# The Nuttall Encyclopædia/D

D
Dacca (82), a city 150 m. NE. of Calcutta, on a branch of the Brahmaputra, once the capital of Bengal, and a centre of Mohammedanism; famous at one time for its muslins; the remains of its former grandeur are found scattered up and down the environs and half buried in the jungle; it is also the name of a district (2,420), well watered, both for cultivation and commerce.
Dacia, a Roman province, N. of the Danube and S. of the Carpathians.
Dacier, André, a French scholar and critic, born at Castres, in Languedoc; assisted by his wife, executed translations of various classics, and produced an edition of them known as the “Delphin Edition” (1651-1722).
Dacier, Madame, distinguished Hellenist and Latinist, wife of the preceding, born in Saumur (1651-1720).
Dacoits, gangs of semi-savage Indian brigands and robbers, often 40 or 50 in a gang.
Da Costa, Isaac, a Dutch poet, born at Amsterdam, of Jewish parents; turned Christian, and after the death of Bilderdijk was chief poet of Holland (1798-1860).
Dædalus, an architect and mechanician in the Greek mythology; inventor and constructor of the Labyrinth of Crete, in which the Minotaur was confined, and in which he was also imprisoned himself by order of Minos, a confinement from which he escaped by means of wings fastened on with wax; was regarded as the inventor of the mechanic arts.
Daghestan (529), a Russian province W. of the Caspian Sea, traversed by spurs of the Caucasus Mountains; chief town Derbend.
Dago, a marshy Russian island, N. of the Gulf of Riga, near the entrance of the Gulf of Finland.
Dagobert I., king of the Franks, son of Clotaire II., reformed the laws of the Franks; was the last of the Merovingian kings who knew how to rule with a firm hand; the sovereign power as it passed from his hands was seized by the mayor of the palace; d. 638.
Dagon, the national god of the Philistines, represented as half-man, sometimes half-woman, and half-fish; appears to have been a symbol to his worshippers of the fertilising power of nature, familiar to them in the fruitfulness of the sea.
Daguerreotype, a process named after its inventor, Louis Daguerre, a Frenchman, of producing pictures by means of the camera on a surface sensitive to light and shade, and interesting as the first step in photography.
Dahl, a Norwegian landscape-painter, born at Bergen; died professor of Painting at Dresden (1788-1857).
Dahlgren, John Adolph, a U.S. naval officer and commander; invented a small heavy gun named after him; commanded the blockading squadron at Charleston (1809-1870).
Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph, a German historian and politician, born at Wismar; was in favour of constitutional government; wrote a “History of Denmark,” “Histories of the French Revolution and of the English Revolution”; left an unfinished “History of Frederick the Great” (1785-1860).
Dahn, Felix, a German jurist, historian, novelist, and poet, born in Hamburg; a man of versatile ability and extensive learning; became professor of German jurisprudence at Königsberg; b. 1834.
Dahna Desert, the central division of the Arabian Desert.
Dahomey (150), a negro kingdom of undefined limits, and under French protectorate, in W. Africa, N. of the Slave Coast; the religious rites of the natives are sanguinary, they offer human victims in sacrifice; is an agricultural country, yields palm-oil and gold dust, and once a great centre of the slave-trade.
Daïri, the Mikado's palace or his court, and sometimes the Mikado himself.
Dako`ta, North and South (400), three times as large as England, forming two States of the American Union; consist of prairie land, and extend N. from Nebraska as far as Canada, traversed by the Missouri; yield cereals, especially wheat, and raise cattle.
Dalai-Lama, chief priest of Lamaism, reverenced as a living incarnation of deity, always present on earth in him. See Lamaism.
Dalayrac, celebrated French composer; author of a number of comic operas (1753-1809).
Dalberg, Baron de, an eminent member of a noble German family; trained for the Church; was a prince-bishop; a highly cultured man, held in high esteem in the Weimar Court circles, and a friend of Goethe and Schiller; an ecclesiastic, as one might suppose, only in name (1744-1817).
Dalberg, Duc de, nephew of the preceding; contributed to political changes in France in 1814, and accompanied Talleyrand to the Congress of Vienna (1773-1833).
D'Albret, Jeanne, queen of Navarre, and mother of Henry IV. of France; came to Paris to treat about the marriage of her son to Charles IX.'s sister; died suddenly, not without suspicion of foul-play, after signing the treaty; she was a Protestant (1528-1572).
D'Alembert, a French philosopher, devoted to science, and especially to mathematics; along with Diderot established the celebrated “Encyclopédie,” wrote the Preliminary Discourse, and contributed largely to its columns, editing the mathematical portion of it; trained to quiet and frugality, was indifferent to wealth and honour, and a very saint of science; no earthly bribe could tear him away from his chosen path of life (1717-1783).
Dalgarno, Lord, a heartless profligate in the “Fortunes of Nigel.”
Dalgetty, Dugald, a swaggering soldier of fortune in the “Legend of Montrose,” who let out his services to the highest bidder.
Dalhousie, James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, Marquis of, Governor-General of India, third son of the ninth Earl; as Lord Ramsay served in Parliament as member for Haddingtonshire; on his father's death in 1838 entered the House of Lords; held office under Sir Robert Peel and Lord Russell; went to India as Governor-General in 1848; ruled vigorously, annexed territory, developed the resources of the country, projected and carried out important measures for its welfare; his health, however, gave way at the end of eight years, and he came home to receive the thanks of the Parliament, elevation in the peerage, and other honours, but really to end his days in pain and prostration; dying without male issue, he was succeeded in the earldom by Fox Maule, Lord Panmure (1812-1860).
Dalkeith (7), a grain-market town in Midlothian, 6 m. SE. of Edinburgh, with a palace adjoining, a seat of the Duke of Buccleuch.
Dallas, George Mifflin, an American diplomatist, born in Philadelphia; represented the United States as ambassador at St. Petersburg and at London, and was from 1844 to 1849 Vice-President (1792-1864).
Dalmatia (527), a crownland of Austria, lying along the NE. coast of the Adriatic, and bounded on the land side by Croatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina; half the land is pasture, only one-ninth of it arable, which yields cereals, wine, oil, honey, and fruit.
Dalri`ads, a Celtic race who came over from Ireland to Argyllshire, and established a kingdom in the SW. of Scotland, till King Kenneth Macalpin succeeded in 843, who obtained rule both over it and the northern kingdom of the Picts, and became the first king of Scotland.
Dalrymple, Alexander, hydrographer to the Admiralty and the East India Company, born at New Hailes, and brother of Lord Hailes; produced many good maps (1737-1808).
Dalton, John, chemist and physicist, born near Cockermouth, of a Quaker family; took early an interest in meteorology, and kept through life a record of meteorological observations; taught mathematics and physics in Manchester; made his first appearance as an author in 1793 in a volume of his observations and essays, and in 1808 published “A New System of Chemical Philosophy,” which he finished in 1810; famous for his experiments on the elastic force of steam, for his researches on the proportional weights of simple bodies, for his discovery of the atomic theory, as also for his investigations on colour-blindness by experimenting on himself and his brother, who along with himself was colour-blind (1766-1844).
Daltonism, colour-blindness (q. v.). See Dalton, John.
Dalziel, Thomas, general, born in Linlithgowshire; being hand-idle at home, entered the Russian service against the Turks; returning at the request of Charles II., was appointed commander-in-chief in Scotland; suppressed a rising of the Covenanters at Pentland in 1666; never once shaved his beard after the execution of Charles I. (1599-1685).
Daman, a Portuguese settlement with a port of the same name in Gujarat, India, 100 m. N. of Bombay.
Dam`araland, a territory on the W. coast of South Africa, N. of Namaqualand; the chief industry is pastoral; the mountain districts, which are rich in minerals, particularly copper, are inhabited by Damaras, who are nomads and cattle-rearers; it is a German protectorate since 1890.
Damas, Colonel Comte de, a devoted adherent of Louis XVI., and one of his convoys on his attempt at flight.
Damascus (220), the capital of Syria, one of the oldest cities in the world; stands 2260 ft. above the sea-level; is a great centre of the caravan trade; is embosomed in the midst of gardens and orchards, hence its appearance as the traveller approaches it is most striking; its history goes as far back as the days of Abraham; it was the scene of two great events in human destiny—the conversion of St. Paul, and, according to Moslem tradition, a great decisive moment in the life of Mahomet, when he resolutely turned his back once for all on the pleasures of the world.
Damasus, St., Pope from 366 to 384, a Spaniard; a zealous opponent of the Arians and a friend of St. Jerome, who, under his sanction, executed his translation of the Bible into the Vulgate; there was a Damasus II., Pope in 1048.
Dame aux Camélias, La, a romance and a drama by Alexander Dumas fils, one of his best creations.
Damien, Father, a French priest, born at Louvain; devoted his life to nurse and instruct the lepers in an island of the Hawaian group, and, though after 12 years infected with the disease himself, continued to minister to them till his death (1841-1889).
Damiens, Robert François, the would-be assassin of Louis XV., born near Arras; aimed at the king as he was entering his carriage at Trianon, but failed to wound him mortally; was mercilessly tortured to death; was known before as Robert le Diable; his motive for the act was never known (1715-1757).
Damietta (36), a town, the third largest, in Egypt, on an eastern branch of the Nile, 8 m. from its mouth; has a trade in grain, rice, hides, fish, &c.; was taken by St. Louis in 1249, and restored on payment of his ransom from captivity.
Damocles, a flatterer at the court of the elder Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, whom, after one day extravagantly extolling the happiness of kings, Dionysius set down to a magnificent banquet, but who, when seated at it, looked up and saw a sword hanging over his head suspended by a single hair; a lesson this which admonished him, and led him to change his views of the happiness of kings.
Damon and Pythias, two Pythagoreans of Syracuse of the days of Dionysius I., celebrated for their friendship; upon the latter having been condemned to death, and having got leave to go home to arrange his affairs beforehand, the former pledged his life for his return, when just as, according to his promise, he presented himself at the place of execution, Pythias turned up and prepared to put his head on the block; this behaviour struck the tyrant with such admiration, that he not only extended pardon to the offender, but took them both into his friendship.
Dampier, William, an English navigator and buccaneer; led a roving and adventurous life, and parting company with his comrades, set off on a cruise in the South Seas; came home and published a “Voyage Round the World”; this led to his employment in further adventures, in one of which Alexander Selkirk accompanied him, but was wrecked on Juan Fernandez; in his last adventure, it is said, he rescued Selkirk and brought him home (1652-1715).
Dana, Charles Anderson, American journalist, member of Brook Farm (q. v.), and became editor of the New York Tribune, the Sun, and a cyclopædia: b. 1829.
Dana, James Dwight, American mineralogist and geologist, born at Utica, New York State; was associated as scientific observer with Commodore Wilkes on his Arctic and Antarctic exploring expeditions, on the results of which he reported; became geological professor in Yale College; author of works on mineralogy and geology, as also on South Sea volcanoes (1813-1895).
Dana, Richard Henry, an American poet and critic; editor of the North American Review, author of the “Dying Raven,” the “Buccaneer,” and other poems (1787-1879).
Dana, Richard Henry, a son of the preceding, lawyer; author of “Two Years before the Mast” (1815-1882).
Danaë, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, confined by her father in an inaccessible tower of brass to prevent the fulfilment of an oracle that she should be the mother of a son who would kill him, but Zeus found access to her in the form of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, by whose hand Acrisius met his fate. See Perseus.
Dana`ides, daughters of Danaüs, who, for murdering their husbands on the night after marriage, were doomed in the nether world to the impossible task of filling with water a vessel pierced with holes. See Danaüs.
Danaüs, son of Belus, and twin-brother of Ægyptus, whom fearing, he fled from with his fifty daughters to Argos, where he was chosen king; by-and-by the fifty sons of Ægyptus, his brother, came to Argos to woo, and were wedded to, their cousins, whom their father provided each with a dagger to murder her husband, which they did, all except Hypermnestra, whose husband, Lynceus, escaping, succeeded her father as king, to the defeat of the old man's purpose in the crime.
Danby, Francis, painter, born near Wexford; settled for a time in Bristol, then in Switzerland, and finally at Exmouth; his works are mostly landscape, instinct with feeling, but some of them are historical, the subjects being taken from Scripture, as the “Passage of the Red Sea,” or from pagan sources, as “Marius among the Ruins of Carthage” (1793-1861).
Dance, George, English architect; was architect to the City of London, and designed the Mansion House, his chief work (1700-1768). George, his son, built Newgate Prison (1740-1825).
Dance of Death, an allegorical representation in a dramatic or pictorial form of Death, figuring, originally as a skeleton, and performing his part as a chief actor all through the drama of life, and often amid the gayest scenes of it; a succession of woodcuts by Holbein in representation of this dance is well known.
Dancing Mania, an epidemic of frequent occurrence, especially in German towns, during the Middle Ages, of the nature of hysteria, showing itself in convulsive movements beyond the control of the will, and in delirious acts, sometimes violently suicidal; the most signal occurrence of the mania was at Aix-la-Chapelle in July 1374.
Dancourt, Florent Carton, French dramatist, a prolific author; a favourite of Louis XIV.; wrote comedies, chiefly on the follies of the middle classes of the time (1661-1725).
Dandie Dinmont, a humorous, jovial store-farmer in “Guy Mannering.”
Dandin, George, one of Molière's comedies, illustrative of the folly a man commits when he marries a woman of higher rank than his own, George being his impersonation of a husband who has patiently to endure all the extravagant whims and fancies of his dame of a wife.
Dandin, Perrin, a simple citizen in the “Pantagruel” of Rabelais, who seats himself judge-wise on the first stump that offers, and passes offhand a sentence in any matter of litigation; a character who figures similarly in a comedy of Racine's, and in a fable of La Fontaine's.
Dan`dolo, a Venetian family that furnished four Doges to the Republic, Enrico being the most illustrious; chosen Doge in his eighty-fourth year, assisted the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade with ships; joined them, when blind and aged 90, in laying siege to Constantinople; led the attack by sea, and was the first to leap ashore; was offered the imperial crown, but declined it; died instead “despot” of Roumania in 1205, at 97.
Danegelt, originally a tax imposed on land to buy off the Danes from the shores of England, and subsequently for other objects, such as the defence of the coast; abolished by Henry II., though re-imposed subsequently under other names.
Danelagh, a district in the E. of England, N. of the Thames; dominated at one time more or less by the Danes; of vague extent.
Dangeau, Marquis, author of “Memoirs” affecting the court of Louis XIV. and its manners (1638-1720).
D'Angoulême, Duchesse, daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; was released from restraint after the execution of her parents in exchange for prisoners in the Royalist's hands; fled to Vienna, where she was driven forth; married her cousin, to whom she was early betrothed; could find no place of safe refuge but in England; returned to France on Napoleon's exile to Elba, and headed a body of troops against him on his return; after Waterloo, returned to France and stayed till July 1830, and lived to see Louis Philippe, in 1848, driven from the throne; Napoleon called her “the only man of her family”; left “Memoirs” (1778-1851).
Dangs, The, a forest district in the N. of the Presidency of Bombay, occupied by fifteen wild tribes, each under a chief.
Daniel, a Hebrew of fine physique and rare endowment, who was, while but a youth, carried captive to Babylon, and trained for office in the court of the king; was found, after three years' discipline, to excel “in wisdom and understanding” all the magicians and enchanters of the realm, of which he gave such proof that he rose step by step to the highest official positions, first in the Babylonian and then in the Persian empire. He was a Hebrew prophet of a new type, for whereas the old prophet had, for the most part, more regard to the immediate present and its outlooks, his eye reached forth into the future and foresaw in vision, as his book has foretold in symbol, the fulfilment of the hope for which the fathers of his race had lived and died.
Daniel, Samuel, English poet, born near Taunton; wrote dramas and sonnets; his principal production a “History of the Civil Wars” of York and Lancaster, a poem in seven books; is called the “Well-Englished Daniel,” and is much admired for his style; in prose he wrote a “History of England,” and a “Defence of Rhyme,” which Swinburne pronounces to be “one of the most perfect examples of sound sense, of pure style, and of just judgment in the literature of criticism”; he is associated with Warner and Drayton as having given birth to “a poetry which has devoted itself to extol the glory of England” (1562-1619).
Daniell, John Frederick, a distinguished chemist, born in London; professor of Chemistry in King's College, London; wrote “Meteorological Essays,” and “Introduction to Chemical Philosophy”; invented a hygrometer and an electric battery (1790-1845).
Daniell, William, an eminent draughtsman; spent his early life in India; author of “Oriental Scenery,” in six folio vols. (1769-1837).
