DOROTHEUS, a professor of jurisprudence in the law school of Berytus in Syria, and one of the three commissioners appointed by the emperor Justinian to draw up a book of Insti tutes to serve as an introduction to the Digest already completed. His colleagues were Tribonian and Theophilus, and their work was accomplished in 533. Dorotheus later wrote a commentary on the Digest, which is called the Index, and was published by him in 542. Fragments of this commentary have been preserved in the Scholia appended to the Basilica, from which it seems probable that the commentary of Dorotheus contained the sub stance of a course of lectures on the Digest delivered by him in the law school of Berytus.
D'ORSAY, ALFRED GUILLAUME G A B R I E L, COUNT (1801-1852), a famous dandy and wit, was born in Paris on Sept. 4, 18oi, and was the son of General D'Orsay, from whom he inherited an exceptionally handsome person. In his youth he entered the French army and served as a garde du corps of Louis XVIII. In 1822, while stationed at Valence on the Rhone, he met the earl and countess of Blessington (q.v.) whose house he had visited when in London a little earlier. At the invitation of the earl he accompanied the party on their tour through Italy. In the spring of 1823 he met Lord Byron at Genoa, and the published correspondence of the poet at this period tains numerous references to the count's gifts and ments, and to his peculiar relationship to the Blessington family. A diary which D'Orsay had kept during a visit to London in 2 2 was much praised by Byron for the knowledge of men and manners and the keen faculty of observation it displayed. On Dec, I, 1827, Count D'Orsay married Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of 15, the daughter of Lord Blessington by his previous wife. The union, if it rendered his connection with the Blessington family less ostensibly equivocal than before, was in other respects an unhappy one, and a separation took place almost immediately. After the death of Lord Blessington, which occurred in 1829, Lady Blessington returned to England, accompanied by Count D Orsay, and her home, first at Seamore Place, then at Gore House, soon became a resort of the fashionable literary and artistic society of London. Count D'Orsay had been from his youth a zealous Bonapartist, and one of the most frequent guests at Gore House was Prince Louis Napoleon. In 1849 he went bankrupt, and the establishment at Gore House being broken up, he went to Paris with Lady Blessington, who died a few weeks after their arrival. His relations with Napoleon were less cordial after the coup d'etat of 1851 of which he disapproved. His pointment to the post of director of fine arts was announced only a few days before his death which occurred on Aug. 4, 1852.
Count d'Orsay was the supreme dandy, and the list of his accomplishments is surprising. In addition to wit, charm, and taste in dress and furniture, he was a good shot, a good horse man, a good fencer and even a good boxer. He had considerable skill in painting and sculpture as well. It is more surprising, per haps, to find him in the light of benefactor to distressed com patriots in England, and as the original founder of the Societe de Bien f aisance.
Much information as to the life and character of Count D'Orsay is to be found in Richard Madden's Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington (1855).