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considered more a fool than a heretic. He afterwards lived in Genoa and Basle. Beza asserts that Postel offered to abjure his errors and to enter one of the Protestant communities, which seems doubtful. It appears that in 1553 he was a teacher of mathematics at Dijon, when his obnoxious opinions compelled him again to flee. He lived for some time at the court of the emperor Fer- dinand I, whence, after a public abjuration of his opin- ions, he was recalled to his former situation at the Col- lege of France by Francis I, but soon lost it again, and spent the last eighteen years of his life in the monastery of Saint-Martin des Champs. " In his old age," says a contemporary, "princes and men of science paid their visits to the venerable recluse at Saint -Martin des Champs, where he lived. He there sat in his chair, his white beard falling down to his girdle ; and in his deportment was such a majesty, such gravity in ev- erything he said, that no one ever left him without a wish to see him again, and without astonishment at what he had heard." He died Sept. 6, 1581. It was during his life at the monastery that Postel published in 1572 his ideas about the comet which appeared in that year, and in 1575 a new edition of his Histoires Orientates, dedicated to Francis of Valois. He says in the dedication that Catharine de' Medici had made choice of him for preceptor of her son Francis, and that he declined the position on account of the dangers of the court, which he had painfully experienced in his own life. It is related by contemporaries that when he lectured at Paris, at the College of the Lombards, he drew such crowds that, the great room of the institute being too narrow, he caused his auditors to go down into the yard, and spoke to them from a window. Maldo- natus says that " there came out of his mouth as many oracles as words." He may have been wrongly accused of atheism, but he entertained strange theological opin- ions. Among the wild and extravagant notions that he entertained, one was that he had died, and risen again with the soul of Adam ; whence he called him- self "Postellus restitutus;'- he also maintained that women shall have the dominion over men, and that his writings were revealed to him by Jesus Christ. He was therefore confident of being able to explain by rea- son and philosophy all Christian dogmas, inclusive of the mysteries, his personal reason having become so su- perior to that of other men that by its means he would convert all nations to the Christian faith. " Christ has given," he said, "the excellence of faith to the apostles; but faith being now almost extinct, he gave us, and es- pecially to me, instead of the faith, nay, with the faith, reason, so powerful and victorious, as never did the apostles have it. And thus innumerable tilings in the Scripture and in nature, which never were understood, by said victorious reason will be understood." He as- serted that the human soul of Christ was created and united with the eternal Word before the creation of the world. He affirmed that everything that was in nat- ure was described in the heavens in Hebrew characters, formed by the arrangement of the stars. The world was to subsist only for 6000 years, an opinion he had taken from the Jewish Cabala. The end of the world will be preceded by the restoration of all things into the state they were in before the fall of Adam. He dreamed of the fusion of all religions into one creed; and in his desire to reconcile Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans, undertook to explain the most extravagant opinions. Put, whatever judgment we may pronounce on his opin- ions, justice compels us to recognise that all historians commend the purity of his life, the wisdom of his con- duct, and the benevolence of his character : he often neglected his own interests to take care of others'. He left, Linguarum XII characteribus differentium alpha- betum introductio ac legendi methodus (Paris, 1538, 4to) : — De originibus seu de Hebraica lingua: et gen/is antiqui- tate atque variorum linguarum affinitate (ibid. 1538, 4to): — Grammatica Arabica (ibid. 1538, 4to) : — Syria descriptio (ibid. 1540, 8vo);— De magistratibus Atheni-