any of its members, was addressed to the Council of Five Hundred. If, after deliberation, the Council admitted the denunciation, it declared it in these terms: the denunciation against-for the fact of-dated-signed by- is admitted. The party was then cited, and heard in the interior place of the Council of Five Hundred; who declared whether there was ground for examining his conduct. He was then heard by the Council of Ancients at the bar; and, if he was deemed culpable, the Council proceeded to accusation, which was followed by suspension, when the accused was sent before the High Court of Justice, which was to proceed to trial without delay. If the party was acquitted, he resumed his func

tions.

The Legislative Body could not cite the Directory, nor any of its members, except in the case above specified. The accounts and information demanded of the Directory by the Legislative Body were furnished in writing. On the opening of a session of the Legislative Body, the Directory were obliged to present to it an estimate of expenses, the state of the finances, pensions, &c., with the abuses that had come to its knowledge. It might invite the Legislative Body to take a subject into consideration; but could not propose legislative dispositions, except with regard to peace and war. No member of the Directory durst be absent more than five days, nor remove above four myriametres, or ten leagues, from his usual residence, without being authorised by the Legislative Body. The members of the Directory could only appear in an appropriate dress. They had a constant guard of 120 infantry and 120 cavalry, who attended them in public processions, in which they had always the first rank. Each member was attended out of doors by two guards; and was entitled to the superior military honors from every post of armed force. The Directory resided in the same commune with the Legislative Body, at the expense of the republic. The salary of each was fixed at the value of 50,000 myriagrammes, about 10,000 quintals of wheat. DIREPTION, n. s.

of plundering.

Lat. direptio. The act

DIRGE, n. s. This is from the Teutonic dyrke, laudare, to praise and extol, says Dr. Johnson, after Verstegan, 'whence it is possible their dyrke, and our dirge, was a laudatory song to commemorate and applaud the dead. Bacon apparently derives it from dirige. A mournful ditty; a song of lamentation.

The imperial jointress of this warlike state Have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy, With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage. In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife. Shakspeare. Hamlet. Meanwhile, the body of Richard, after many dignities and reproaches, the diriges and obsequies of the common people towards tyrants, was obscurely

buried.

in

Bacon.

Tickell.

In vain thy hungry monntaineers
Come forth in all their warlike geers,
The shield, the pistol, dirk, and dagger,
In which they daily wont to swagger.
And in the fire his recent rags they scattered,
And dress'd him, for the present, like a Turk,
Or Greek-that is, although it not much mattered,
Omitting turban, slippers, pistols, dirk.

Byron. Don Juan.
DIRKE, v. a. To spoil; to ruin. Obsolete.
Thy waste bigness but cumbers the ground,
And dirkes the beauties of my blossoms round.

DIRT, n. s. DIRT'ILY, adv. DIRT'INESS, n. s. DIRTY, v. a. & adj.

Spenser.

Dut. an Goth dryt; Islandic, dirt. Mud; filth; mire; any thing that sticks to the clothes

Such employments are the diseases of labour, and the rust of time, which it contracts not by lying still, but by dirty employment. Taylor's Holy Living.

Marriages would be made up upon more natural motives than mere dirty interests, and increase of riches without measure or end. Temple.

Numbers engage their lives and labours to heap together a little dirt that shall bury them in the end. Wake.

Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one.

Locke.

They come at length to grow sots and epicures, mean in their discourses, and dirty in their practices South.

Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life, Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife. Pope. Ill company is like a dog, who dirts those mos

whom he loves best.

Swift.

The god of day

A tripod gives, amid the crowded way, To raise the dirty foot, and ease his toil. Gay. The lords Strutts lived generously, and never used to dirty their fingers with pen, ink, and counters. Arbuthnot.

DIRUPTION, n. s. Lat. diruptio. The act or state of bursting or breaking.

DIS, in mythology,' a god of the Gauls, the same as Pluto, the god of hell. The ancient inhabitants of Gaul supposed themselves descended from that deity.

DISA, in botany, a genus of the diandria order and gynandria class of plants. The spatha is univalvular; the petals three; the third smaller than the rest, bifid, and gibbous, at the base. Species four, all Cape plants.

DISABLED, v. a. Į Of dis, and ABLE, DISABILITY, n. s. which see. To deprive of force or power; to disqualify; impair; to declare deficient. Disability is the want of power, aptitude, or legal right to do a thing.

Our consideration of creatures, and attention unto scriptures, are not in themselves things of like disability to breed or beget faith.