Danites, or Destroying Angels, a band of Mormons organised to prevent the entrance into Mormon territory of other than Mormon immigrants, but whose leader, for a massacre they perpetrated, was in 1827 convicted and shot.
Dannecker, Johann Heinrich von, a distinguished German sculptor, born near Stuttgart, and educated by the Duke of Würtemberg, who had become his patron; became professor of Sculpture in the Academy at Stuttgart; his earlier subjects were from the Greek mythology, and his later Christian, the principal of the latter being a colossal “Christ,” which he took eight years to complete; he executed besides busts of contemporaries, which are wonderful in expression, such as those of Schiller, Lavater, and Glück; “Ariadne on the Panther” is regarded as his masterpiece (1758-1841).
Dante Alighieri, the great poet of Italy, “the voice of ten silent centuries,” born in Florence; was of noble birth; showed early a great passion for learning; learned all that the schools and universities of the time could teach him “better than most”; fought as a soldier; did service as a citizen; at thirty-five filled the office of chief magistrate of Florence; had, while but a boy of ten, “met a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful girl of his own age and rank, and had grown up in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her,” who became to him the ideal of all that was pure and noble and good; “made a great figure in his poem and a great figure in his life”; she died in 1290; he married another, “not happily, far from happily; in some civic Guelf-Ghibelline strife he was expelled the city, and his property confiscated; tried hard to recover it, even 'with arms in his hand,' but could not, and was doomed, 'whenever caught, to be burned alive'; invited to confess his guilt and return, he sternly answered: 'If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will never return.'” From this moment he was without home in this world; and “the great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world ... over which, this time-world, with its Florences and banishments, flutters as an unreal shadow.” Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into “mystic unfathomable song,” and this, his “Divine Comedy” (q. v.), the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. He died after finishing it, not yet very old, at the age of 56. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna, “shutout from my native shores.” The Florentines begged back his body in a century after; the Ravenna people would not give it (1265-1321). See Carlyle's “Heroes and Hero-Worship,” and Dean Plumptre's “Life of Dante.”
Danton, Georges Jacques, “The Titan of the Forlorn Hope” of the French Revolution, born at Arcis-sur-Aube, “of good farmer people ... a huge, brawny, black-browed man, with a waste energy as of a Hercules”; an advocate by profession, “esurient, but with nothing to do; found Paris and his country in revolt, rose to the front of the strife; resolved to do or die”; the cause threatened, he threw himself again and again into the breach defiant, his motto “to dare, and to dare, and again to dare,” so as to put and keep the enemy in fear; “Let my name be blighted,” he said, “what am I? The cause alone is great, and will live and not perish”; but the “Sea-green” (q. v.) viewed him with jealousy, held him suspect, had him arrested, brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the severity of whose proceedings under him he had condemned, and sentenced to the guillotine; a reflection of his in prison has been recorded: “Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with governing of men.” “No weakness, Danton,” he said to himself on the scaffold, as his heart began to sink within him as he thought of his wife. His last words were to Samson the headsman: “Thou wilt show my head to the people, it is worth showing”; words worthy of the brother of Mirabeau, who died saying, “I wish I could leave my head behind me, France needs it just now”; a man fiery-real, as has been said, genuine to the core, with many sins, yet lacking that greatest of sins, cant. “He was,” says Mr. Belloc, “the most French, the most national, the nearest to the mother of all the Revolutionary group. He summed up France ... when we study him, we see France” (1759-1794). See Carlyle's “French Revolution.”
Dantzig (116), the capital of W. Prussia, once a Hanse town, on the Vistula, 4 m. from the mouth; one of the great ports and trading centres of Germany and in the N. of Europe; it is traversed by canals, and many of the houses are built on piles of wood; exports grain brought down the river on timber rafts from the great grain country in the S.; it is one of the chief stations of the German navy.
Danube, The, the great south-eastward-flowing river of Europe, 1750 m. in length, rises in the Black Forest, and is divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower; the Upper extends as far as Pressburg, begins to be navigable to Ulm, flows NE. as far as Ratisbon, and then bends SE. past Vienna; the Middle extends from Pressburg to the Iron Gate, enclosing between its gorges a series of rapids, below Orsova; and the Lower extends from the Iron Gate to the Black Sea. It receives numerous tributary rivers, 60 of them navigable, in its course; forms with them the great water highway of the SE. of Europe, and is of avail for traffic to all the races and nations whose territories it traverses; the navigation of the river is free indeed to all nations.
Danubian Principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia.
Danville, the name of several towns in the United States.
D'Anville, geographer to the king of France; left numerous valuable maps and geographical works (1697-1782).
Daphne (lit. a laurel), a nymph chased by Apollo, transformed into a laurel as he attempts to seize her; henceforth sacred to the god.
Daphnis, a Sicilian shepherd, the mythical inventor of pastoral poetry.
Dapsang, the highest of the Karakorum Mountains.
D'Arblay, Madame, a distinguished novelist, daughter of Dr. Burney, the historian of music; authoress of “Evelina” and “Cecilia,” the first novels of the time, which brought her into connection with all her literary contemporaries, Johnson in chief; left “Diary and Letters” (1752-1840).
Darboy, Georges, archbishop of Paris: was a defender of the Gallican liberties of the Church; had been assiduous in offices of benevolence during the siege of Paris; was arrested as a hostage by the Communists, and shot (1813-1871).
Darby and Joan, a married couple celebrated for their mutual attachment.
Darbyites, the Plymouth Brethren (q. v.), from the name of one of their founders, a man of scholarly ability and culture, and the chief expounder of their views (1800-1852).
Dardanelles, a strait extending between the Archipelago and the Sea of Marmora, anciently called the Hellespont, 40 m. long, from 1 to 4 broad; commanded by Turkey, both sides of the strait being strongly fortified.
Dardanus, a son of Zeus and Electra, mythical ancestor of the Trojans; originally a king in Greece.
Darfur (500), a district in the Egyptian Soudan, in which vegetation is for the most part dormant all the year round, except from June to September, when it is rank and rich; was snatched from Egypt by the Mahdi, but is now restored.
D'Argens, Marquis, born at Aix; disinherited owing to his misconduct; turned author, and became a protégé of Frederick the Great, but lost caste with him too, and was deprived of his all once more (1704-1771).
D'Argenson, Comte, an eminent French statesman, head of the police in Paris; introduced lettres de cachet, and was a patron of the French philosophes; had the “Encyclopédie” dedicated to him; fell out of favour at Court, and had to leave Paris, but returned to die there (1696-1764).
Daric, a gold coin current in ancient Persia, stamped with an archer kneeling, and weighing little over a sovereign.
Darien, Gulf of, an inlet of the Caribbean Sea, NW. of S. America. For isthmus of, see Panama.
Darien Scheme, a project to plant a colony on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, which was so far carried out that some 1200 left Scotland in 1698 to establish it, but which ended in disaster, and created among the Scotch, who were the chief sufferers, an animus against the English, whom they blamed for the disaster, an animus which did not for long die out.
Darius I., eldest son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians; subdued subject places that had revolted, reorganised the empire, carried his conquests as far as India, subdued Thrace and Macedonia, declared war against the Athenians; in 492 B.C. sent an expedition against Greece, which was wrecked in a storm off Athos; sent a second, which succeeded in crossing over, but was defeated in a famous battle at Marathon, 490 B.C.
Darius II., called Ochus or Nothus, king of the Persians; subject to his eunuchs and his wife Parysatis; his reign was a succession of insurrections; he supported the Spartans against the Athenians, to the ascendency of the former in the Peloponnesus; d. 405 B.C.
Darius III., surnamed Codomannus, king of the Persians, a handsome man and a virtuous; could not cope with Alexander of Macedon, but was defeated by him in successive engagements at Granicus, Issus, and Arbela; was assassinated on his flight by Bessus (q. v.), one of his satraps, in 330 B.C.; with him the Persian empire came to an end.
Darjeeling (14), a sanitary station and health resort in the Lower Himalayas, and the administrative head-quarters of the district, 7167 ft. above the level of the sea; it has greatly increased of late years.
Darley, George, poet and critic, born in Dublin; author of “Sylvia” and “Nepenthe”; wrote some good songs, among them “I've been Roaming,” once very popular; much belauded by Coleridge; contributed to the Athenæum (1795-1846).
Darling, a tributary of the Murray River, in Australia, now stagnant, now flooded.
Darling, Grace, a young maiden, daughter of the lighthouse keeper of one of the Farne Islands, who with her father, amid great peril, saved the lives of nine people from the wreck of the Forfarshire, on Sept. 7, 1838; died of consumption (1815-1842).
Darlington (38), a town in S. of Durham, on the Tees, with large iron and other works; a considerable number of the inhabitants belong to the Society of Friends.
Darmesteter, James, Orientalist, born in Lorraine, of Jewish descent; a distinguished Zend scholar and authority in Zend literature; in the interpretation of the Zend and other ancient literatures was of the modern critical school (1849-1894).
Darmstadt (55), the capital of the grand-duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on the Darm, an affluent of the Rhine, 15 m. S. of Frankfort; is divided into an old and a new town; manufactures tobacco, paper, carpets, chemicals, &c.
Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, eldest son of the Earl of Lennox and grand-nephew of Henry VIII.; husband of Queen Mary; was murdered on Feb. 5, 1567, in Kirk-o'-Field, which stood on the site of the present University of Edinburgh.
Dartmoor, moor in Devonshire, a tableland of an average height of 1200 ft. above the sea-level, and of upwards of 120,000 acres in extent, incapable of cultivation, but affording pasturage for sheep, of which it breeds a small hardy race; it has rich veins of minerals; abounds in British remains, and contains a large convict prison.
Daru, Comte, a French administrator and littérateur, born at Montpellier; translated Horace when in prison during the Reign of Terror; served as administrator under Napoleon; on the return of the Bourbons devoted himself to letters, and wrote the “History of the Republic of Venice” (1767-1829).
Darwin, Charles Robert, great English naturalist and biologist, born at Shrewsbury, grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's; studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge; in 1831 accompanied as naturalist without salary the Beagle in her voyage of exploration in the Southern Seas, on the condition that he should have the entire disposal of his collections, all of which he got, and which he ultimately distributed among various public institutions; he was absent from England for five years, and on his return published in 1836 his “Naturalist's Voyage Round the World,” in 1839-43 accounts of the fruits of his researches and observations in the departments of geology and natural history during that voyage, in 1842 his treatise on the “Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,” and in 1859 his work on the “Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” a work which has proved epoch-making and gone far to revolutionise thought in the scientific study of, especially, animated nature, and is being applied to higher spheres of being; this work was followed by others more or less confirmatory, finishing off with “The Descent of Man” in 1871, in which he traces the human race to an extinct quadrumanous animal related to that which produced the orang-outang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla. He may be said to have taken evolution out of the region of pure imagination, and by giving it a basis of fact, to have set it up as a reasonable working hypothesis. Prof. A. R. Wallace claims for Darwin “that he is the Newton of natural history, and has ... by his discovery of the law of natural selection and his demonstration of the great principles of the preservation of useful variations in the struggle for life, not only thrown a flood of light on the process of development of the whole organic world, but also established a firm foundation for the future study of nature.” He was buried in Westminster Abbey (1809-1882).
Darwin, Erasmus, physician and natural philosopher, born in Nottinghamshire; studied at Cambridge and Edinburgh; practised medicine in Lichfield, and finally settled in Derby; occupied his mind with the study of fanciful analogies in the different spheres of nature, and committed his views, often not without genuine poetic sentiment and melody of expression, to verse, while in the views themselves there have been recognised occasional glimpses of true insight, and at times a foreshadow of the doctrine developed on strict scientific lines by his illustrious grandson. His chief poetic works were the “Botanic Garden” and the “Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life,” deemed, in the philosophy of them, not unworthy of criticism by such sane thinkers as Paley and Dugald Stewart (1731-1802).
Darwinian Theory, the theory established by Darwin that the several species of plants and animals now in existence were not created in their present form, but have been evolved by natural law of descent, with modifications of structure, from cruder forms. See Darwin, C. R.
Dasent, Sir George Webbe, Icelandic scholar, born at St. Vincent, West Indies; studied at Oxford; from 1845 to 1870 was assistant-editor of the Times; has translated “The Prose, or Younger, Edda” and Norse tales and sagas; written also novels, and contributed to reviews and magazines; b. 1817.
Dash, Countess, the nom de plume of the Viscountess de Saint-Mars, a French novelist, born at Poitiers; in straits for a living, took desperately to writing; treated of aristocratic life and its hollow artificialities and immoralities (1804-1872).
Dashkoff, a Russian princess of note; played a part in the conspiracy which ended in the elevation of Catharine II. to the throne; was a woman of culture; founded the Russian Academy; projected and assisted in the compilation of a Russian dictionary; died at Moscow (1744-1810).
Dates of Epoch-making Events, the Ascendency in Athens of Pericles (445 B.C.); the Fall of the Persian Empire (330 B.C.); the Death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.); the Reduction of Greece to a Roman province, and the Ruin of Carthage (146 B.C.); the Battle of Actium (31 B.C.); Birth of Christ, 14th year of Augustus; Commencement of the Middle Ages (395); Ruin of the Roman Empire by the Barbarians (476); Clovis, ruler of Gaul (509); the Flight of Mahomet (622); Charlemagne, Emperor of the West (800); Treaty of Verdun (843); the Crusades (1096-1291); Employment of Cannon at Crécy (1346); Invention of Printing (1436); Taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. (1453); Discovery of America by Columbus (1492); Copernican System published (1500); Accession of Leo X. as Pope (1513); the Reformation of Luther (1517); Publication of Bacon's “Novum Organon” (1620); Publication of Descartes's “Discourse on Method” (1637); the Peace of Westphalia (1648); Reign of Louis XIV. at its Height, and Peace of Nimeguen (1678); Publication of Newton's Theory of Gravitation (1682); Watt's Invention of the Steam-Engine (1769); Independence of the United States (1776); Coup d'état of 10th Brumaire (1799); Waterloo, and Congress of Vienna (1815); Introduction of Railroads into England (1830); First Attempt at Electric Telegraphy in France (1837); Africa traversed by Livingstone (1852-1854); Publication of Darwin's “Origin of Species” (1859); Opening of the Suez Canal (1869); Proclamation of the German Empire (1871); Congress of Berlin (1878).
Daubenton, Louis Jean Marie, a French naturalist, born at Montbard; associated with Buffon in the preparation of the first 15 vols. of his “Histoire Naturelle,” and helped him materially by the accuracy of his knowledge, as well as his literary qualifications; contributed largely to the “Encyclopédie,” and was 50 years curator of the Cabinet of Natural History at Paris (1716-1799).
Daubeny, Charles, English chemist and botanist, author of “A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes,” an “Introduction to the Atomic Theory,” and other works, all like the latter more or less related to chemistry (1795-1867).
D'Aubigné, Merle, a popular Church historian, born near Geneva; studied under Neander at Berlin; became pastor at Hamburg, court-preacher at Brussels, and professor of Church History at Geneva; his reputation rests chiefly on his “History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century” (1794-1872).
D'Aubigné, Theodore Agrippa, a historian, bred to the military profession; held appointments under Henry IV., on whose assassination he returned to Geneva, where he wrote his “Histoire Universelle,” which had the honour to be burned by the common hangman in Paris; was a satirical writer; grandfather to Mme. de Maintenon (1550-1630).
Daubigny, Charles François, a French landscape painter and skilful etcher, born in Paris, attained distinction as an artist late in life (1817-1878).
D'Aubusson, Pierre, grand-master of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, of French origin; served under the Emperor Sigismund against the Turks; went to Rhodes; became a knight of St. John, and was chosen grand-master; defended Rhodes against 100,000 Turks, and thus stayed the career of Mahomet II., who, after establishing himself in Constantinople, was threatening to overrun Europe (1423-1503).
Daudet, Alphonse, a noted French novelist of great versatility, born at Nîmes, of poor parents; early selected literature as his career in life; wrote poems and plays, and contributed to the Figaro and other journals; worked up into his novels characters and situations that had come under his own observation, often in too satirical a vein to become universally popular; has been likened to Dickens in his choice of subjects and style of treatment; died suddenly (1840-1897).
D'Aulnoy, the Countess, authoress of charmingly-written “Contes des Fées” (Fairy Tales), and on which her reputation rests (1650-1705).
Daumier, Henri, a French caricaturist of great fertility and playfulness of genius, born at Marseilles; became blind in his old age (1808-1879).
Daun, Karl, German theologian, born at Cassel, professor at Heidelberg, sought to ground theology on a philosophic basis, and found what he sought in the philosophy of Hegel (1765-1836).
