the emperor. These are a kind of little commonwealths; the chief magistrate whereof does homage to the emperor; but in other respects, and in the administration of justice, is sovereign. Imperial cities have a right of coining money, and of keeping forces and fortified places. Their deputies assisted at the imperial diets, where they are divided into two branches, that of the Rhine and that of Sambia. There were formerly 22 in the former and 37 in the latter; but since 1815 there are only four, Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, and Frankfort.

IMPERIAL Diet, is an assembly or convention of all the states of the empire. See Diet and Germany.

IMPERSONAL verb, in Grammar, a verb to which the nominative of any certain person cannot be prefixed; or, as others define it, a verb destitute of the two first and primary persons, as decet, oportet, &c. The impersonal verbs of the active voice end in t, and those of the passive in tur; they are conjugated through the third person singular of almost all the tenses and moods: they want the imperative, instead of which we use the present of the subjunctive; as ponitcat, pugnatur, &c. nor, but a few excepted, are they to be met with in the supines, participles or gerunds.

IMPEVIOUS, a thing not to be pervaded or passed through, either by reason of the closeness of its pores, or the particular configuration of its parts.

IMPETIGO, in Medicine, an extreme roughness and founess of the skin, attended with an itching and plentiful scurf.

The impetigo is a species of dry pruriginous itch, wherein scales or scurf succeed apace; arising from saline corrosive humours thrown out upon the exterior parts of the body, by which means the internal parts are usually relieved.the act of obtaining anything by request or prayer.

Impetration was more particularly used in our statutes for the pre-obtaining of benefices and church-offices in England from the court of Rome, which did belong to the disposal of the king and other lay patrons of the realm; the penalty whereof is the same with that of provisors, 25 Ed. III.