Hooker.

Many withdrew themselves out of pure faintness, and disability to attend the conclusion, Raleigh. I have disabled mine estate,

By shewing something a more swelling port
Than my faint means would grant continuance.
Shakspeare.

Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; lock you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country. Id. The invasion and rebellion did not only disable this king to be a conqueror, but deprived him both of his kingdom and life. Davies's Ireland.

I will not disable any for proving a scholar, nor yet dissemble that I have seen many happily forced upon the course to which by nature they seemed much indisposed. Wotton.

Nor so is overcome Satan, whose fall from heaven, a deadlier bruise Disabled not to give thee thy death's wound.

Milton.

A Christian's life is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, for which sensual pleasure disables him, by yielding to that enemy with whom he must strive. Taylor's Holy Living.

I have known a great fleet disabled for two months, and thereby lose great occasions by an indisposition of the admiral. Temple.

Your days I will alarm, I'll haunt your nights, Acd worse than age disable your delights. Dryden. He that knows most of himself, knows least of his knowledge, and the exercised understanding is conscious of its disability. Glanville.

The ability of mankind does not lie in the impotency or disabilities of brutes.

Locke.

Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last, Full in the centre stands the bull at bay, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast, And foes disabled in the brutal fray. Byron.

DISABILITY, in law, is when a man is disabled, or made incapable to inherit any lands, or take that benefit which otherwise he might have done. This may happen four ways: 1st, by the act of an ancestor: 2d, of the party: 3d, by the act of God: or, 4th, of the law. 1. Disability by the act of the ancestor is where the ancestor is attainted of high treason, &c., which corrupts the blood of his children, so that they may not inherit his estate. 2. Disability by the act of the party is where a man binds himself by obligation, that, upon surrender of a lease, he will grant a new estate to a lessee; and afterwards he grants over the reversion to another, which puts it out of his power to perform it. 3. Disability by the act of God is where a man is non sanæ memoriæ, whereby he is incapable to make any grant, &c. So that, if he passes an estate out of him, it may, after his death, be made void; but it is a maxim in law, that a man of full age shall never be received to disable his own person.' 4. Disability by the act of the law is where a man, by the sole act of the law, without any thing by him done, is rendered incapable of the benefit of the law; as an alien born, &c.

If by simplicity you meant a general defect in those that profess angling, I hope to disabuse you. Walton's Angler.

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused. Pope. DISACCOMMODATION, n. s. Dis and accommodation. The state of seing unfit or unprepared.

Devastations have happened in some places more than in others, according to the accommodation or disaccommodation of them to such calamities.

Hale's Origin of Mankind. DISACCUSTOM, v.a. Dis and accustom. To destroy the force of habit by disuse, or contrary practice. Dis and ac

DISACKNOWLEDGE, v.a. knowledge. Not to acknowledge.

The manner of denying Christ's deity here prohibited, was, by words and oral expressions verbally to deny and disacknowledge it. South. DISACQUAINTANCE, n. s. Dis and acquaintance. Disuse of familiarity.

Conscience, by a long neglect of, and disacquaintance with itself, contracts an inveterate rust or soil.

DISANNUL', v. a. Dis and annul. This DISANNULLING, n. s. ) word, as Dr. Johnson observes, is formed, contrarily to analogy and by the needless use of the negative particle. It ought therefore to be rejected, as ungrammatical and barbarous. To annul; to deprive of authority; to vacate; to make void.

The covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. Gal. iii. 17.

The Jews ordinances for us to resume, were to check our Lord himself, which hath diannulled them.

Hooker,

DISAPPOINTMENT ISLANDS, a cluster of small islands in the South Pacific Ocean, discovered by commodore Byron in 1765, who gave them this name from the shores affording no anchorage for his ships. This obliged him to quit them without landing, or procuring any refreshments for his crew. The inhabitants appeared on the beach armed with spears full sixteen feet long; and they every where discovered hostile intentions. These islands abound with cocoa trees, and turtles are plentiful on the coast. Long. 145° 4′ W. lat. from 14° 5' to 14° S.

DISAPPOINTMENT ISLAND is also a name given by captain Wilson in 1797 to an island in the South Sea, one of the Duff's group, in E. long. 167°, and S. lat. 9° 57'. See DUFF.

DISAPPROVE', v. a. ? Fr. desapprouver. DISAPPROBATION, n. s. To dislike; to censure; expressive of dislike.

