a circle of the Russian government of
---
1 See Britton's Beauties of England. England Delineated. Parliamentary Population Returns. Keroma. It extends in north latitude from $57^\circ 8'$ to $58^\circ$ and in east longitude from $45^\circ 6'$ to $47^\circ 48'$. The soil is poor, and the climate raw and cold, better adapted for pasture than for agriculture; and the population, much dispersed, does not exceed 30,000 persons. The capital is the city of the same name, 437 miles from St Petersburg.
Leg. 45. 35. E. Lat. 57. 40. N.
ETSTEIN, JOHN James, a learned biblical critic, was born at Basel in 1693. On his admission to the ministry, he maintained a thesis "De variis Novi Testamenti Lectionibus," in which he showed that the great variety of readings of the New Testament affords no argument against the authenticity of the text. He had made these various readings the object of his attention, and travelled into foreign countries to examine all the manuscripts he could find. In 1730, he published "Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti Graeci Editionem accurassimam," &c. Some difficulties, dreading his unsettling the present text, procured a decree of the senate of Basel against his undertaking, and even got him prohibited from officiating in the ministry; so which he went to Amsterdam, where the Remonstrants needed him to succeed the famous Le Clerc, then superannuated, as professor of philosophy and history. His edition of the New Testament he published in 1752, in 2 vols. fol. He left the text as he found it, placing the various readings, with a critical commentary, underneath; subjoining two epistles of Clemens Romanus, till then unknown to the learned, but discovered by him in a Syriac manuscript of the New Testament. He died at Amsterdam in 1754.
VETTER ISLE, in the Eastern Seas, situated off the north coast of the island of Timor. It is about sixty-five miles in length and twenty in average breadth. Long. 126° 41'. E. Lat. 7° 24'. S.
VETTEREN, a large market-town of the Netherlands, in the province of East Flanders and circle of Dendermond. It stands on the river Scheldt, and contains 7750 inhabitants, chiefly employed in making linen and fine thread. There is a handsome bridge over the river.