Capitol Square (10 acres) contains the capitol building, of granite, which cost $3,500,000, and is the largest State capitol in the United States. Other prominent structures are the State land office, county court-house, and the buildings of the State University. There are also the State asylums for the insane, the blind, and the deaf and dumb; institutions for the colored deaf, dumb, and blind; Saint Edward's College; Tillotson Institute (colored); several seminaries and academies. Two bridges span the river, and in 1893, a great dam, one of the largest in the world, was built 2 miles above the city, to provide water and power. But the dam proved a failure, being carried away by a flood. (See Dams and Reservoirs.) The export trade in agricultural produce, live stock, cotton, grain, wool, and hides is very large; and an extensive wholesale trade in groceries, dry goods, drugs, provisions, etc., is carried on. The manufactures include planed lumber, flour, and tanned leather. The government is administered under a revised charter of 1901, by a mayor, elected biennially; a city council, elected one-half by wards and one half at large; and municipal officials, of whom the sanitary inspector, police, pound-master, bridgekeeper, and hospital matron are elected by the council, and all others by popular vote. The water-works and electric-light plant are owned and operated by the city. Austin, originally called Waterloo, was in 1837 named after Stephen F. Austin (q.v.); was incorporated, and then made the capital of the Republic of Texas in 1839; and later became the permanent capital of the State. The first free school in Texas was established here in 1871. Population, in 1890, 14,575; in 1900, 22,358.
AUSTIN, Alfred (1835—). An English poet, born May 30, 1835, at Headingley, near Leeds. He graduated at the University of London, in 1853, and was called to the bar in 1857, but abandoned law for literature. After writing much for other periodicals, he became editor of the National Review in 1883. He was made Poet Laureate of England in 1896. Among his many volumes of verse, are The Season: A Satire (1861); Savonarola, a tragedy (1881); English Lyrics (1890); The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems (1897); Songs of England (new ed., 1900), and A Tale of True Love and Other Poems (1902), dedicated to President Roosevelt. Austin attracted much notice in 1870 by an essay entitled The Poetry of the Period, in which he severely criticised Tennyson, Browning, and other Victorians. As a critic he is original and interesting, and although he has not the imagination of the poets whom he attacked, he has written some graceful verse. He has also published The Garden that I Love (1894) and In Veronica's Garden (1895)—two pieces in prose interspersed with short poems.
AUSTIN, Jane Goodwin (1831-93). A novelist who dealt with colonial New England. The more noteworthy of her romances are Fairy Dreams (1860), Moonfolk (1874), Mrs. Beauchamp Brown (1880), A Nameless Nobleman (1881), The Desmond Hundred (1882), Nantucket Scraps (1882), Standish of Standish (1889), Betty Alden (1891), and David Alden's Daughter and Other Stories (1892).
AUSTIN, John (1790–1859). The most distinguished of English writers on jurisprudence. He was born at Creeting Mill, in Suffolk, England, on March 3, 1790. At the age of 16 he entered the army and served as a subaltern in Sicily and elsewhere for five years. Resigning his commission, he returned to London and took up the study of law, and in 1818 was called to the bar. In 1820 he married Miss Sarah Taylor, of Norwich, a gifted woman, to whose devotion, courage, and steadiness of purpose he was indebted for the few but remarkable achievements of his life. In the same year he went to live in Westminster and was a welcome member of the circle to which belonged Jeremy Bentham and James and John Stuart Mill, and many others of the foremost minds and characters in England. But his great social and conversational gifts did not bring him success at the bar, a natural infirmity of will and deficiency of courage being aggravated by weakness of constitution and frequent attacks of fever and debility. Accordingly, he retired from practice in 1825, and the following year, upon the establishment of the University of London, he received the appointment of professor of jurisprudence in that institution.
This was before the period of the scientific study of the law in England, and her lawyers had not yet become aware of the existence of the science of jurisprudence. Hence his unrivaled powers of analysis and classification received scant recognition, and his work resulted in disappointment and apparent failure. To prepare himself for his task, he went to Bonn, then the principal seat of juristic learning in Europe, and spent the winter reading and studying under Niebuhr, Brandis, Schlegel, Arndt, Welcker, and Mackeldey. Returning in the spring of 1828, he began his lectures at University College. His earnestness and enthusiasm were not adequate to render his precise and accurate definitions and his profound and refined reasoning attractive to the professional students of law, and it soon became evident that there was no demand for the scientific teaching of jurisprudence. The number of his students dwindled to a mere handful. Unfortunately, no provision was made for the chair of jurisprudence beyond class fees; and in the absence of students, Austin, in 1832, was reluctantly compelled to resign his appointment. In the same year, he published his Province of Jurisprudence Determined, a work at the time little appreciated by the general public, so that the slight success it met with did not encourage him to undertake other publications on the subject. In the estimation of competent judges, however, it placed its author in the highest rank among writers on jurisprudence. In 1833, he was appointed by Lord Brougham a member of the criminal law commission. The post was not much to his taste, as he did not believe that the public received any advantage from such bodies, in the efficacy of which for constructive purposes he put no faith.
In 1836, he and his friend and pupil, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, were appointed commissioners to inquire into the laws and usages, the administration and state of government of the island of Malta, a congenial task which was performed with remarkable ability and thoroughness. But again his health broke down, and in 1838 he returned to England, only to be ordered abroad by his physicians. The next ten years were spent on the Continent, but the Revolution of 1848 drove him back to England. He then
