinite distance vertically to one of the hemispheres. Stereographic projection of the sphere is that in which the surface and circles of the sphere are drawn upon the plane of a great circle, the eye being in the pole of that circle. Gnomonical projection of the sphere is that in which the surface of the sphere is drawn upon an external plane commonly touching it, the eye being at the centre of the sphere.

Or

PROLEGOMENA (Greek); preliminary observations, serving as an introduction to a work, to which they are prefixed, and containing historical, critical, &c. illustrations of its contents, language, form, &c.

PROLOGUE, in dramatic poetry; an address to the audience, which precedes the piece itself, that is, the proper action. It may be either in prose or verse, and is usually pronounced by one person. Among the ancients, the player who delivered this address was called the prologus, and was usually considered as a person of the drama. Thus in the Amphitryon of Plautus, Mercury appears as prologus. Prologues sometimes relate to the drama itself, and serve to explain to the audience some circumstance of the action, sometimes to the situation in which the author or actor stands to the public, and sometimes have no immediate connexion with either of these persons or subjects. (See Epilogue.)

PROMETHEUS, a Titan, son of Japetus and Clymene, a daughter of Oceanus; Eschylus makes Themis, Apollodorus Asia, his mother. He was the father of Deucalion. Cunning and fertile in expedients, he opposed Jupiter, the founder of the new race of the gods, whom he had at

first supported; and when some of the Titans proposed to expel Saturn from the throne, and elevate Jupiter in his place, Prometheus advised them to work by cunning, as it had been revealed to him by Themis and Earth, that cunning, and not force, would be victorious. But they neglected his advice, and Prometheus went over to the side of Jupiter, who became victori- ous through his counsels. Jupiter, who despised poor mortals, determined to extirpate them, and to create a new race. But Prometheus prevented him, by secretly bestowing on men the fire which had been concealed by Jove, and teaching them the arts. To punish this offence, Jupiter sent down Pandora (q. v.), who brought all kinds of diseases into the world. He caused Prometheus himself to be chained by Vulcan on a rock of the Caucasus (the eastern extremity of the world, according to the notions of the earlier Greeks), where his liver, which was renewed every night, was torn by a vulture or an eagle. But Prometheus, knowing that from Io's race would spring a man (Hercules), who, after having encountered innumerable hardships, would deliver him from his chains, suffered with heroic firmness; he was even acquainted with the future fate of Jove, which was unkown to the god himself. When the irresistible enemy of Jupiter, generated by himself and Thetis, should appear, then Prometheus was to find a termination of his sufferings. Jupiter must then be reconciled to him, because his fall could only be prevented by the counsels of Prometheus. These are evidently two traditions united by Eschylus. The cause of Jupiter's anger against mortals, and determination to destroy them, is thus related by Hesiod. The gods once attempted to make an agreement with men at Mecone, the object of which was to determine what honors the gods should enjoy, and what duties men should owe them for their protection. Prometheus appeared for men, that the gods might not impose too burdensome duties upon them, in return for their protection. A bull was brought as an offering, from which the gods were to select what portion they chose for their share. After it was cut up, Prometheus formed two heaps; in the one he placed the flesh and the fat entrails, wrapped in the skin of the bull, and covered with the stomach; in the other pile he placed the bones, artfully concealed in the fat. Jupiter, who did not see through the trick, chose for the gods, and selected the fat,

in which he was indignant to find only the bones. Hesiod adds, that from that time it became the custom to offer to the gods bones without flesh. In Lucian's dialogue, called Prometheus, Prometheus is accused not only of this division of the flesh, and of stealing the fire, but also of having created man. According to Apollodorus, he formed man of clay and water, and bestowed on him fire, by kindling dry wood at the sun. Plato relates that the gods had made the races of animals from earth and fire, but that they left to Prometheus and his brother, Epimetheus (the husband of Pandora), to arrange the proportion in which these materials should be assigned to each. Epimetheus had distributed the best powers among the irrational animals, and Prometheus, that man might not be left altogether helpless, obtained for them by stealth, from Vulcan and Minerva, the arts of fire. Others, poets as well as philosophers, have modified this mythus, according to their particular object. (See Welcker's Die Eschylische Trilogie und die Kabirenweihe zu Lemnos.)

PROMISSORY NOTE. (See Bill of Exchange.)

PRONOUN (pronomen); a word which stands instead of another word, or of a sentence, and the use of which is to prevent repetition. Pronouns are of several sorts. Personal pronouns indicate directly a person or thing, as I, thou, he, it: demonstrative are those which relate to a present subject, as this, that: relative refer to some subject previously mentioned, as who, which: interrogative refer to some unknown subject: possessive indicate possession, as mine, his. Other divisions, as reciprocal, indefinite, &c., are times made.

PRONUBA. (See Juno.)

some

PRONY, Gaspard Clair François Marie Riche de; a French geometrician and mechanical philosopher, member of the academy of sciences and of the legion of honor, and for some time professor in the polytechnic school, and first engineer of roads and bridges. He is the author of many valuable works. Among them are the Nouvelle Architecture hydraulique; Recherches physico-mathématiques sur la Theorie des Eaux courantes; Leçons de Mécanique, &c.

PROOF. (See Evidence.) PROOF IMPRESSION. (See Impression, and Avant la Lettre.)

PROPEDEUTICs (from #ponaideów, to prepare for instruction); a term used by the Germans to indicate the knowledge which