Daun, Leopold, Graf von, an able Austrian general, born at Vienna; distinguished himself by his prudence and valour in the Seven Years' War, gained a victory over Frederick the Great at Kolin in 1757, and another at Hochkirch in 1758; could prevail little or not at all against Frederick afterwards as soon as Frederick saw through his tactics, which he was not long in doing (1705-1766).
Dauphin, a name originally given to the Seigneurs of the province of Dauphiné, in allusion to the dolphin which several members of the family wore as a badge, but in 1349 given to the heir-presumptive to the crown of France, when Humbert II., dauphin of Vienne, ceded Dauphiné to Philippe of Valois, on condition that the eldest son of the king of France should assume the title, a title which was abolished after the Revolution of 1830. The word signifies dolphin in French.
Dauphiné, a SW. province of France, of which the capital was Grenoble; annexed to the French crown under Philippe II. in 1349.
Daurat, Jean, French scholar, a member of the Pléiade (q. v.), and who figures as one of the leading spirits in the fraternity (1507-1588).
Davenant, Sir William, an English playwright, born at Oxford, who succeeded Ben Jonson as poet-laureate, and was for a time manager of Drury Lane; was knighted by Charles I. for his zeal in the Royalist cause; his theatrical enterprise had small success during the Commonwealth, but interest in it revived with the Restoration, at which time “the drama broke loose from the prison of Puritanism to indulge in a shameless license” (1606-1668).
David, Félicien, a French composer, born at Vaucluse; author, among other compositions, of the “Desert,” a production which achieved an instant and complete triumph; was in his youth an ardent disciple of St. Simon (1810-1876).
David, Gerhard, a Flemish painter; painted religious subjects, several from the life of Christ (1450-1525).
David, King of Israel, 11th century B.C., born in Bethlehem; tended the flocks of his father; slew Goliath with a stone and a sling; was anointed by Samuel, succeeded Saul as king; conquered the Philistines; set up his throne in Jerusalem, and reigned thirty-three years; suffered much from his sons, and was succeeded by Solomon; the book of Psalms was till recently accepted as wholly his by the Church, but that hypothesis no longer stands the test of criticism.
David, Louis, a French historical painter, born in Paris; studied in Rome and settled in Paris; was carried away with the Revolution; joined the Jacobin Club, swore eternal friendship with Robespierre; designed “a statue of Nature with two mammelles spouting out water” for the deputes to drink to, and another of the sovereign people, “high as Salisbury steeple”; was sentenced to the guillotine, but escaped out of regard for his merit as an artist; appointed first painter by Napoleon, but on the Restoration was banished and went to Brussels, where he died; among his paintings are “The Oath of the Horatii,” “The Rape of the Sabines,” “The Death of Socrates,” and “The Coronation of Napoleon” (1748-1825).
David d'Angers, a French sculptor, born at Angers; came to Paris and became a pupil of the preceding, afterwards proceeded to Rome and associated with Canova; executed in Paris a statue of the Great Condé, and thereafter the pediment of the Pantheon, his greatest work, as well as numerous medallions of great men; on a visit to Weimar he modelled a bust of Goethe (1788-1856).
David I., king of Scotland, youngest son of Malcolm Canmore and Queen Margaret; was brought up at the English court; was prince of Cumbria under the reign of his brother Alexander, on whose decease he succeeded to the throne in 1124; on making a raid in England to avenge an insult offered to his son Henry, was defeated at Northallerton in the Battle of the Standard; addressed himself after this to the unification of the country and civilisation of his subjects; founded and endowed bishoprics and abbeys at the expense of the crown, on account of which he was called St. David, and characterised by James VI., a successor of his, as a “sair saunt to the croon”; the death of his son Henry was a great grief to him, and shortened his days (1084-1153).
David II., king of Scotland, son of King Robert the Bruce, born at Dunfermline; succeeded his father when a boy of four; spent from 1334 to 1341 in France; was taken prisoner by the English at the battle of Neville's Cross, and was afterwards, till his death, dependent on England (1326-1371).
David, St., or Dewi, the patron saint of Wales, lived about the 5th century; archbishop of Caerleon; transferred his see to St. David's; founded churches, opposed Pelagianism, and influenced many by the odour of his good name.
Davids, Rhys, professor of Pâli and Buddhist literature, born in Colchester; author of “Buddhism: a Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha,” and of other works in that department of literature; b. 1843.
Davidson, Andrew Bruce, Hebrew scholar and professor, born in Aberdeenshire; a most faithful, clear, and effective interpreter of the spirit of Hebrew literature, and influential for good as few men of the time have been in matters of biblical criticism; b. 1831.
Davidson, John, poet and journalist, born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire; has written novels and plays as well as poems; b. 1859.
Davidson, Samuel, biblical scholar and exegete, born near Ballymena; wrote Introductions to the Old and the New Testaments; was pioneer in the higher criticism (1807-1898).
Davies, Ben, a popular tenor vocalist, born near Swansea in 1858.
Davies, Sir John, poet and statesman, born in Wiltshire; wrote two philosophic poems, “The Orchestra,” a poem in which the world is exhibited as a dance, and “Nosce Teipsum” (Know Thyself), a poem on human learning and the immortality of the soul; became a favourite with James I., and was sent Attorney-General to Ireland (1569-1626).
Davila, a celebrated historian, born near Padua, brought up in France; served in the French army under Henry IV.; did military and other service in Venice; was assassinated; his great work “The History of the Civil War in France” (1576-1631).
Davis, Jefferson, President of the Confederate States, born in Kentucky; entered the army; fought against the Indians; turned cotton-planter; entered Congress as a Democrat; distinguished himself in the Mexican war; defended slave-holding and the interests of slave-holding States; was chosen President of the Confederate States; headed the conflict with the North; fled on defeat, which he was the last to admit; was arrested and imprisoned; released after two years; retired into private life, and wrote a “History of the Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government” (1808-1889).
Davis, John, an English navigator, born near Dartmouth; took early to the sea; conducted (1585-1587) three expeditions to the Arctic Seas in quest of a NW. passage to India and China, as far N. as 73°; discovered the strait which bears his name; sailed as pilot in two South Sea expeditions, and was killed by Japanese pirates near Malacca; wrote the “Seaman's Secret” (1550-1605).
Davis, Thomas, an Irish patriot, born at Mallow; educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and called to the Irish bar; took to journalism in the interest of Irish nationality; founded the Nation newspaper, and by his contributions to it did much to wake up the intelligence of the country to national interests; died young; was the author of “Songs of Ireland” and “Essays on Irish Songs” (1814-1845).
Davis Strait, strait connecting Baffin's Bay with the Atlantic, discovered by John Davis (q. v.).
Davitt, Michael, a noted Irish patriot, born in co. Mayo, son of a peasant, who, being evicted, settled in Lancashire; joined the Fenian movement, and was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude; released on ticket-of-leave after seven years; founded the Land League; was for over a year imprisoned again for breaking his ticket-of-leave; published in 1885 “Leaves from a Prison Diary”; entered Parliament in 1895 for co. Mayo; b. 1846.
Davos-Platz, a village 5105 ft. above the sea-level, in a valley of the East Grisons; a place frequented in winter by invalids suffering from chest disease, the dry air and sunshine that prevail being favourable for patients of that class.
Davout, Duke of Auerstädt, Prince of Eckmühl, marshal of France, born at Annoux, in Burgundy; was fellow-student with Napoleon at the military school in Brienne; entered the army in 1788, served in the Revolutionary wars under Dumouriez and Desaix, and became general; served under Bonaparte in Egypt; distinguished himself at Austerlitz, Auerstädt, Eckmühl, and Wagram; was made governor of Hamburg; accompanied Napoleon to Moscow; returned to Hamburg, and defended it during a siege; was made Minister of War in 1815, and assisted Napoleon in his preparations for the final struggle at Waterloo; commanded the remains of the French army which capitulated under the walls of Paris; adhered to the Bourbon dynasty on its return, and was made a peer; was famous before all the generals of Napoleon for his rigour in discipline (1770-1823).
Davy, Sir Humphry, a great English chemist, born at Penzance; conceived early in life a passion for the science in which he made so many discoveries; made experiments on gases and the respiration of them, particularly nitrous oxide and carbonic acid; discovered the function of plants in decomposing the latter in the atmosphere, and the metallic bases of alkalies and earths; proved chlorine to be a simple substance and its affinity with iodine, which he discovered; invented the safety-lamp, his best-known achievement; he held appointments and lectured in connection with all these discoveries and their applications, and received knighthood and numerous other honours for his services; died at Geneva (1778-1829).
Davy Jones's Locker, the sailors' familiar name for the sea as a place of safe-keeping, though why called of Davy Jones is uncertain.
Davy-Lamp, a lamp encased in gauze wire which, while it admits oxygen to feed the flame, prevents communication between the flame and any combustible or explosive gas outside.
Dawkins, William Boyd, geologist and palæontologist, born in Montgomeryshire; has written “Cave Hunting,” “Early Man in Britain,” &c.; b. 1838.
Dawson, George, a popular lecturer, born in London; educated in Aberdeen and Glasgow; bred for the ministry by the Baptist body, and pastor of a Baptist church in Birmingham, but resigned the post for ministry in a freer atmosphere; took to lecturing on a purely secular platform, and was for thirty years the most popular lecturer of the day; no course of lectures in any institute was deemed complete if his name was not in the programme; did much to popularise the views of Carlyle and Emerson (1821-1876).
Dawson, Sir John William, geologist and naturalist, born in Pictou, Nova Scotia; studied in Edinburgh; distinguished himself as a palæontologist; published in 1872, “Story of the Earth and Man”; in 1877, “Origin of the World”; and recently, “Geology and History”; called in question the Darwinian theory as to the origin of species; b. 1820.
Day, John, an English dramatist, contemporary of Ben Jonson; author of the “Parliament of Bees,” a comedy in which all the characters are bees.
Day, Thomas, an eccentric philanthropist, born in London; author of “Sandford and Merton”; he was a disciple of Rousseau; had many a ludicrous adventure in quest of a model wife, and happily fell in with one to his mind at last; was a slave-abolitionist and a parliamentary reformer (1748-1789).
Dayaks. See Dyaks.
Dayton (85), a prosperous town in Ohio, U.S.; a great railway centre, with a court-house of marble, after the Parthenon in Athens.
D'Azara, a Spanish naturalist, born in Aragon; spent 20 years in South America; wrote a “Natural History of the Quadrupeds in Paraguay” (1781-1811).
Dead Sea, called also the Salt Sea and 'the Asphalt Lake, a sea in Palestine, formed by the waters of the Jordan, 46 m. long, 10 m. broad, and in some parts 1300 ft. deep, while its surface is 1312 ft. below the level of the Mediterranean, just as much as Jerusalem is above it; has no outlet; its waters, owing to the great heat, evaporate rapidly, and are intensely salt; it is enclosed E. and W. by steep mountains, which often rise to a height of 6000 ft.
Deák, Francis, an eminent Hungarian statesman, born at Kehida, of an ancient noble Magyar family; his aim for Hungary was the same as that of Cavour (q. v.) for Italy, the establishment of constitutional government, and he succeeded; standing all along as he did from Hungarian republicanism on the one hand, and Austrian tyranny on the other, he urged on the Emperor of Austria the demand of the Diet, of which he had become leader, at first without effect, but after the humiliation of Austria in 1866, all that he asked for was conceded, and the Austrian Emperor received the Hungarian crown (1803-1876).
Deal (9), a town, one of the old Cinque ports, oil the E. of Kent, opposite the Goodwin Sands, 89 m. from London, with a fine sea-beach; much resorted to for sea-bathing quarters.
Dean, Forest of, a forest of 22,000 acres in the W. of Gloucestershire, between the Severn and the Wye; the property of the Crown for the most part; the inhabitants are chiefly miners, who at one time enjoyed special privileges.
Dean of Guild, a burgh magistrate in Scotland who has the care of buildings, originally the head of the Guild brethren of the town.
Dean of St. Patrick's, Jonathan Swift, who held that post from 1713 till his death.
Deans, Davie, Effie, and Jeanie, characters in the “Heart of Midlothian.”
Débats, Journal des, a daily paper, established in 1789; it defends at present the Conservative Republican policy, and publishes often remarkable literary articles.
Debenture, a deed acknowledging a debt on a specified security.
Debo`rah, a Hebrew prophetess; reckoned one of the judges of Israel by her enthusiasm to free her people from the yoke of the Canaanites; celebrated for her song of exultation over their defeat, instinct at once with pious devotion and with revengeful feeling; Coleridge calls her “this Hebrew Boadicea.”
Debreczen (56), a Hungarian town, 130 m. E. of Buda-Pesth; is the head-quarters of Protestantism in the country, and has an amply equipped and a largely attended Protestant College; is a seat of manufactures and a large trade.
Decameron, a collection of a hundred tales, conceived of as rehearsed in ten days at a country-house during the plague at Florence; are of a licentious character, but exquisitely told; were written by Boccaccio; published in 1352; the name comes from deka, ten, and hemera, a day.
Decamps, Alexandra Gabriel, a distinguished French painter, born in Paris; brought up as a boy among the peasants of Picardy; represented nature as he in his own way saw it himself, and visited Switzerland and the East, where he found materials for original and powerful pictures; his pictures since his death have brought great prices (1803-1860).
De Candolle, Augustin Pyrame, an eminent botanist, born at Geneva, of Huguenot descent; studied in Paris; attracted the attention of Cuvier and Lamarck, whom he assisted in their researches; published his “Flore Française,” in six vols.; became professor at Montpellier, and then at Geneva; is the historical successor of Jussieu; his great contribution to botanical science is connected with the classification of plants (1778-1841).
Deca`tur, Stephen, an American naval commodore; distinguished for his feats of valour displayed in the war with Tripoli and with England (1779-1820).
Deccan, a triangular plateau of from 2000 to 3000 ft. of elevation in the Indian peninsula, extending S. of the Vindhya Mountains; is densely peopled, and contains some of the richest soil in the globe.
December, the twelfth month of the year, so called, i. e. tenth, by the Romans, as their year began with March.
Dec`emvirs, the patricians of Rome, with Consular powers, appointed in 450 B.C. to prepare a code of laws for the Republic, which, after being agreed upon, were committed first to ten, then to twelve tables, and set up in the Forum that all might read and know the law they lived under.
Decius, Roman emperor from 249 to 251; was a cruel persecutor of the Christians; perished in a morass fighting with the Goths, who were a constant thorn in his side all through his reign.
Decius Mus, the name of three Romans, father, son, and grandson, who on separate critical emergencies (340, 295, 279 B.C.) devoted themselves in sacrifice to the infernal gods in order to secure victory to the Roman arms; the name is mostly employed ironically.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the immortal work of Gibbon, of which the first volume was published in 1776.
Decretals, The, a collection of laws added to the canon law of the Church of Rome, being judicial replies of the Popes to cases submitted to them from time to time for adjudication.
Dee, John, an alchemist, born in London; a man of curious learning; earned the reputation of being a sorcerer; was imprisoned at one time, and mobbed at another, under this imputation; died in poverty; left 79 works, the majority of which were never printed, though still extant in MS. in the British Museum and other places of safe-keeping (1527-1608).
Defauconpret, French littérateur; translator of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper (1767-1843).
Defender of the Faith, a title conferred by Pope Leo X. in 1521 upon Henry VIII. for his defence of the Catholic faith in a treatise against Luther, and retained ever since by the sovereigns of England, though revoked by Pope Paul III. in 1535 in consequence of Henry's apostasy.
Deffand, Marie, Marquise du, a woman of society, famed for her wit and gallantry; corresponded with the eminent philosophes of the time, in particular Voltaire, as well as with Horace Walpole; her letters are specially brilliant, and display great shrewdness; she is characterised by Prof. Saintsbury as “the typical French lady of the eighteenth century”; she became blind in 1753, but retained her relish for society, though at length she entered a monastery, where she died (1697-1780).
Defoe, Daniel, author of “Robinson Crusoe,” born in London; bred for the Dissenting ministry; turned to business, but took chiefly to politics; was a zealous supporter of William III.; his ironical treatise, “The Shortest Way with Dissenters” (1703), which, treated seriously, was burned by order of the House of Commons, led to his imprisonment and exposed him for three days to the pillory, amidst the cheers, however, not the jeers, of the mob; in prison wrote a “Hymn to the Pillory,” and started his Review; on his release he was employed on political missions, and wrote a “History of the Union,” which he contributed to promote. The closing years of his life were occupied mainly with literary work, and it was then, in 1719, he produced his world-famous “Robinson Crusoe”; has been described as “master of the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth.” “His circumstantial invention,” as Stopford Brooke remarks, “combined with a style which exactly fits it by its simplicity, is the root of the charm of his great story” (1661-1731).
