DECEMBER 31.

71 B. C. Pompey and Crassus triumph at Rome. The former had closed the ten years' war in Lusitania, and Crassus the revolt of Spartacus at home. Marcus Lucullus triumphed the same year, bringing with him the Thracian colossus of Apollo.

192. Lucius Aurelius Commodus, a dissipated emperor of Rome, strangled, and Pertinax elected. It was in the reign of this emperor, A. D. 190, that the Capitoline library at Rome was destroyed.

406. The Huns, 100,000 strong, entered Gaul, and laid desolate her seventeen luxurious provinces with havoc and flame, from the banks of the Rhine to the Pyrenæan mountains.

535. The acquisition of Sicily from the Goths. Belisarius entered Syracuse in triumph, a city which once embraced 22 miles.

1384. John Wickliffe died; professor of divinity in the university of Oxford, and father of the reformation of the English church from popery.

1460. Battle of Wakefield, in England; the duke of York and 3000 of his followers slain.

1563. Charles de Cosse died; a French general of great military talents, and employed also as a diplomatist.

1583. Thomas Erastus, a celebrated German physician and divine, died. He wrote several works on philosophy, physic and divinity; but is chiefly memorable for his work on excommunication, in which he denies the power of the church, and affirms its censures to be incapable of extending beyond the present life.

1600. The East India company established by a charter from Elizabeth, granted to the earl of Cumberland and 215 knights, aldermen and merchants. The original capital was £22,000, divided into shares of £50.

1616. James Le Maire died at sea in returning with the Dutch navigator, Schouten. In this voyage, the straits that bear his name were discovered, between Staaten Land and Terra del Fuego.

1620. Era of the first settlement of New England. It being sabbath, they kept the day for the first time in their new house, and in grateful remembrance of the friends they found in the last town they left in their native country, they called it Plymouth.

1674. Battle of Mulhausen, in Alsace, in which the French marshal Turenne defeated the Austrians.

1679. John Adolphus Borelli, a distinguished philosopher and mathematician, of Naples, died; author of thirteen treatises in Italian and Latin.

1704. The peak of Teneriffe formed a lateral eruption in the plain de los Infantes, preceded by tremendous earthquakes.

1718. John Flamstead, an eminent English astronomer, died. He formed a new catalogue of the fixed stars, containing about three thousand.

1762. Mary Collyer died; the translator of Gesner's poem of the Death of Abel.

1771. Christian Adolphus Klotz, professor of philosophy at Göttingen, died. He distinguished himself by his Latin poems, his numismatic treatises, his works on the study of antiquity, and on the value and mode of using ancient gems.

1775. Assault of the American forces under Montgomery and Arnold on Quebec. Montgomery was killed in advancing upon the barrier, at the head of the New York troops, and Arnold's division, after a desperate engagement, in which the Americans sustained the whole force of the garrison three hours were compelled to surrender themselves prisoners of war. They lost 100 killed, 300 taken.

1781. Henry Laurens, ambassador from the United States to France, liberated from the tower of London in exchange for general Burgoyne.

1791. John Ellis, a London scrivner, died; the last of that ancient profession. He was an alderman of London nearly half a century, and was besides a man of literature, whose conversation was highly extolled by Dr. Johnson.

1792. The quantity of gold coined at the royal mint of Mexico this year was $969,430; of silver, $23,225,611; total, $24,195,041; the largest sum which had been coined there since the conquest of the country.

1793. Thomas Jefferson resigned the office of secretary of state to the United States.

1796. The thermometer 4° below zero in London. Several persons were frozen to death.

1799. John Francis Marmontel, a French novelist, died. He was admired for the vigor and delicacy of his writings, but was allowed to pass his last days in a state of retirement bordering on want.

1811. Tariffa, near Gibraltar, attacked by the French, who were repulsed with great loss by the British under colonel Skerritt.

1812. United States frigates President and Congress returned to Boston after an active cruise of three months, during which they passed over a space of about 8000 miles without meeting an adventure to test the courage and discipline of their crews. They, however, captured two British vessels, one laden with $300,000 specie and gold dust, the other with oil.

1816. Deaths in Boston this year, 904; in Paris, 19,992.

1820. Joseph Lathrop, an American clergyman, died. His publications were more numerous and highly esteemed than those of any contemporary theologian in America.

1826. William Gifford, an English poet and reviewer, died. He rose from a shoemaker's bench to an editor's stool where he acquired fame and fortune. He was a very good poet and critic, but a poor shoemaker.

1832. Insurrection of the slaves in Jamaica. More than 150 plantations were destroyed, and the loss of property was estimated at more than four millions of dollars. About 2000 negroes are supposed to have been killed.

1835. Battle of Withlacoochie; about 250 United States troops and militia engaged 300 Seminole Indians. Of the latter 40 were killed; of the former, 4 killed, 59 wounded.

1839. Hyacinthe Louis de Quelen, archbishop of Paris, died. At the revolution of 1830 his adherence to the Bourbons incensed the mob to level the archiepiscopal palace to the ground, by which he was reduced to poverty. He was a man of distinguished talents and learning.

1840. Prentiss Mellen, chief justice of Maine, died at Portland, aged 77. The first eleven volumes of the Maine Reports are a monument of his legal discrimination, great familiarity with practice, and high sense of justice.

1846. James Cochran died at Batavia, Genesee co., N. Y., aged 83. To him the world owes the invaluable invention of making cut nails, yet he died poor.

1849. Hudson river rail road opened to Poughkeepsie.

1852. Amos Lawrence, a wealthy and leading Boston merchant, died, aged 77. His charities amounted to several hundred thousands of dollars.

INDEX.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX TO NAMES OF PERSONS.