Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, a Swiss author, born near Lausanne, June 17, 1797, died near Vevay in May, 1847. He studied at the academy of Lausanne, and taught French literature at the university of Basel from 1817 to 1837, when he became professor at Lausanne, teaching practical theology till 1845, and subsequently French literature. He had entered the Protestant ministry in 1819, and in 1823 Guizot procured a prize from the society of Christian morals for his essay Sur la liberie des cultes. He became one of a commission for organizing the Protestant church in the canton of Vaud; but his views of the respective functions of the government and of the church not being adopted, he seceded from the state church and aided in forming an independent organization; and he finally (Dec. 2, 1846) lost his professorship on account of his. opposition to the new radical authorities of the canton. His works, the most important of which have been translated into English, in- elude Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, et sur la separation de l'-Eglise et de l'Etat (Paris, 1842; 2d revised ed., 1858); Etudes sur Blaise Pascal (1848; 2d ed., 1856); Meditations évangeliques (1849); Etudes sur la litterature francaise au XIXs siècle (3 vols., 1849-'51; 2d ed., 1857); Théologie pastorale, ou théologie du ministère évangelique (1850; 2d ed., 1854); Histoire de la littèrature au XVIIIe siecle (2 vols., 1851); and Homiletique, ou theorie de la predication (1853). J. F. Astie has published, under the title of Esprit d' Alexandre Vinet, a synopsis of Pensées et reflexions, extracted from all his works (2 vols., Geneva, 1861). - See A. Vinet, sa me et ses oeuvres, by Edmond Schérer (Paris, 1853); A. Vinet, histoire de sa vie et de ses outrages, by E. Rambert (Lausanne and Paris, 1875); and SainteBeuve's Portraits contemporains, vol. ii.