Dege`rando, Baron, a French philanthropist and philosopher, born at Lyons, of Italian descent; wrote “History of Philosophy,” long in repute as the best French work on the subject (1772-1842).
Deianeira, the wife of Hercules, whose death she had been the unwitting cause of by giving him the poisoned robe which Nessus (q. v.) had sent her as potent to preserve her husband's love; on hearing the fatal result she killed herself in remorse and despair.
Deiphobus, a son of Priam and Hecuba, second in bravery to Hector; married Helen after the death of Paris, and was betrayed by her to the Greeks.
Deir-al-Kamar, a town in Syria, once the capital of the Druses, on a terrace in the heart of the Lebanon Mountains.
Deism, belief on purely rational grounds in the existence of God, and distinguished from theism as denying His providence.
Deists, a set of free-thinkers of various shades, who in England, in the 17th and 18th centuries, discarded revelation and the supernatural generally, and sought to found religion on a purely rational basis.
Déjazet, Virginie, a celebrated French actress, born in Paris; made her début at five years of age (1797-1875).
Dekker, Thomas, a dramatist, born in London; was contemporary of Ben Jonson, between whom and him, though they formerly worked together, a bitter animosity arose; wrote lyrics as well as dramas, which are light comedies, and prose as well as poetry; the most famous among his prose works, “The Gull's Hornbook,” a pamphlet, in which he depicts the life of a young gallant; his pamphlets are valuable (1570-1641).
De la Beche, Sir Henry Thomas, geologist, born in London; wrote the “Depth and Temperature of the Lake of Geneva,” and published a “Manual of Geology” and the “Geological Observer”; was appointed head of the Geological Survey in England (1796-1855).
Delacroix, Eugène, a French painter, born at Charenton, dep. of Seine; one of the greatest French painters of the 19th century; was the head of the French Romantic school, a brilliant colourist and a daring innovator; his very first success, “Dante crossing Acheron in Charon's Boat,” forms an epoch in the history of contemporary art; besides his pictures, which were numerous, he executed decorations and produced lithographic illustrations of “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and Goethe's “Faust” (1799-1863).
Delagoa Bay, an inlet in the SE. of Africa, E. of the Transvaal, subject to Portugal; stretches from 25° 30' to 26° 20' S.; extends 52 m. inland, where the Transvaal frontier begins, and between which and it a railway of 52 m., constructed by an English company, extends.
Delaistre, a French statuary, born in Paris (1836-1891).
Delambre, Jean Joseph, an eminent French astronomer, born at Amiens, a pupil of Lalande; measured with Méchain the arc of the meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona towards the establishment of the metric system; produced numerous works of great value, among others “Theoretical and Practical Astronomy” and the “History of Astronomy” (1749-1822).
Delane, John Thadeus, editor of the Times, born in London; studied at Oxford; after some experience as a reporter was put on the staff of the Times, and in 1841 became editor, a post he continued to hold for 36 years; was the inspiring and guiding spirit of the paper, but wrote none of the articles (1817-1879).
Delaroche, Paul, a French historical painter and one of the greatest, born in Paris; was the head of the modern Eclectic school, so called as holding a middle place between the Classical and Romantic schools of art; among his early works were “St. Vincent de Paul preaching before Louis XIII.” and “Joan of Arc before Cardinal Beaufort”; the subjects of his latest pictures are from history, English and French, such as “The Princes in the Tower” and “Cromwell contemplating the corpse of Charles I.,” a great work; but the grandest monument of his art is the group of paintings with which he adorned the wall of the semicircle of the Palais des Beaux Arts in Paris, which he completed in 1841 (1797-1856).
Delaunay, Le Vicomte, the nom de plume of Mme. Delphine, under which she published her “Parisian Letters.”
Delaunay, Louis Arsène, a great French actor, born in Paris; made his début in 1846, retired 1887.
Delavigne, Casimir, a popular French lyric poet and dramatist, born at Havre; his verse was conventional and without originality (1793-1843).
Delaware (168), one of the Atlantic and original States of the American Union, as well as the smallest of them; the soil is rather poor, but porcelain clay abounds.
Delcassé, Théophile, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, born at Pamiers; began life as a journalist; was elected to the Chamber in 1889; became Colonial Minister; advocated colonial expansion; dealt skilfully with the Fashoda affair as Foreign Minister; b. 1852.
Delectable Mountains, mountains covered with sheep in the “Pilgrim's Progress,” from which the pilgrim obtains a view of the Celestial City.
Delescluze, a French Communist, born at Dreux; was imprisoned and transported for his extreme opinions; started a journal, the Rèveil, in 1868, to advocate the doctrines of the International; was mainly answerable for the atrocities of the Paris Commune; was killed in the barricades (1809-1871).
Delft (27), a Dutch town, S m. NW. of Rotterdam, once famous for its pottery; is intersected by canals; has an important polytechnic school.
Delgado, a cape of E. Africa, on the border between Zanzibar and Mozambique.
Delhi (192), on the right bank of the Jumna, once the capital of the Mogul empire and the centre of the Mohammedan power in India; it is a great centre of trade, and is situated in the heart of India; it contains the famous palace of Shah Jahan, and the Jama Masjid, which occupies the heart of the city, and is the largest and finest mosque in India, which owes its origin to Shah Jahan; it is walled, is 51 m. in circumference, and divided into Hindu, Mohammedan, and European quarters; it was captured by Lord Lake in 1803, and during the Mutiny by the Sepoys, but after a siege of seven days retaken in 1857.
Delight of Mankind, the Roman Emperor Trajan.
Delilah, the Philistine woman who beguiled and betrayed Samson.
Delille, Jacques, a French poet, born at Aigues Perse, in Auvergne; translator of the “Georgics” of Virgil into verse, afterwards the “Æneid” and “Paradise Lost,” besides producing also certain didactic and descriptive works; was a good versifier, but properly no poet, and much overrated; died blind (1738-1813).
Delitzsch, Franz, a learned biblical scholar and exegete, born at Leipzig; his commentaries, which are numerous, were of a conservative tendency; he wrote on Jewish antiquities, biblical psychology, and Christian apologetics; was professor at Erlangen and Leipzig successively, where his influence on the students was distinctly marked (1813-1899).
Delius, Nicolaus, a German philologist, born at Bremen; distinguished especially as a student of Shakespeare and for his edition of Shakespeare's works, which is of transcendent merit (1813-1888).
Delia Cruscans, a set of English sentimental poetasters, the leaders of them hailing from Florence, that appeared in England towards the close of the 18th century, and that for a time imposed on many by their extravagant panegyrics of one another, the founder of the set being one Robert Merry, who signed himself Della Crusca; he first announced himself by a sonnet to Love, in praise of which Anne Matilda wrote an incomparable piece of nonsense; “this epidemic spread for a term from fool to fool,” but was soon exposed and laughed out of existence.
Dellys (3), a seaport in Algeria, 49 m. E. of Algiers.
Delolme, John Louis, a writer on State polity, born at Geneva, bred to the legal profession; spent some six years in England as a refugee; wrote a book on the “Constitution of England,” and in praise of it, which was received for a time with high favour in the country, but is now no longer regarded as an authority; wrote a “History of the Flagellants,” and on “The Union of Scotland with England” (1740-1806).
Delorme, a French architect, born at Lyons; studied in Rome; was patronised by Catherine de Medici; built the palace of the Tuileries, and contributed to the art of building (1518-1577).
Delorme, Marion, a Frenchwoman celebrated for her wit and fascination, born at Châlons-sur-Marne; came to Paris in the reign of Louis XIII., where her drawing-room became the rendezvous of all the celebrities of the time, many of whom were bewitched by her charms; she gave harbour to the chiefs of the Fronde, and was about to be arrested when she died; the story that her death was a feint, and that she had subsequent adventures, is distrusted; she is the subject of a drama by Victor Hugo (1612-1650).
Delos, the smallest and central island of the Cyclades, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and where the former had a famous oracle; it was, according to the Greek mythology, a floating island, and was first fixed to the spot by Zeus to provide Leda with a place, denied her elsewhere by Hera, in which to bring forth her twin offspring; it was at one time a centre of Apollo worship, but is now uninhabited, and only frequented at times by shepherds with their flocks.
Delphi, a town of ancient Greece in Phocis, at the foot of Parnassus, where Apollo had a temple, and whence he was wont to issue his oracles by the mouth of his priestess the Pythia, who when receiving the oracle used to sit on a tripod over an opening in the ground through which an intoxicating vapour exhaled, deemed the breath of the god, and that proved the vehicle of her inspiration; the Pythian games were celebrated here.
Delphin Classics, an edition of the Greek and Roman classics, edited by Bossuet and Huet, assisted by thirty-nine scholars, for the use of the dauphin of Louis XIV.; of little use now.
Delphine, a novel by Mme. de Staël; presumed to be an idealised picture of herself.
Delta, the signature of D. Macbeth Moir in Blackwood's Magazine.
Deluc, Jean André, geologist, born in Geneva; lived in England; was reader to Queen Charlotte, and author of several works (1727-1817).
Deluge, name given to the tradition, common to several races, of a flood of such universality as to sweep the land, if not the earth, of all its inhabitants, except the pair by whom the land of the earth was repeopled.
Dem`ades, an Athenian orator, a bitter enemy of Demosthenes, in the interest of Philip of Macedon; put to death for treason by Antipater, 318 B.C.; was a man of no principle, but a great orator.
Demara`tus, king of Sparta from 510 to 491 B.C.; dispossessed of his crown, fled to Persia and accompanied Xerxes into Greece.
Demavend, Mount, an extinct volcano, the highest peak (18,600 ft.) of the Elburz chain, in Persia.
Dembea, a lake, the largest in Abyssinia, being 60 m. long and 6000 ft. above the sea-level, from which the Blue Nile issues.
Dembinski, Henry, a Polish general, born near Cracow; served under Napoleon against Russia, under Kossuth against Austria; fled to Turkey on the resignation of Kossuth; died in Paris (1791-1864).
Demerara, a division of British Guiana; takes its name from the river, which is 200 m. long, and falls into the Atlantic at Georgetown.
Demeter (lit. Earth-mother), the great Greek goddess of the earth, daughter of Kronos and Rhea and sister of Zeus, and ranks with him as one of the twelve great gods of Olympus; is specially the goddess of agriculture, and the giver of all the earth's fruits; the Latins call her Ceres.
Demetrius, the name of two kings of Macedonia who ruled over the country, the first from 290 to 289 B.C., and the second from 240 to 229 B.C.
Demetrius, or Dimitri, the name of several sovereigns of Russia, and of four adventurers called the four false Dimitri.
Demetrius I., Soter (i. e. saviour), king of Syria from 162 to 150 B.C.; was grandson of Antiochus the Great. D. II., Nicator (i. e. conqueror), king of Syria from 143 to 125 B.C. D. III., Eucæros (i. e. the happy), king of Syria in 95, died in 84 B.C.
Demetrius Phalereus, an eminent Athenian orator, statesman, and historian, born at Phalerus, a seaport of Athens; was held in high honour in Athens for a time as its political head, but fell into dishonour, after which he lived retired and gave himself up to literary pursuits; died from the bite of an asp; left a number of works (345-283 B.C.).
Demidoff, a Russian family distinguished for their wealth, descended from a serf of Peter the Great, and who amassed a large fortune by manufacturing firearms for him, and were raised by him to the rank of nobility; they were distinguished in the arts, in arms, and even literature; Anatol in particular, who travelled over the SE. of Europe, and wrote an account of his travels, a work magnificently illustrated.
Demigod, a hero elevated in the imagination to the rank of a divinity in consequence of the display of virtues and the achievement of feats superior to those of ordinary men.
Demi-monde, a class in Parisian society dressing in a fashionable style, but of questionable morals.
Demiurgus, a name employed by Plato to denote the world-soul, the medium by which the idea is made real, the spiritual made material, the many made one, and it was adopted by the Gnostics to denote the world-maker as a being derived from God, but estranged from God, being environed in matter, which they regarded as evil, and so incapable as such of redeeming the soul from matter, from evil, such as the God of the Jews, and the Son of that God, conceived of as manifest in flesh.
Democracy has been defined to be government of the people by the people and for the people, or as a State in which the government rests directly with the majority of the citizens, but this under the protest of some that it is not an end but a means “to the attainment of a truer and truer aristocracy, or government again by the Best.”
Democrats, a political party in the United States that contends for the rights of the several States to self-government as against undue centralisation.
Democritus, a Greek philosopher, born in Abdera, Thrace, of wealthy parents; spent his patrimony in travel, gathered knowledge from far and near, and gave the fruits of it in a series of writings to his contemporary compatriots, only fragments of which remain, though they must have come down comparatively entire to Cicero's time, who compares them for splendour and music of eloquence to Plato's; his philosophy was called the Atomic, as he traced the universe to its ultimate roots in combinations of atoms, in quality the same but in quantity different, and referred all life and sensation to movements in them, while he regarded quiescence as the summum bonum; he has been called the Laughing Philosopher from, it is alleged, his habit of laughing at the follies of mankind; b. 460 B.C.
Democritus Junior, a pseudonym under which Burton published his “Anatomy of Melancholy.”
Demogeot, French littérateur, born at Paris; wrote a history of literature, chiefly French (1808-1894).
Demogorgon, a terrible deity, the tyrant of the elves and fairies, who must all appear before him once every five years to give an account of their doings.
Demoivre, Abraham, a mathematician, born in Champagne; lived most of his life in England to escape, as a Protestant, from persecution in France; became a friend of Newton, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was of such eminence as a mathematician that he was asked to arbitrate between the claims of Newton and Leibnitz to the invention of fluxions (1667-1754).
Demon, or Daimon, a name which Socrates gave to an inner divine instinct which corresponds to one's destiny, and guides him in the way he should go to fulfil it, and is more or less potent in a man according to his purity of soul.
De Morgan, Augustus, an eminent mathematician, born in Madura, S. India; was professor of Mathematics in London University from 1828 till his death, though he resigned the appointment for a time in consequence of the rejection of a candidate, James Martineau, for the chair of logic, on account of his religious opinions; wrote treatises on almost every department of mathematics, on arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, the last pronounced to be “the most complete treatise on the subject ever produced in England”; wrote also “Formal Logic” (1806-1871).
Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, born in Athens; had many impediments to overcome to succeed in the profession, but by ingenious methods and indomitable perseverance he subdued them all, and became the first orator not of Greece only, but of all antiquity; a stammer in his speech he overcame by practising with pebbles in his mouth, and a natural diffidence by declaiming on the sea-beach amid the noise of the waves; while he acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek language by binding himself down to copy five times over in succession Thucydides' “History of the Peloponnesian War”; he employed 15 years of his life in denunciation of Philip of Macedon, who was bent on subjugating his country; pronounced against him his immortal “Philippics” and “Olynthiacs”; took part in the battle of Cheronea, and continued the struggle even after Philip's death; on the death of Alexander he gave his services as an orator to the confederated Greeks, and in the end made away with himself by poison so as not to fall into the hands of Autipater (385-322 B.C.). See Ctesiphon.
Dempster, Thomas, a learned Scotchman, born in Aberdeenshire; held several professorships on the Continent; was the author of “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum,” a work of great learning, but of questionable veracity; has been reprinted by the Bannatyne Club; his last days were embittered by the infidelity of his wife (1579-1625).
Denarius, a silver coin among the Romans, first coined in 269 B.C., and worth 8½ d.
Denbigh (6), the county town of Denbighshire, in the Vale of the Clwyd, 30 m. W. of Chester; manufactures shoes and leather.
Denbighshire (117), a county in North Wales, of rugged hills and fertile vales, 40 m. long and 17 m. on an average broad, with a coal-field in the NE., and with mines of iron, lead, and slate.
Dendera, a village in Upper Egypt, on the left bank of the Nile, 28 m. N. of Thebes, on the site of ancient Tentyra, with the ruins of a temple in almost perfect preservation; on the ceiling of a portico of which there was found a zodiac, now in the museum of the Louvre in Paris, and dates from the period of Cleopatra and the early Roman emperors, and has sculptured portraits of that queen and her son Cæsarion.
Dengue, a disease peculiar to the tropics, occurs in hot weather, and attacks one suddenly with high fever and violent pains, and after a relapse returns in a milder form and leaves the patient very weak.
Denham, Dixon, an English traveller, companion of Clapperton; visited Bornu and Lake Tchad (1785-1828).
