DESSAUER, THE OLD.  See LEOPOLD OF DESSAU.

DESTOUCHES, a French dramatist, born at Tours; his plays were comedies, and he wrote 17, all excellent (1680-1754); also a French painter (1790-1884).

DETMOLD (9), capital of Lippe, 47 m.  SW. of Hanover, with a bronze colossal statue of ARMINIUS (q. v.) near by.

DETROIT (285), the largest city in Michigan, U.S., a great manufacturing and commercial centre, situated on a river of the same name, which connects Lake St. Clair with Lake Erie; is one of the oldest places in the States, and dates from 1670, at which time it came into the possession of the French; is a well-built city, with varied manufactures and a large trade, particularly in grain and other natural products.

DETTINGEN, a village in Bavaria, where an army of English, Hanoverians, and Austrians under George II., in 1743 defeated the French under Duc de Noailles.

DEUCALION, son of Prometheus, who, with his wife Pyrrha, by means of an ark which he built, was saved from a flood which for nine days overwhelmed the land of Hellas.  On the subsidence of the flood they consulted the oracle at Delphi as to re-peopling the land with inhabitants, when they were told by Themis, the Pythia at the time, to throw the bones of their mother over their heads behind them.  For a time the meaning of the oracle was a puzzle, but the readier wit of the wife found it out; upon which they took stones and threw them over their heads, when the stones he threw were changed into men and those she threw were changed into women.

DEUS EX MACHINA, the introduction in high matters of a merely external, material, or mechanical explanation instead of an internal, rational, or spiritual one, which is all a theologian does when he simply names God, and all a scientist does when he simply says EVOLUTION (q. v.).

DEUTERONOMY (i. e. the Second Law), the fifth book of the Pentateuch, and so called as the re-statement and re-enforcement, as it were, by Moses of the Divine law proclaimed in the wilderness.  The Mosaic authorship of this book is now called in question, though it is allowed to be instinct with the spirit of the religion instituted by Moses, and it is considered to have been conceived at a time when that religion with its ritual was established in Jerusalem, in order to confirm faith in the Divine origin and sanction of observances there.

DEUTSCH, EMANUEL, a distinguished Hebrew scholar, born at Neisse, in Silesia, of Jewish descent; was trained from his boyhood to familiarity with the Hebrew and Chaldea languages; studied under Boeckh at the university of Berlin; came to England, and in 1855 obtained a post in the library of the British Museum; had made a special study of the “Talmud,” on which he wrote a brilliant article for the Quarterly Review, to the great interest of many; his ambition was to write an exhaustive treatise on the subject, but he did not live to accomplish it; died at Alexandria, whither he had gone in the hope of prolonging his days (1829-1873).