OLAUS GERHARD, a famous orientalist of Germany, was born of poor parents at Tondern, in Schleswig, on the 14th of December 1734. Passing from the gymnasium of Altona, where he was strongly influenced by Maternus de Cila, the distinguished eastern scholar, he entered the university of Göttingen in 1756. When he had finished his studies at this place, he was sent by Calenberg, professor at Halle, on a mission to the Jews, from which he returned in 1760, on the death of his employer, without having converted a single individual. He was subsequently appointed professor of oriental literature at the university of Butzow, where he remained till his death. Tychsen was a man of great knowledge, but he was full of singularities and conceits; and so vain was he of his acquirements, that he often got into very awkward disputes with his contemporaries. He certainly had the best of it in his controversy with Kennicott, but F. P. Bayer of Valencia gave him a smart chastisement. He wrote various dissertations on the Arabic and Phoenician languages; he investigated the history of the Christian sects in Asia; and he was the first to point to a curious catechism of the Druses in Syria. The best and most important of Tychsen's works is his Bützonesche Nebenstunden, which appeared between 1766 and 1769. He died at Rostock on the 30th of December 1815. His life was written by A. T. Hartmann, in 2 vols., Bremen, 1818-20.