Denham, Sir John, an English poet, born at Dublin, the son of an Irish judge; took to gambling and squandered his patrimony; was unhappy in his marriage, and his mind gave way; is best known as the author of “Cooper's Hill,” a descriptive poem, interspersed with reflections, and written in smooth flowing verse (1615-1669).
Denina, Carlo, an Italian historian, born in Piedmont; banished from Italy for a cynical remark injurious to the monks; paid court to Frederick the Great in Berlin, where he lived a good while, and became eventually imperial librarian in Paris under Napoleon (1731-1813).
Denis, a king of Portugal from 1279 to 1325; the founder of the University of Coimbra and the Order of Christ.
Denis, St., the apostle of the Gauls, the first bishop of Paris, and the patron saint of France; suffered martyrdom in 270.
Denis, St., a town 6 m. N. of Paris, within the line of the fortifications, with an abbey which contains the remains of St. Denis, and became the mausoleum of the kings of France.
Denison, Edward, philanthropist; distinguished by his self-denying benevolent labours in the East End of London (1840-1870).
Denison, George Anthony, archdeacon of Taunton, born in Notts; was charged with holding views on the eucharist inconsistent with the teaching of the Church of England, first condemned and then acquitted on appeal; a stanch High Churchman, and equally opposed to Broad Church and Low; b. 1805.
Denison, John Evelyn, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1858 to 1872, brother of the above (1800-1873).
Denman, Lord, Lord Chief-Justice of England from 1832 to 1850, born in London; was along with Brougham counsel for Queen Caroline (1779-1854).
Denmark (2,182), the smallest of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, consisting of Jutland and an archipelago of islands in the Baltic Sea, divided into 18 counties, and is less than half the size of Scotland; is a low-lying country, no place in it more above the sea-level than 500 ft., and as a consequence has no river to speak of, only meres or lakes; the land is laid out in cornfields and grazing pastures; there are as good as no minerals, but abundance of clay for porcelain; while the exports consist chiefly of horses, cattle, swine, hams, and butter; it has 1407 m. of railway, and 8686 of telegraph wires; the government is constitutional, and the established religion Lutheran.
Dennewitz, a village in Brandenburg, 40 m. SW. of Berlin, where Marshal Ney with 70,000 was defeated by Marshal Bülow with 50,000.
Dennis, John, a would-be dramatist and critic, born in London, in constant broils with the wits of his time; his productions were worth little, and he is chiefly remembered for his attacks on Addison and Pope, and for the ridicule these attacks brought down at their hands on his own head, from Pope in “Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis,” and “damnation to everlasting fame” in “Dunciad”; he became blind, and was sunk in poverty, when Pope wrote a prologue to a play produced for his benefit (1657-1734).
Dens, Peter, a Catholic theologian, born at Boom near Antwerp; author of a work entitled “Theologia Moralis et Dogmatica,” a minute and casuistic vindication in catechetical form of the tenets of the Catholic Church, and in use as a text-book in Catholic colleges (1690-1775).
Dentatus, M. Curius, a Roman of the old stamp; as consul gained two victories over rival States and two triumphs in one year; drove Pyrrhus out of Italy (275 B.C.), and brought to Rome immense booty, of which he would take nothing to himself; in his retirement took to tilling a small farm with his own hand.
Denver (134), the capital of Colorado, U.S., on a plain 5196 ft. above the sea-level; originally founded as a mining station in 1858, now a large and flourishing and well-appointed town; is the centre of a great trade, and a great mining district.
Deodar (25), a small protected independent State in the NW. of Gujarat, India.
Deodoraki, a glacier in the Caucasus Mountains.
Deparcieux, French mathematician, born at Cessoux, dep. of Gard; known for the “Tables” which bear his name, containing a reckoning of the chances of longevity for different ages (1703-1768).
Department, a territorial division in France instituted in 1790, under which the old division into provinces was broken up; each department, of which there are now 87, is broken up into arrondissements.
Depping, a learned French historian, born at Münster; wrote a “History of Normandy,” and on “Trade of Europe with the Levant” (1784-1853).
Deptford (101), a town on the S. bank of the Thames, partly in Kent and partly in Surrey, now forming part of London; once with an extensive Government dockyard and arsenal, the site of it purchased by the Corporation of London as a market for foreign cattle; is now the central station for the Electric Light Company.
De Quincey, Thomas, a great English prose writer, born in Manchester; son of a merchant called Quincey; his father dying, he was under a guardian, who put him to school, from which in the end he ran away, wandered about in Wales for a time, and by-and-by found his way to London; in 1803 was sent to Oxford, which in 1807 he left in disgust; it was here as an anodyne he took to opium, and acquired that habit which was the bane of his life; on leaving Oxford he went to Bath beside his mother, where he formed a connection by which he was introduced to Wordsworth and Southey, and led to settle to literary work at Grasmere, in the Lake District; here he wrote for the reviews and magazines, particularly Blackwood's, till in 1821 he went up to London and published his “Confessions” under the nom de plume of “The English Opium-Eater”; leaving Grasmere in 1828 he settled in Edinburgh, and at Polton, near Lasswade, where he died; is characterised by Stopford Brooke as “owing to the overlapping and involved melody of his style one of our best, as he is one of our most various miscellaneous writers”; he was a writer of very miscellaneous ability and acquirement (1785-1859).
Derbend (14), capital of Russian Daghestan, on the W. of the Caspian Sea, 140 m. NW. of Baku.
Derby (94), county town of Derbyshire, on the Derwent, with manufactures of silk, cotton hosiery, lace, porcelain, &c.; it is the centre of a great railway system.
Derby, Charlotte Countess of, wife of the 7th Earl who was taken prisoner at Worcester in 1651, and was beheaded at Bolton; famous for her gallant defence of Lathom House against the Parliamentary forces, which she was obliged to surrender; lived to see the Restoration; d. 1663.
Derby, 14th Earl of, British statesman, born at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire; entered Parliament in 1820 in the Whig interest, and was hailed as an accession to their ranks by the Whigs; supported the cause of reform; in 1830 became Chief Secretary for Ireland under Earl Grey's administration; introduced a coercive measure against the Repeal agitation of O'Connell; contributed to the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832; seceded from the Whigs in 1834, and became Colonial Secretary in 1845 under a Conservative administration, but when Sir Robert Peel brought in a bill to repeal the Corn Laws, he retired from the Cabinet, and in 1848 became the head of the Protectionist party as Earl of Derby, to which title he succeeded in 1851; was after that Prime Minister three times over, and it was with his sanction Disraeli carried his Reform Act of 1867, though he spoke of it as “a leap in the dark”; he resigned his Premiership in 1868, and the last speech he made was against the Irish Disestablishment Bill; was distinguished for his scholarship as well as his oratory, and gave proof of this by his scholarly translation of the “Iliad” of Homer (1797-1869).
Derby, 15th Earl of, eldest son of the preceding; entered Parliament as Lord Stanley in 1848; was a member of the three Derby administrations, in the first and third in connection with foreign affairs, and in the second as Secretary for India, at the time when the government of India passed from the Company to the Crown; became Earl in 1869; was Foreign Secretary under Mr. Disraeli in 1874, but retired in 1878; in 1885 joined the Liberal party, and held office under Mr. Gladstone, but declined to follow him in the matter of Home Rule, and joined the Unionist ranks; was a man of sound and cool judgment, and took a deep interest in economical questions (1826-1893).
Derby Day, the last Wednesday in May, or, as may happen, the 1st of June, being the second day of the Summer Meeting at Epsom, on which the Derby Stakes for colts and fillies three years old are run for, so called as having been started by the 12th Earl of Derby in 1780; the day is held as a great London holiday, and the scene is one to which all London turns out. The stakes run for are £6000, of which the winner gets £5000.
Derbyshire (520), a northern midland county of England, hilly in the N., undulating and pastoral in the S., and with coal-fields in the E.; abounds in minerals, and is more a manufacturing and mining county than an agricultural.
Derg, Lough, an expansion of the waters of the Shannon, Ireland, 24 m. long, from 2 to 6 broad; also a small lake in the S. of Donegal, with small islands, one of which, Station Island, was, as the reputed entrance to St. Patrick's Purgatory, a place of pilgrimage to thousands at one time.
Dervishes, a name given to members of certain mendicant orders connected with the Mohammedan faith in the East. Of these there are various classes, under different regulations, and wearing distinctive costumes, with their special observances of devotion, and all presumed to lead an austere life, some of whom live in monasteries, and others go wandering about, some of them showing their religious fervour in excited whirling dances, and others in howlings; all are religious fanatics in their way, and held sacred by the Moslems.
Derwentwater, one of the most beautiful of the Cumberland lakes, in the S. of the county; extends S. from Keswick; is over 3 m. long, and over 1 m. broad; is dotted with wooded islands, and is overlooked by Skiddaw; it abounds with perch.
Derwentwater, Earl of, a Jacobite leader; was 3rd Earl and the last; several warrants were issued for his apprehension in 1714; he joined the Jacobite rising in 1715; was taken prisoner at Preston, and beheaded on Tower Hill, London, next year, after trial in Westminster Hall, confession of guilt, and pleadings on his behalf with the king.
Derzhaven, Gabriel, a Russian lyric poet, born at Kasan; rose from the ranks as a common soldier to the highest offices in the State under the Empress Catharine II. and her successors; retired into private life, and gave himself up to poetry; the ode by which he is best known is his “Address to the Deity” (1743-1816).
Desaix, Louis Charles Antoine, a distinguished French general, born at the Château d'Ayat, Auvergne, of a noble family; entered the army at 15; commanded a division of the Army of the Rhine in 1796, and after the retreat of Moreau defended Kehl against the Austrians for two months; accompanied Bonaparte to the East, and in 1799 conquered Upper Egypt; contributed effectively to the success at Marengo, and fell dead at the moment of victory, shot by a musket-ball; he was an upright and a chivalrous man, known in Egypt as “the just Sultan,” and in Germany as “the good general” (1768-1800).
Desaugiers, Marc, a celebrated French composer of songs and vaudevilles; “stands second to Béranger as a light song-writer,” and is by some preferred to him (1772-1827).
Desault, a French surgeon, born in dep. of Haute-Saône; his works contributed largely to the progress of surgery (1714-1795).
Desbarres, Joseph Frederick, military engineer and hydrographer, aide-de-camp of General Wolfe at Quebec; fortified Quebec; surveyed the St. Lawrence; revised the maps of the American coast at the outbreak of the American war; died at Halifax, Nova Scotia, aged 102 (1722-1824).
Descamps, a French painter, born at Dunkirk; painted village scenes (1714-1791).
Descartes, René, the father of modern philosophy, born at La Haye, in Touraine; was educated at the Jesuit College of La Flèche, where he made rapid progress in all that his masters could teach him, but soon grew sceptical as to their methods of inquiry; “resolved, on the completion of his studies, to bid adieu to all school and book learning, and henceforth to gain knowledge only from himself, and from the great book of the world, from nature and the observation of man”; in 1616 he entered the army of the Prince of Orange, and after a service of five years quitted it to visit various centres of interest on the Continent; made a considerable stay in Paris; finally abandoned his native land in 1629, and betook himself to seclusion in Holland in order to live there, unknown and undisturbed, wholly for philosophy and the prosecution of his scientific projects; here, though not without vexatious opposition from the theologians, he lived twenty years, till in 1649, at the invitation of Christina of Sweden, he left for Stockholm, where, the severe climate proving too much for him, he was carried off by pneumonia next year; Descartes' philosophy starts with Doubt, and by one single step it arrives at Certainty; “if I doubt, it is plain I exist,” and from this certainty, that is, the existence of the thinking subject, he deduces his whole system; it all comes from the formula Cogito, ergo sum, “I think, therefore I exist,” that is, the thinking ego exists; in which thinking philosophy ere long sums the universe up, regarding it as a void, without thought; Descartes' philosophy is all comprehended in two works, his “Discourse on Method,” and his “Meditations” (1596-1650).
Deschamps, Émile, a French poet, born at Bourges, one of the chiefs of the Romantic school (1795-1871).
Deschamps, Eustache, a French poet, born at Vertus, in Champagne; studied in Orleans University; travelled over Europe; had his estate pillaged by the English, whom, in consequence, he is never weary of abusing; his poems are numerous, and, except one, all short, consisting of ballads, as many as 1175 of them, a form of composition which he is said to have invented; he deals extensively in satire, and if he wields the shafts of it against the plunderers of his country, he does no less against the oppressors of the poor (1328-1415).
Desdemona, the wife of Othello the Moor, who, in Shakespeare's play of that name, kills her on a groundless insinuation of infidelity, to his bitter remorse.
Desèze, a French advocate, had the courage, along with advocate Tronchet, to defend Louis XVI. when dragged to judgment by the Convention, and who, honourably fulfilling his perilous office, pled for the space of three hours, an honourable pleading “composed almost overnight; courageous, yet discreet; not without ingenuity, and soft pathetic eloquence”; he was imprisoned for a time, but escaped the scaffold; on the return of the Bourbons he was made a peer (1750-1828).
Desmond, Earldom of, an Irish title long extinct by the death of the last earl in 1583; he had rebelled against Elizabeth's government, been proclaimed, and had taken refuge in a peasant's cabin, and been betrayed.
Des Moines (62), the largest city in Iowa, U.S., and the capital, founded in 1846.
Desmoulins, Camille, one of the most striking figures in the French Revolution, born at Guise, in Picardy; studied for the bar in the same college with Robespierre, but never practised, owing to a stutter in his speech; was early seized with the revolutionary fever, and was the first to excite the same fever in the Parisian mob, by his famous call “To arms, and, for some rallying sign, cockades—green ones—the colour of Hope, when,” as we read in Carlyle, “as with the flight of locusts, the green tree-leaves, green ribbons from the neighbouring shops, all green things, were snatched to make cockades of”; was one of the ablest advocates of the levelling principles of the Revolution; associated himself first with Mirabeau and then with Danton in carrying them out, and even supported Robespierre in the extreme course he took; but his heart was moved to relent when he thought of the misery the guillotine was working among the innocent families, the wives and the children, of its victims, would, along with Danton, fain have brought the Reign of Terror to a close; for this he was treated as a renegade, put under arrest at the instance of Robespierre, subjected to trial, sentenced to death, and led off to the place of execution; while his young wife, for interfering in his behalf, was arraigned and condemned, and sent to the guillotine a fortnight after him (1762-1794).
De Soto, a Spanish voyager, was sent to conquer Florida, penetrated as far as the Mississippi; worn out with fatigue in quest of gold, died of fever, and was buried in the river (1496-1542).
Des Periers, Bonaventure, a French humanist and story-teller, born at Autun, in Burgundy; valet-de-chamber of Margaret of Valois; wrote “Cymbalum Mundi,” a satirical production, in which, as a disciple of Lucian, he holds up to ridicule the religious beliefs of his day; also “Novelles Recréations et Joyeux Devis,” a collection of some 129 short stories admirably told; was one of the first prose-writers of the century, and is presumed to be the author of the “Heptameron,” ascribed to Margaret of Valois; d. 1544.
Despre`aux. See Boileau.
Dessalines, Jean Jacques, emperor of Hayti, born in Guinea, W. Africa, a negro imported into Hayti as a slave; on the emancipation of the slaves there he acquired great influence among the insurgents, and by his cruelties compelled the French to quit the island, upon which he was raised to the governorship, and by-and-by was able to declare himself emperor, but his tyranny provoked a revolt, in which he perished (1760-1806).
Dessau (34), a North German town, the capital of the Duchy of Anhalt, on the Mulde, affluent of the Elbe, some 70 m. SW. of Berlin; it is at once manufacturing and trading.
Dessauer, the old. See Leopold of Dessau.
Destouches, a French dramatist, born at Tours; his plays were comedies, and he wrote 17, all excellent (1680-1754); also a French painter (1790-1884).
Detmold (9), capital of Lippe, 47 m. SW. of Hanover, with a bronze colossal statue of Arminius (q. v.) near by.
Detroit (285), the largest city in Michigan, U.S., a great manufacturing and commercial centre, situated on a river of the same name, which connects Lake St. Clair with Lake Erie; is one of the oldest places in the States, and dates from 1670, at which time it came into the possession of the French; is a well-built city, with varied manufactures and a large trade, particularly in grain and other natural products.
Dettingen, a village in Bavaria, where an army of English, Hanoverians, and Austrians under George II., in 1743 defeated the French under Duc de Noailles.