I reasoned much, alas! but more I loved ;
Sent and recalled, ordained, and disapproved.

Prior.

Then, where Nemea's howling forests wave, He drives the lion to his dusky cave; Seized by the throat the growling fiend disarms, And tears his gaping jaws with sinewy arms. Darwin.

DISARMING, in law, the prohibiting people to wear arms. It is an offence by the common law of England for persons to go or ride armed with dangerous and uncommon weapons: though gentlemen may wear common armour, according to their quality. It is also ordained by statute, that no persons shall come before the king's justices with force of arms, on pain of imprisonmeut, &c. We have noticed the introduction of the celebrated disarming act of Scotland into the Highlands, under the article CLAN.

DISARRAY', v. a. & n. s. Dis and array. To undress any one; to divest of clothes; undress; disorder.

So, as she bad, the witch they disarrayed.

Faerie Queene.

Ah, chaste bed of mine, said she, which never heretofore couldst accuse me of one defiled thought, how canst thou now receive that disastered changeling? Sidney. Immediately after his return from this very expedition, such disastrous calamities befel his family, that he burnt two of his children himself. South.

This day black omens threat the brightest fair,
That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care;
Some dire disaster, or by force or slight;

But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night.

He only does his conquest disavow, And thinks too little what they found too much. Dryden.

We are reminded by the ceremony of taking an oath, that it is a part of that obedience which we learn from the gospel, expressly to disavow all evasions and mental reservations whatsoever.

Addison's Freeholder. An earnest disavowal of fear often proceeds from fear. Clarissa.

To DISAUTHORIZE, v. a. Dis and authorize. To deprive of credit or authority.

The obtrusion of such particular instances as these, are insufficient to disauthorise a note grounded upon the final intention of nature. Wotton.

DISBAND', v. a. & v. n. Old Fr. desbander. To dismiss from military service; to retire; be dismissed; broke up.

Our navy was upon the point of disbanding, and many of our men come ashore.

Bacon. War with Spain.

The ranged powers

Disband, and wandering each his several way
Pursues.

Milton. The common soldiers, and inferior officers, should be fully paid upon their disbanding. Clarendon.

Pythagoras bids us in our station stand,

Till God, our general, shall us disband. Denham.
I am content to lead a private life;
Disbund my army to secure the state.
Dryden's Aurengzebe.

Were it not for some small remainders of piety and virtue which are yet left scattered among mankind, human society would in a short disband and run space into confusion, and the earth would become a forest.

grow

wild and Tillotson.

Bid him disband his legions. Addison's Cato. Some imagine that a quantity of water, sufficient to make such a deluge, was created upon that occasion; and, when the business was done, all disbanded again, and annihilated. Woodward.

DISBARK', v. a. Fr. debarquer. To land from a ship; to put on shore. Together sailed they, fraught with all the things To service done by land that might belong, And, when occasion served, disbarked them.

Fairfax.

The ship we moor on these obscure abodes; Disbark the sheep an offering to the gods.

Pope's Odyssey. DISBELIEVE', v. a. Į From dis and beDISBELIEVER, n. s. lieve. Not to credit; one who refuses belief; one who denies any position to be true.

The thinking it impossible his sins should be forgiven, though he should be truly penitent, is a sin, bnt rather of infidelity than despair; it being the disbelieving of an eternal truth of God's.

Hammond's Practical Catechism. Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing. Tillotson. Such who profess to disbelieve a future state, are not always equally satisfied with their own reasonings.

Atterbury.

An humble soul is frightened into sentiments, because a man of great name pronounces heresy upon the contrary sentiments, and casts the disbeliever out of the church. Watts. DISBENCH', v. a. Dis and bench. To drive from a seat.

Sir, I hope My words disbenched you not?

-No, Sir; yet oft, When blows have made me stay, I filed from words. Shakspeare.

DISBRANCH', v. a. Dis and branch. To separate, or break off, as a branch from a tree. She that herself will sliver and disbranch From her maternal sap, perforce must wither, And come to deadly use. Shakspeare. King Lear. Such as are newly planted need not be disbranched till the sap begins to stir, that so the wound may be healed without a scar. Evelyn's Kalendar.

DISBUD', v. a. With gardeners. To take away the branches or sprigs newly put forth, that are ill placed.

DISBUR'DEN, v. a. Dis and burden. To ease of a burden; to unload.

The river, with ten branches or streams, disburdens himself within the Persian Sea.

Peacham on Drawing.