Deucalion, son of Prometheus, who, with his wife Pyrrha, by means of an ark which he built, was saved from a flood which for nine days overwhelmed the land of Hellas. On the subsidence of the flood they consulted the oracle at Delphi as to re-peopling the land with inhabitants, when they were told by Themis, the Pythia at the time, to throw the bones of their mother over their heads behind them. For a time the meaning of the oracle was a puzzle, but the readier wit of the wife found it out; upon which they took stones and threw them over their heads, when the stones he threw were changed into men and those she threw were changed into women.
Deus ex machina, the introduction in high matters of a merely external, material, or mechanical explanation instead of an internal, rational, or spiritual one, which is all a theologian does when he simply names God, and all a scientist does when he simply says Evolution (q. v.).
Deuteronomy (i. e. the Second Law), the fifth book of the Pentateuch, and so called as the re-statement and re-enforcement, as it were, by Moses of the Divine law proclaimed in the wilderness. The Mosaic authorship of this book is now called in question, though it is allowed to be instinct with the spirit of the religion instituted by Moses, and it is considered to have been conceived at a time when that religion with its ritual was established in Jerusalem, in order to confirm faith in the Divine origin and sanction of observances there.
Deutsch, Emanuel, a distinguished Hebrew scholar, born at Neisse, in Silesia, of Jewish descent; was trained from his boyhood to familiarity with the Hebrew and Chaldea languages; studied under Boeckh at the university of Berlin; came to England, and in 1855 obtained a post in the library of the British Museum; had made a special study of the “Talmud,” on which he wrote a brilliant article for the Quarterly Review, to the great interest of many; his ambition was to write an exhaustive treatise on the subject, but he did not live to accomplish it; died at Alexandria, whither he had gone in the hope of prolonging his days (1829-1873).
Deutz (17), a Prussian town on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite Cologne.
Deux Ponts, French name for Zweibrücken (q. v.).
Deva, the original Hindu name for the deity, meaning the shining one, whence deus, god, in Latin.
Devanag`ari, the character in which Sanskrit works are printed.
Development, the biological doctrine which ascribes an innate expansive power to the organised universe, and affirms the deviation of the most complex forms through intermediate links from the simplest, without the intervention of special acts of creation. See Evolution.
Dev`enter (25), a town in Holland, in the province of Overyssel, 55 m. SE. of Amsterdam; has carpet manufactures; is celebrated for its gingerbread; was the locality of the Brotherhood of Common Life, with which the life and work of Thomas à Kempis are associated.
De Vere, Thomas Aubrey, poet and prose writer, born in co. Limerick, Ireland; educated at Trinity College, Dublin; wrote poetical dramas of “Alexander the Great” and “St. Thomas of Canterbury”; his first poem “The Waldenses”; also critical essays; b. 1814.
Devil, The, a being regarded in Scripture as having a personal existence, and, so far as this world is concerned, a universal spiritual presence, as everywhere thwarting the purposes of God and marring the destiny of man; only since the introduction of Christianity, which derives all evil as well as good from within, he has come to be regarded less as an external than an internal reality, and is identified with the ascendency in the human heart of passions native to it, which when subject ennoble it, but when supreme debase it. He is properly the spirit that deceives man, and decoys him to his eternal ruin from truth and righteousness.
Devil, The, is an Ass, a farce by Ben Jonson, full of vigour, but very coarse.
Devil-worship, a homage paid by primitive tribes to the devil or spirit of evil in the simple-hearted belief that he could be bribed from doing them evil.
Devonport (70), a town in Devonshire, adjoining Plymouth to the W., and the seat of the military and naval government of the three towns, originally called Plymouth Dock, and established as a naval arsenal by William III.
Devonshire, a county in the S. of England, with Exmoor in the N. and Dartmoor in the S.; is fertile in the low country, and enjoys a climate favourable to vegetation; it has rich pasture-grounds, and abounds in orchards.
Devonshire, Duke of. See Cavendish.
Devrient, Ludwig, a popular German actor, born in Berlin, of exceptional dramatic ability, the ablest of a family with similar gifts (1784-1832).
D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, antiquary, born in Dorsetshire; bred for the bar; was a member of the Long Parliament; left notes on its transactions; took the Puritan side in the Civil War; his “Journal of all the Parliaments of Elizabeth” is of value; left an “Autobiography and Correspondence” (1602-1656).
De Wette, Wilhelm Martin Leberecht, a German theologian, born near Weimar; studied at Jena, professor of Theology ultimately at Basel; was held in high repute as a biblical critic and exegete; contributed largely to theological literature; counted a rationalist by the orthodox, and a mystic by the rationalists; his chief works “A Critical Introduction to the Bible” and a “Manual to the New Testament” (1780-1849).
De Witt, Jan, a Dutch statesman, born at Dort; elected grand pensionary in 1652; like his father, Jacob de Witt, before him, was a declared enemy of the House of Orange, and opposed the Stadtholdership, and for a time he carried the country along with him, but during a war with England his influence declined, the Orange party prevailed, and elected the young Prince of Orange, our William III., Stadtholder. He and his brother Cornelius were murdered at last by the populace (1625-1672).
Dewsbury (73), a town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 8 m. SW. of Leeds; engaged in the manufacture of woollens, blankets, carpets, and yarns.
Dextrine, a soluble matter into which the interior substance of starch globules is converted by acids or diastase, so called because when viewed by polarised light it has the property of turning the plane of polarisation to the right.
Deyster, Louis de, a Flemish painter, born at Bruges; was of a deeply religious temper, and his character was reflected in his choice of subjects, such as the “Death of the Virgin,” “The Resurrection of Christ,” &c.; he was a recluse (1656-1711).
Dezobry, Charles, a French writer, born at St. Denis; author of “Rome in the Time of Augustus” (1798-1871).
Dhagoba, a mound with a dome-shaped top, found to contain Buddhist relics.
Dharma, the name given to the law of Buddha, as distinct from the Sangha, which is the Church.
Dharwar (32), a town in the S. of the Bombay Presidency, a place of considerable trade in a district noted for its cotton growing.
Dhwalagiri, one of the peaks of the Himalayas, the third highest, 26,826 ft. high.
Diabetes, a disease characterised by an excessive discharge of urine, and accompanied with great thirst; there are two forms of this disease.
Diab`lerets, a mountain of the Bernese Alps, between the Cantons de Vaud and de Valois.
Diafoirus, Thomas, the name of two pedantic doctors, father and son, who figure in Molière's “Malade Imaginaire.”
Diagoras, a Greek philosopher, born in Melos, one of the Cyclades, 5th century B.C., surnamed the Atheist, on account of the scorn with which he treated the gods of the popular faith, from the rage of whose devotees he was obliged to seek safety by flight; died in Corinth.
Dialectic, in the Hegelian philosophy the logic of thought, and, if of thought, the logic of being, of essential being.
Dialogues of Plato, philosophical dialogues, in which Socrates figures as the principal interlocutor, although the doctrine expounded is rather Plato's than his master's; they discuss theology, psychology, ethics, æsthetics, politics, physics, and related subjects.
Dialysis, the process of separating the crystalloid or poisonous ingredients in a substance from the colloid or harmless ingredients.
Diamante, a Spanish dramatic poet, who plagiarised Corneille's “Cid” and passed it off as original; b. 1826.
Diamantina (13), a district in Brazil, in the province of Minas Geraes, rich in diamonds.
Diamond, the name of Newton's favourite dog that, by upsetting a lamp, set fire to MSS. containing notes of experiments made over a course of years, an irreparable loss.
Diamond Necklace, a necklace consisting of 500 diamonds, and worth £80,000, which one Madame de la Motte induced the jeweller who “made” it to part with for Marie Antoinette, on security of Cardinal de Rohan, and which madame made away with, taking it to pieces and disposing of the jewels in London; the swindle was first discovered when the jeweller presented his bill to the queen, who denied all knowledge of the matter; this led to a trial which extended over nine months, gave rise to great scandal, and ended in the punishment of the swindler and her husband, and the disgrace of the unhappy, and it is believed innocent, queen. See Carlyle's “Miscellanies.”
Diamond Net, a name given in the Hegelian philosophy to “the connective tissue, so to speak, that not only supports, but even in a measure constitutes, the various organs” of the universe. See Hegelianism.
Diamond State, Delaware, U.S., from its small size and great wealth.
Diana, originally an Italian deity, dispenser of light, identified at length with the Greek goddess Artemis, and from the first with the moon; she was a virgin goddess, and spent her time in the chase, attended by her maidens; her temple at Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the world. See Artemis.
Diana de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II. of France, for whom he built the magnificent Château d'Anet, in Eure-et-Loir; she had a great influence over him, and the cruel persecutions of the Huguenots in his reign were due to her instigation (1490-1566).
Diana of France, the Duchess of Angoulême, the natural daughter of Henry II. and the Duchess de Castro (1538-1619).
Diarbekir (42), the largest town in the Kurdistan Highlands, on the Tigris, 194 m. NE. of Aleppo, and on the highway between Bagdad and Constantinople, with a large and busy bazaar.
Diastase, a nitrogenous substance developed during the germination of grain, and having the property of converting starch first into dextrine and then into sugar.
Diavolo, Fra (lit. Brother Devil), Michele Porsa, a Calabrian, originally a monk, who left his monastery and joined a set of bandits, who lent themselves to and conducted insurrectionary movements in Italy; taken prisoner, was hanged at Naples; Auber's opera, “Fra Diavolo,” has no connection with him except the name (1760-1806).
Diaz, Barthélemy, a Portuguese navigator, sent on a voyage of discovery by John II., in the command of two ships; sailed down the W. coast of Africa and doubled the Cape of Good Hope, which, from the storm that drove him past it, he called the Cape of Storms; returning to Lisbon he was superseded by Vasco da Gama, or rather subordinated to him; subsequently accompanied Cabral on his voyage to Brazil, and was lost in a storm in 1500.
Diaz Miguel, governor of Porto Rico, born in Aragon; friend and companion of Columbus; suffered from the usual Jealousies in enterprises of the kind, but prevailed in the end; d. 1514.
Diaz de la Peña, a French painter, born at Bordeaux, of Spanish descent; a landscapist of the Romantic school, eminent as a colourist (1809-1876).
Diaz del Castello, historian; accompanied Cortes to Mexico; took part in the conquest, and left a graphic, trustworthy account of it; died in Mexico, 1560.
Dibdin, Charles, musician, dramatist, and song-writer, born in Southampton; began life as an actor; invented a dramatic entertainment consisting of music, songs, and recitations, in which he was the sole performer, and of which he was for the most part the author; wrote some 30 dramatic pieces, and it is said 1400 songs; his celebrity is wholly due to his sea songs, which proved of the most inspiring quality, and did much to man the navy during the war with France; was the author of “Tom Bowling”; left an account of his “Professional Life” (1745-1814).
Dibdin, Thomas, dramatic author and song-writer, son of the preceding; was an actor as well as an author, and a most versatile one; performed in all kinds of characters, and wrote all kinds of plays, as well as numerous songs (1771-1841).
Dibdin, Thomas Frognall, bibliographer, nephew of Charles Dibdin, born in Calcutta; took orders in the Church of England; held several preferments; wrote several works all more or less of a bibliographical character, which give proof of extensive research, but are lacking often in accuracy and critical judgment; was one of the founders of the Roxburghe Club (1775-1847).
Dicæarchus, an ancient geographer, born at Messina, 4th century B.C.; a disciple of Aristotle.
Dick, James, a West Indian and London merchant, born in Forres; bequeathed £113,787 to encourage learning and efficient teaching among the parish schoolmasters of Elgin, Banff, and Aberdeen shires; it is known as the Dick Bequest, and the property is vested in a governing body of thirteen duly elected (1743-1828).
Dickens, Charles, celebrated English novelist, born at Landport, Portsmouth; son of a navy clerk, latterly in great straits; was brought up amid hardships; was sent to a solicitor's office as a clerk, learned shorthand, and became a reporter, a post in which he learned much of what afterwards served him as an author; wrote sketches for the Monthly Magazine under the name of “Boz” in 1834, and the “Pickwick Papers” in 1836-37, which established his popularity; these were succeeded by “Oliver Twist” in 1838, “Nicholas Nickleby” in 1839, and others which it is needless to enumerate, as they are all known wherever the English language is spoken; they were all written with an aim, and as Ruskin witnesses, “he was entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written,” though he thinks we are apt “to lose sight of his wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire.... Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true”; being a born actor, and fain in his youth to become one, he latterly gave public readings from his works, which were immensely popular; “acted better,” says Carlyle, who witnessed one of these performances, “than any Macready in the world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic theatre visible, performing under one hat, and keeping us laughing—in a sorry way some of us thought—the whole night”; the strain proved too much for him; he was seized with a fit at his residence, Gad's Hill, near Rochester, on June 8, 1870, and died the following morning; he was a little man, with clear blue intelligent eyes, a face of most extreme mobility, and a quiet shrewdness of expression (1812-1870).
Dictator, a magistrate invested with absolute authority in ancient republican Rome in times of exigence and danger; the constitution obliged him to resign his authority at the end of six months, till which time he was free without challenge afterwards to do whatever the interest of the commonwealth seemed to him to require; the most famous dictators were Cincinnatus, Camillus, Sulla, and Cæsar, who was the last to be invested with this power; the office ceased with the fall of the republic, or rather, was merged in the perpetual dictatorship of the emperor.
Dictator of Letters, Voltaire.
Dictys Cretensis (i. e. of Crete), the reputed author of a narrative of the Trojan war from the birth of Paris to the death of Ulysses, extant only in a Latin translation; the importance attached to this narrative and others ascribed to the same author is, that they are the source of many of the Greek legends we find inwoven from time to time in the mediæval literature that has come down to us.
Diddler, Jeremy, a needy, artful swindler in Kenny's farce of “Raising the Wind.”
Diderot, Denis, a French philosopher, born at Langres, the son of a cutler there; a zealous propagator of the philosophic ideas of the 18th century, and the projector of the famous “Encyclopédie,” which he edited along with D'Alembert, and which made a great noise in its day, but did not enrich its founder, who was in the end driven to offer his library for sale to get out of the pecuniary difficulties it involved him in, and he would have been ruined had not Catharine of Russia bought it, which she not only did, but left it with him, and paid him a salary as librarian. Diderot fought hard to obtain a hearing for his philosophical opinions; his first book was burnt by order of the parlement of Paris, while for his second he was clapped in jail; and all along he had to front the most formidable opposition, so formidable that all his fellow-workers were ready to yield, and were only held to their task by his indomitable resolution and unquenchable ardour. “A deist in his earlier writings,” says Schwegler, “the drift of his subsequent writings amounts to the belief that all is God. At first a believer in the immateriality and immortality of the soul, he peremptorily declares at last that only the race endures, that individuals pass, and that immortality is nothing but life in the remembrance of posterity; he was kept back, however, from the materialism his doctrines issued in by his moral earnestness”; that Diderot was at heart no sceptic is evident, as Dr. Stirling suggests, from his “indignation at the darkness, the miserable ignorance of those around him, and his resolution to dispel it” (1713-1784).
Didius, Julianus, a Roman emperor who in 193 purchased the imperial purple from the prætorian guards, and was after two months murdered by the soldiers when Severus was approaching the city.
Dido, the daughter of Belus, king of Tyre, and the sister of Pygmalion, who, having succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, put Sichæus, her husband, to death for the sake of his wealth, whereupon she secretly took ship, sailed away from the city with the treasure, accompanied by a body of disaffected citizens, and founded Carthage, having picked up by the way 80 virgins from Cyprus to make wives for her male attendants; a neighbouring chief made suit for her hand, encouraged by her subjects, upon which, being bound by an oath of eternal fidelity to Sichæus, she erected a funeral pile and stabbed herself in presence of her subjects; Virgil makes her ascend the funeral pile out of grief for the departure of Æneas, of whom she was passionately in love.
Didot, the name of a French family of paper-makers, printers, and publishers, of which the most celebrated is Ambroise Firmin, born in Paris, a learned Hellenist (1790-1876).
Didymus (twin), a surname of St. Thomas; also the name of a grammarian of Alexandria, a contemporary of Cicero, and who wrote commentaries on Homer.
Diebitsch, Count, a Russian general, born in Silesia; commander-in-chief in 1829 of the Russian army against Turkey, over the forces of which he gained a victory in the Balkans; commissioned to suppress a Polish insurrection, he was baffled in his efforts, and fell a victim to cholera in 1831.
Dieffenbach, Johann Friedrich, an eminent German surgeon, born at Königsberg; studied for the Church; took part in the war of liberation, and began the study of medicine after the fall of Napoleon; was appointed to the chair of Surgery in Berlin; his fame rests on his skill as an operator (1792-1847).
Dieffenbach, Lorenz, a distinguished philologist and ethnologist, born at Ostheim, in the grand-duchy of Hesse; was for 11 years a pastor; in the end, until his death, librarian at Frankfort-on-the-Main; his literary works were numerous and varied; his chief were on philological and ethnological subjects, and are monuments of learning (1806-1883).
Diego Suarez, Bay of, is situated on the NE. of Madagascar, and has been ceded to France.
Diemen, Antony van, governor of the Dutch possessions in India, born in Holland; was a zealous coloniser; at his instance Abel Tasman was sent to explore the South Seas, when he discovered the island which he named after him Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania after the discoverer (1593-1645).
Diepenbeck, Abraham van, a Flemish painter and engraver (1599-1675).
Dieppe (22), a French seaport on the English Channel, at the mouth of the river Arques, 93 m. NW. of Paris; a watering and bathing place, with fisheries and a good foreign trade.
Dies Irae (lit. the Day of Wrath), a Latin hymn on the Last Judgment, so called from first words, and based on Zeph. i. 14-18; it is ascribed to a monk of the name of Thomas de Celano, who died in 1255, and there are several translations of it in English, besides a paraphrastic rendering in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Scott, and it is also the subject of a number of musical compositions.
Diet, a convention of the princes, dignitaries, and delegates of the German empire, for legislative or administrative purposes, of which the most important in a historical point of view are diets held at Augsburg in 1518, at Worms in 1521, at Nüremberg in 1523, 1524, at Spires in 1526, 1529, at Augsburg in 1530, at Cologne in 1530, at Worms in 1536, at Frankfort in 1539, at Ratisbon in 1541, at Spires in 1544, at Augsburg in 1547, 1548, 1550, and at Ratisbon in 1622.
Dietrich, mayor of Strasburg, at whose request Rouget de Lisle composed the “Marseillaise”; was guillotined (1748-1793).
Dietrich of Bern, a favourite hero of German legend, who in the “Nibelungen” avenges the death of Siegfried, and in the “Heldenbuch” figures as a knight-errant of invulnerable prowess, from whose challenge even Siegfried shrinks, hiding himself behind Chriemhilda's veil; has been identified with Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.
Diez, Friedrich Christian, a German philologist, born at Giessen; after service as a volunteer against Napoleon, and a tutorship at Utrecht, went to Bonn, where, advised by Goethe, he commenced the study of the Romance languages, and in 1830 became professor of them, the philology of which he is the founder; he left two great works bearing on the grammar and etymology of these languages (1794-1876).
Diez, Juan Martin, a Spanish brigadier-general of cavalry, born at Valladolid, the son of a peasant; had, as head of guerilla bands, done good service to his country during the Peninsular war and been promoted; offending the ruling powers, was charged with conspiracy, tried, and executed (1775-1825).
Digby, a seaport on the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia; noted for the curing of pilchards, called from it digbies.
Digby, Sir Everard, member of a Roman Catholic family; concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, and executed (1581-1606).
Digby, Sir Kenelm, a son of the preceding; was knighted by James I.; served under Charles I.; as a privateer defeated a squadron of Venetians, and fought against the Algerines; was imprisoned for a time as a Royalist; paid court afterwards to the Protector; was well received at the Restoration; was one of the first members of the Royal Society, and a man of some learning; wrote treatises on the Nature of Bodies and Man's Soul, on the corpuscular theory (1603-1665).
Dihong, the name given to the Brahmaputra as it traverses Assam; in the rainy season it overflows its channel and floods the whole lowlands of the country.
Dijon (61), the ancient capital of Burgundy, and the principal town in the dep. of Côte d'Or, 195 m. SE. of Paris, on the canal of Bourgogne; one of the finest towns in France, at once for its buildings, particularly its churches, and its situation; is a centre of manufacture and trade, and a seat of learning; the birthplace of many illustrious men.
Dikë (i. e. Justice), a Greek goddess, the daughter of Zeus and Themis; the guardian of justice and judgment, the foe of deceit and violence, and the accuser before Zeus of the unjust judge.
Diktys, the fisherman of Seriphus; saved Perseus and his mother from the perils of the deep.
Dilettante Society, The, a society of noblemen and gentlemen founded in England in 1734, and which contributed to correct and purify the public taste of the country; their labours were devoted chiefly to the study of the relics of ancient Greek art, and resulted in the production of works in illustration.
Dilettantism, an idle, often affected, almost always barren admiration and study of the fine arts, “in earnest about nothing.”
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, English critic and journalist; served for 20 years in the Navy Pay-Office; contributed to the Westminster and other reviews; was proprietor and editor of the Athenæum; started the Daily News; left literary Papers, edited by his grandson (1789-1864).
Dilke, Sir Charles Wentworth, English publicist and politician, grandson of the preceding, born at Chelsea; called to the bar; travelled in America and the English colonies, and wrote a record of his travels in his “Greater Britain”; entered Parliament as an extreme Liberal; held office under Mr. Gladstone; from exposures in a divorce case had to retire from public life, but returned after a time; b. 1843.
Dillmann, a great German Orientalist, born at Illingen, a village of Würtemberg; studied under Ewald at Tübingen; became professor at Kiel, at Giessen, and finally at Berlin; as professor of Old Testament exegesis made a special study of the Ethiopic languages, and is the great authority in their regard; wrote a grammar and a lexicon of these, as well as works on theology; b. 1823.
Dillon, a general in the service of France, born in Dublin; was butchered by his troops near Lille (1745-1792).
Dillon, John, an Irish patriot, born in New York; entered Parliament in 1880 as a Parnellite; was once suspended, and four times imprisoned, for his over-zeal; sat at first for Tipperary, and since for East Mayo; in 1891 threw in his lot with the M'Carthyites; b. 1851.
Dimanche, M. (Mr. Sunday), a character in Molière's “Don Juan,” the type of an honest merchant, whom, on presenting his bill, his creditor appeases by his politeness.
Dime, a U.S. silver coin, worth the tenth part of a dollar, or about fivepence.
Dinan (10), an old town in the dep. of Côtes du Nord, France, 14 m. S. of St. Malo; most picturesquely situated on the top of a steep hill, amid romantic scenery, of great archæological interest; the birthplace of Duclos.
Dinant, an old town on the Meuse, 14 m. S. of Namur, Belgium; noted for its gingerbread, and formerly for its copper wares, called Dinanderie.
Dinapur (44), a town and military station on the right bank of the Ganges, 12 m. NW. of Patna.
Dinarchus, an orator of the Phocion party in Athens, born at Corinth.
Dinaric Alps, a range of the Eastern Alps in Austria, runs SE. and parallel with the Adriatic, connecting the Julian Alps with the Balkans.
Dindorf, Wilhelm, a German philologist, born at Leipzig; devoted his life to the study of the ancient Greek classics, particularly the dramatists, and edited the chief of them, as well as the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” of Homer, with notes; was joint-editor with his brothers Ludwig and Hase of the “Thesaurus Græcæ Linguæ” of Stephanus (1802-1883).
Dingelstedt, a German poet, novelist, and essayist, born near Marburg; was the Duke of Würtemberg's librarian at Stuttgart, and theatre superintendent at Münich, Weimar, and Vienna successively; his poems show delicacy of sentiment and graphic power (1814-1881).
Dingwall, the county town of Ross-shire, at the head of the Cromarty Firth.
Dinkas, an African pastoral people occupying a flat country traversed by the White Nile; of good stature, clean habits; of semi-civilised manners, and ferocious in war.
Dinmont, Dandie, a jovial, honest-hearted store-farmer in Scott's “Guy Mannering.”
Dinocrates, a Macedonian architect, who, in the time of Alexander the Great, rebuilt the Temple of Ephesus destroyed by the torch of Erostratus; was employed by Alexander in the building of Alexandria.
Diocletian, Roman emperor from 284 to 308, born at Salona, in Dalmatia, of obscure parentage; having entered the Roman army, served with distinction, rose rapidly to the highest rank, and was at Chalcedon, after the death of Numerianus, invested by the troops with the imperial purple; in 286 he associated Maximianus with himself as joint-emperor, with the title of Augustus, and in 292 resigned the Empire of the West to Constantius Chlorus and Galerius, so that the Roman world was divided between two emperors in the E. and two in the W.; in 303, at the instance of Galerius, he commenced and carried on a fierce persecution of the Christians, the tenth and fiercest; but in 305, weary of ruling, he abdicated and retired to Salona, where he spent his remaining eight years in rustic simplicity of life, cultivating his garden; bating his persecution of the Christians, he ruled the Roman world wisely and well (245-313).
Diodati, a Calvinistic theologian, born at Lucca; was taken while a child with his family to Geneva; distinguished himself there in the course of the Reformation as a pastor, a preacher, professor of Hebrew, and a professor of Theology; translated the Bible into Italian and into French; a nephew of his was a school-fellow and friend of Milton, who wrote an elegy on his untimely death (1576-1614).
Diodorus Siculus, historian, born in Sicily, of the age of Augustus; conceived the idea of writing a universal history; spent 30 years at the work; produced what he called “The Historical Library,” which embraced the period from the earliest ages to the end of Cæsar's Gallic war, and was divided into 40 books, of which only a few survive entire, and some fragments of the rest.
Diogenes Laërtius, a Greek historian, born at Laerte, in Cilicia; flourished in the 2nd century A.D.; author of “Lives of the Philosophers,” a work written in 10 books; is full of interesting information regarding the men, but is destitute of critical insight into their systems.
Diogenes of Apollonia, a Greek philosopher of the Ionic school, and an adherent of Anaximenes (q. v.), if of any one, being more of an eclectic than anything else; took more to physics than philosophy; contributed nothing to the philosophic movement of the time.
Diogenes the Cynic, born in Sinope, in Pontus, came to Athens, was attracted to Antisthenes (q. v.) and became a disciple, and a sansculotte of the first water; dressed himself in the coarsest, lived on the plainest, slept in the porches of the temples, and finally took up his dwelling in a tub; stood on his naked manhood; would not have anything to do with what did not contribute to its enhancement; despised every one who sought satisfaction in anything else; went through the highways and byways of the city at noontide with a lit lantern in quest of a man; a man himself not to be laughed at or despised; visiting Corinth, he was accosted by Alexander the Great: “I am Alexander,” said the king, and “I am Diogenes” was the prompt reply; “Can I do anything to serve you?” continued the king; “Yes, stand out of the sunlight,” rejoined the cynic; upon which Alexander turned away saying, “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.” D'Alembert declared Diogenes the greatest man of antiquity, only that he wanted decency. “Great truly,” says Carlyle, but adds with a much more serious drawback than that (412-323 B.C.). See “Sartor Resartus,” bk. iii. chap. 1.
Diogenes the Stoic, born in Seleucia; a successor of Zeno, and head of the school at Athens, 2nd century B.C.
Diomedes, king of Argos, called Tydides, from his father; was, next to Achilles, the bravest of the Greeks at the Trojan war; fought under the protection of Athene against both Hector and Æneas, and even wounded both Aphrodité and Ares; dared along with Ulysses to carry off the Palladium from Troy; was first in the chariot race in honour of Patroclus, and overcame Ajax with the spear.
Diomedes, king of Thrace; fed his horses with human flesh, and was killed by Hercules for his inhumanity.
Dion Cassius, a Greek historian, born at Nicæa, in Bithynia, about A.D. 155; went to Rome, and served under a succession of emperors; wrote a “History of Rome” from Æneas to Alexander Severus in 80 books, of which only 18 survive entire; took years to prepare for and compose it; it is of great value, and often referred to.
Dion Chrysostomus (Dion with the golden, or eloquent, mouth), a celebrated Greek rhetorician, born at Prusa, in Bithynia, about the middle of the 1st century; inclined to the Platonic and Stoic philosophies; came to Rome, and was received with honour by Nerva and Trajan; is famous as an orator and as a writer of pure Attic Greek.
Dion of Syracuse, a pupil of Plato, and an austere man; was from his austerity obnoxious to his pleasure-loving nephew, Dionysius the Younger; subjected to banishment; went to Athens; learned his estates had been confiscated, and his wife given to another; took up arms, drove his nephew from the throne, usurped his place, and was assassinated in 353 B.C., the citizens finding that in getting rid of one tyrant they had but saddled themselves with another, and greater.
Dione, a Greek goddess of the earlier mythology; figures as the wife of the Dodonian Zeus; drops into subordinate place after his nuptials with Hera.
Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse from 406 to 367 B.C.; at first a private citizen; early took interest in public affairs, and played a part in them; entered the army, and rose to be head of the State; subdued the other cities of Sicily, and declared war against Carthage; was attacked by the Carthaginians, and defeated them three times over; concluded a treaty of peace with them, and spent the rest of his reign, some 20 years, in maintaining and extending his territory; was distinguished, it is said, as he might well be, both as a poet and a philosopher; tradition represents him as in perpetual terror of his life, and taking every precaution to guard it from attack.
Dionysius the Younger, tyrant of Syracuse, son of the preceding, succeeded him in 367 B.C. at the age of thirty; had never taken part in public affairs; was given over to vicious indulgences, and proved incapable of amendment, though Dion (q. v.) tried hard to reform him; was unpopular with the citizens, who with the help of Dion, whom he had banished, drove him from the throne; returning after 10 years, was once more expelled by Timoleon; betook himself to Corinth, where he associated himself with low people, and supported himself by keeping a school.
Dionysius of Alexandria, patriarch from 348, a disciple of Origen, and his most illustrious pupil; a firm but judicious defender of the faith against the heretics of the time, in particular the Sabellians and the Chiliasts; d. 264.
Dionysius, St., the Areopagite (i. e. judge of the Areopagus), according to Acts xvii. 34, a convert of St. Paul's; became bishop of Athens, and died a martyr in 95; was long regarded as the father of mysticism in the Christian Church, on the false assumption that he was the author of writings of a much later date imbued with a pantheistic idea of God and the universe.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian and rhetorician of the age of Augustus; came to Italy in 29 B.C., and spent 27 years in Rome, where he died; devoted himself to the study of the Roman republic, its history and its people, and recorded the result in his “Archæologia,” written in Greek, which brings down the narrative to 264 B.C.; it consisted of 20 books, of which only 9 have come down to us entire; he is the author of works in criticism of the orators, poets, and historians of Greece.
Dionysius Periegetes, a Greek geographer who lived about the 4th century, and wrote a description of the whole earth in hexameters and in a terse and elegant style.
Dionysus, the god of the vine or wine; the son of Zeus and Semele (q. v.), the “twice born,” as plucked first from the womb of his dead mother and afterwards brought forth from the thigh of Zeus, which served to him as his “incubator.” See Bacchus.
Diophantus, a Greek mathematician, born in Alexandria; lived presumably about the 4th century; left works in which algebraic methods are employed, and is therefore credited with being the inventor of algebra.
Dioscor`ides, a Greek physician, born in Cilicia, lived in the 1st century; left a treatise in 5 books on materia medica, a work of great research, and long the standard authority on the subject.
Dioscuri, twin sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux, a stalwart pair of youths, of the Doric stock, great the former as a horse-breaker and the latter as a boxer; were worshipped at Sparta as guardians of the State, and pre-eminently as patrons of gymnastics; protected the hearth, led the army in war, and were the convoy of the traveller by land and the voyager by sea, which as constellations they are still held to be.
Diphilus, a Greek comic poet, born at Sinope; contemporary of Menander; was the forerunner of Terence and Plautus, the Roman poets.
Diphtheria, a contagious disease characterised by the formation of a false membrane on the back of the throat.
Dippel, Johann Konrad, a celebrated German alchemist; professed to have discovered the philosopher's stone; did discover Prussian blue, and an animal oil that bears his name (1672-1734).
Dippel's Oil, an oil obtained from the distinctive distillation of horn bones.
Dircæan Swan, Pindar, so called from the fountain Dirce, near Thebes, his birthplace.
Dirce, the wife of Lycus, king of Thebes, who for her cruelty to Antiope, her divorced predecessor, was, by Antiope's two sons, Zethos and Amphion, tied to a wild bull and dragged to death, after which her carcass was flung by them into a well; the subject is represented in a famous antique group by Apollonius and Tauriscus.
Directory, The, the name given to the government of France, consisting of a legislative body of two chambers, the Council of the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred, which succeeded the fall of the Convention, and ruled France from October 27, 1795, till its overthrow by Bonaparte on the 18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799). The Directors proper were five in number, and were elected by the latter council from a list presented by the former, and the chief members of it were Barras and Carnot.
Dirschau (11), a Prussian town on the Vistula, 21 m. SE. of Danzig, with iron-works and a timber trade.
Dis, a name given to Pluto and the nether world over which he rules.
Discipline, The Two Books of, books of dates 1561 and 1581, regulative of ecclesiastical order in the Presbyterian churches of Scotland, of which the ground-plan was drawn up by Knox on the Geneva model.
Discobolus, The, an antique statue representing the thrower of the discus, in the Louvre, and executed by the sculptor Myron.
Discord, Apple of. See infra.
Discord, The Goddess of, a mischief-making divinity, daughter of Night and sister of Mars, who on the occasion of the wedding of Thetis with Peleus, threw into the hall where all the gods and goddesses were assembled a golden apple inscribed “To the most Beautiful,” and which gave rise to dissensions that both disturbed the peace of Olympus and the impartial administration of justice on earth. See Paris.
Dismal Science, Carlyle's name for the political economy that with self-complacency leaves everything to settle itself by the law of supply and demand, as if that were all the law and the prophets. The name is applied to every science that affects to dispense with the spiritual as a ruling factor in human affairs.
Dismas, St., the good thief to whom Christ promised Paradise as he hung on the cross beside Him.
Disraeli, Benjamin. See Beaconsfield.
D'Israeli, Isaac, a man of letters, born at Enfield, Middlesex; only son of a Spanish Jew settled in England, who left him a fortune, which enabled him to cultivate his taste for literature; was the author of several works, but is best known by his “Curiosities of Literature,” a work published in six vols., full of anecdotes on the quarrels and calamities of authors; was never a strict Jew; finally cut the connection, and had his children baptized as Christians (1766-1848).
Dithyramb, a hymn in a lofty and vehement style, originally in honour of Bacchus, in celebration of his sorrows and joys, and accompanied with flute music.
Ditmarsh (77), a low-lying fertile district in West Holstein, between the estuaries of the Elbe and the Eider; defended by dykes; it had a legal code of its own known as the “Ditmarisches Landbuch.”
Ditton, Humphry, author of a book on fluxions (1675-1715).
Diu (12), a small Portuguese island, with a port of the same name, in the Gulf of Cambay, S. of the peninsula of Gujarat, India; was a flourishing place once, and contained a famous Hindu temple; inhabited now chiefly by fishermen.
Divan, The, a collection of poems by Häfiz, containing nearly 600 odes; also a collection of lyrics in imitation of Goethe, entitled “Westöstlicher Divan.”
Dives, the name given, originally in the Vulgate, to the rich man in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.
Dividing Range, a range of mountains running E. from Melbourne, and then N., dividing the basin of the Murray from the plain extending to the coast.
Divine Comedy, The, the great poem of Dante, consisting of three compartments, “Inferno,” “Purgatorio,” and “Paradiso”; “three kingdoms ... Dante's World of Souls...; all three making up the true Unseen World, as it figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing for ever memorable, for ever true in the essence of it, to all men ... but delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ... to the earnest soul of Dante it is all one visible fact—Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, with him not mere emblems, but indubitable awful realities.” See Dante, and Carlyle's “Heroes and Hero-Worship.”
Divine Doctor, Jean de Ruysbroek, the mystic (1294-1381).
Divine Pagan, Hypatia (q. v.).
Divine Right, a claim on the part of kings, now all but extinct, though matter of keen debate at one time, that they derive their authority to rule direct from the Almighty, and are responsible to no inferior power, a right claimed especially on the part of and in behalf of the Bourbons in France and the Stuart dynasty in England, and the denial of which was regarded by them and their partisans as an outrage against the ordinance of very Heaven.
Dixie Land, nigger land in U.S.
Dixon, W. Hepworth, an English writer and journalist, born in Manchester; called to the bar, but devoted himself to literary work; wrote Lives of Howard, Penn, Robert Blake, and Lord Bacon, “New America,” “Spiritual Wives,” &c.; was editor of the Athenoeum from 1853 to 1869; died suddenly (1821-1879).
Dizier, St. (13), a flourishing French town, 30 m. from Châlons-sur-Marne.
Dizzy, a nickname given to Benjamin Disraeli.
Djezzar (i. e. Butcher), the surname of Achmed Pasha, pacha of Acre; was born at Bosnia; sold as a slave, and raised himself by his servility to his master to the length of executing his cruellest wishes; in 1799 withstood a long siege of Acre by Bonaparte, and obliged him to retire (1735-1804).
Djinnestan, the region of the Jinns.
Dnieper, a river of Russia, anciently called the Borysthenes, the third largest for volume of water in Europe, surpassed only by the Danube and the Volga; rises in the province of Smolensk, and flowing in a generally southerly direction, falls into the Black Sea below Kherson after a course of 1330 m.; it traverses some of the finest provinces of the empire, and is navigable nearly its entire length.
Dniester, a river which takes its rise in Austria, in the Carpathians, enters Russia, flows generally in a SE. direction past Bender, and after a rapid course of 650 m. falls into the Black Sea at Akjerman.
Doab, The, a richly fertile, densely peopled territory in the Punjab, between the Jumna and Ganges, and extending 500 m. N., that is, as far as the Himalayas; it is the granary of Upper India.
Dobell, Sidney, poet, born at Cranbrook, in Kent; wrote, under the pseudonym of Sidney Yendys, the “Roman,” a drama, “Balder,” and, along with Alexander Smith, sonnets on the war (the Crimean); suffered much from weak health (1824-1874).
Döbereiner, a German chemist, professor at Jena; inventor of a lamp called after him; Goethe was much interested in his discoveries (1780-1849).
Döbereiner's Lamp, a light caused by a jet of hydrogen passing over spongy platinum.
Dobrovski, Joseph, a philologist, born in Gyarmet, in Hungary; devoted his life to the study of the Bohemian language and literature; wrote a history of them, the fruit of immense labour, under which his brain gave way more than once; was trained among the Jesuits (1753-1829).
Dobrenter, Hungarian archæologist; devoted 30 years of his life to the study of the Magyar language; author of “Ancient Monuments of the Magyar Language” (1786-1851).
Dobrudja (196), the part of Roumania between the Danube and the Black Sea, a barren, unwholesome district; rears herds of cattle.
Dobson, Austin, poet and prose writer, born at Plymouth, is in a department of the Civil Service; wrote “Vignettes in Rhyme,” “Proverbs in Porcelain,” “Old World Idylls,” in verse, and in prose Lives of Fielding, Hogarth, Steele, and Goldsmith; contributed extensively to the magazines; b. 1840.
Dobson, William, portrait-painter, born in London; succeeded Vandyck as king's serjeant-painter to Charles I.; painted the king and members of his family and court; supreme in his art prior to Sir Joshua Reynolds; died in poverty (1610-1646).
Docetæ, a sect of heretics in the early Church who held that the humanity of Christ was only seeming, not real, on the Gnostic or Manichæan theory of the essential impurity and defiling nature of matter or the flesh.
Doctor (lit. teacher), a title implying that the possessor of it is such a master of his art that he can teach it as well as practise it.
Doctor Mirabilis, Roger Bacon.
Doctor My-Book, John Abernethy, from his saying to his patients, “Read my book.”
Doctor of the Incarnation, Cyril of Alexandria, from his controversy with the Nestorians.
Doctor Slop, a doctor in “Tristram Shandy,” fanatical about a forceps he invented.
Doctor Squintum, George Whitfield.
Doctor Syntax. See Combe, William.
Doctors' Commons, a college of doctors of the civil law in London, where they used to eat in common, and where eventually a number of the courts of law were held.
Doctrinaires, mere theorisers, particularly on social and political questions; applied originally to a political party that arose in France in 1815, headed by Roger-Collard and represented by Guizot, which stood up for a constitutional government that should steer clear of acknowledging the divine right of kinghood on the one hand and the divine right of democracy on the other.
Dodabetta, the highest peak, 8700 ft., in the Nilgherries.
Dodd, Dr. William, an English divine, born at Bourne, Lincolnshire; was one of the royal chaplains; attracted fashionable audiences as a preacher in London, but lived extravagantly, and fell hopelessly into debt, and into disgrace for the nefarious devices he adopted to get out of it; forged a bond for £4500 on the Earl of Chesterfield, who had been a pupil of his; was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, a sentence which was carried out notwithstanding the great exertions made to procure a pardon; wrote a “Commentary on the Bible,” and compiled “The Beauties of Shakespeare” (1729-1777).
Doddridge, Philip, a Nonconformist divine, born in London; was minister at Kebworth, Market Harborough, and Northampton successively, and much esteemed both as a man and a teacher; suffered from pulmonary complaint; went to Lisbon for a change, and died there; was the author of “The Family Expositor,” but is best known by his “Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” and perhaps also by his “Life of Colonel Gardiner” (1702-1751).
Döderlein, Ludwig, a German philologist, born at Jena; became professor of Philology at Erlangen; edited Tacitus, Horace, and other classic authors, but his principal works were on the etymology of the Latin language (1791-1863).
Dodger, The Artful, a young expert in theft and other villanies in Dickens's “Oliver Twist.”
Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge, English writer and man of genius, with the nom de plume of Lewis Carroll; distinguished himself at Oxford in mathematics; author of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,” with its sequel, “Through the Looking-Glass,” besides other works, mathematical, poetic, and humorous; mingled humour and science together (1833-1898).
Dodington, George Bubb, an English politician, notorious for his fickleness, siding now with this party, now with that; worked for and won a peerage before he died; with all his pretensions, and they were many, a mere flunkey at bottom (1691-1762).
Dodo, an ungainly bird larger than a turkey, with short scaly legs, a big head and bill, short wings and tail, and a greyish down plumage, now extinct, though it is known to have existed in the Mauritius some 200 years ago.
Dodo`na, an ancient oracle of Zeus, in Epirus, close by a grove of oak trees, from the agitation of the branches of which the mind of the god was construed, the interpreters being at length three old women; it was more or less a local oracle, and was ere long superseded by the more widely known oracle of Delphi (q. v.).
Dods, Meg, an old landlady of consistently inconsistent qualities in “St. Ronan's Well”; also the pseudonym of the authoress of a book on cookery.
Dodsley, Robert, an English poet, dramatist, and publisher; wrote a drama called “The Toyshop,” which, through Pope's influence, was acted in Drury Lane with such success as to enable the author to commence business as a bookseller in Pall Mall; projected and published the Miscellany, and continued to write plays, the most popular “Cleone”; is best known in connection with his “Collection of Old Plays”; he was a patron of Johnson, and much esteemed by him (1703-1764).
Doeg, a herdsman of Saul (1 Sam. xxi. 7); a name applied by Dryden to Elkanah Settle in “Absalom and Achitophel.”
Dogberry, a self-satisfied night constable in “Much Ado about Nothing.”
Dog-days, 20 days before and 20 after the rising of the dog-star Sirius, at present from 3rd July to 11th August.
Doge, the name of the chief magistrate of Venice and Genoa, elected at first annually and then for life in Venice, with, in course of time, powers more and more limited, and at length little more than a figure-head; the office ceased with the fall of the republic in 1797, as it did in Genoa in 1804.
Dogger Bank, a sandbank in the North Sea; a great fishing-field, extending between Jutland in Denmark and Yorkshire in England, though distant from both shores, 170 m. long, over 60 m. broad, and from 8 to 10 fathoms deep.
Dogs, Isle of, a low-lying projection of a square mile in extent from the left bank of the Thames, opposite Greenwich, and 3½ m. E. of St. Paul's.
Dog-Star, Sirius (q. v.).
Dolabella, son-in-law of Cicero, a profligate man, joined Cæsar, and was raised by him to the consulship; joined Cæsar's murderers after his death; was declared from his profligacy a public enemy; driven to bay by a force sent against him, ordered one of his soldiers to kill him.
Dolci, Carlo, a Florentine painter, came of a race of artists; produced many fine works, the subjects of them chiefly madonnas, saints. &c. (1616-1686).
Dolcino, a heresiarch and martyr of the 14th century, of the Apostolic Brethren, a sect which rose in Piedmont who made themselves obnoxious to the Church; was driven to bay by his persecutors, and at last caught and tortured and burnt to death; a similar fate overtook others of the sect, to its extermination.
Doldrums, a zone of the tropics where calms, squalls, and baffling winds prevail.
Dôle (12), a town in the dep. of Jura, on the Doubs, and the Rhône and Rhine Canal, 28 m. SE. of Dijon, with iron-works, and a trade in wine, grain, &c.
Dolet, Étienne, a learned French humanist, born at Orleans, became, by the study of the classics, one of the lights of the Renaissance, and one of its most zealous propagandists; suffered persecution after persecution at the hands of the Church, and was burned in the Place Maubert, Paris, a martyr to his philosophic zeal and opinions (1509-1546).
Dolgelly, capital of Merioneth, Wales, with manufactures of flannel.
Dolgorouki, the name of a noble and illustrious Russian family.
Dollart Zee, a gulf in Holland into which the Ems flows, 8 m. long by 7 broad, and formed by inundation of the North Sea.
Döllinger, a Catholic theologian, born in Bamberg, Bavaria, professor of Church History in the University of Münich; head of the old Catholic party in Germany; was at first a zealous Ultramontanist, but changed his opinions and became quite as zealous in opposing, first, the temporal sovereignty, and then the infallibility of the Pope, to his excommunication from the Church; he was a polemic, and as such wrote extensively on theological and ecclesiastical topics; lived to a great age, and was much honoured to the last (1799-1890).
Dollond, John, a mathematical instrument-maker, born in Spitalfields, London, of Dutch descent; began life as a silk-weaver; made good use of his leisure hours in studies bearing mainly on physics; went into partnership with his son, who was an optician; made a study of the telescope, suggested improvements which commended themselves to the Royal Society, and in especial how, by means of a combination of lenses, to get rid of the coloured fringe in the image (1706-1761).
Dolmen, a rude structure of prehistoric date, consisting of upright unhewn stones supporting one or more heavy slabs; long regarded as altars of sacrifice, but now believed to be sepulchral monuments; found in great numbers in Bretagne especially.
Dolomite Alps, a limestone mountain range forming the S. of the Eastern Alps, in the Tyrol and N. Italy, famous for the remarkable and fantastic shapes they assume; named after Dolomieu, a French mineralogist, who studied the geology of them.
Domat, Jean, a learned French jurist and friend of Pascal, regarded laws and customs as the reflex of political history (1625-1696).
Dombasle, an eminent French agriculturist, born at Nancy (1771-1818).
Dom-Boke (i. e. Doom-book), a code of laws compiled by King Alfred from two prior Saxon codes, to which he prefixed the Ten Commandments of Moses, and rules of life from the Christian code of ethics.
Dombrowski, John Henry, a Polish general, served in the Polish campaigns against Russia and Prussia in 1792-1794; organised a Polish legion which did good service in the wars of Napoleon; covered the retreat of the French at the Beresina in 1812 (1755-1818).
Domdaniel, a hall under the ocean where the evil spirits and magicians hold council under their chief and pay him homage.
Domenichi`no, a celebrated Italian painter, born at Bologna; studied under Calvaert and Caracci; was of the Bolognese school, and reckoned one of the first of them; his principal works are his “Communion of St. Jerome,” now in the Vatican, and the “Martyrdom of St. Agnes,” at Bologna, the former being regarded as his masterpiece; he was the victim of persecution at the hands of rivals; died at Naples, not without suspicion of having been poisoned (1581-1641).
Domesday Book, the record, in 2 vols., of the survey of all the lands of England made in 1081-1086 at the instance of William the Conqueror for purposes of taxation; the survey included the whole of England, except the four northern counties and part of Lancashire, and was made by commissioners appointed by the king, and sent to the different districts of the country, where they held courts, and registered everything on evidence; it is a valuable document.
Dominic de Guzman, St., saint of the Catholic Church, born in Old Castile; distinguished for his zeal in the conversion of the heretic; essayed the task by simple preaching of the Word; sanctioned persecution when persuasion was of no avail; countenanced the crusade of Simon de Montfort against the Albigenses for their obstinate unbelief, and thus established a precedent which was all too relentlessly followed by the agents of the Spanish Inquisition, the chiefs of which were of the Dominican order, so that he is ignominiously remembered as the “burner and slayer of heretics” (1170-1221). Festival, Aug. 4.
Dominica, or Dominique (26), the largest and most southerly of the Leeward Islands, and belongs to Britain; one-half of the island is forest, and parts of it have never been explored; was discovered by Columbus on Sunday, November 3, 1493, whence its name.
Dominical Letter, one of seven letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, used to mark the Sundays throughout the year, so that if A denote the first Sunday, it will denote all the rest, and so on with B, C, &c., till at the end of seven years A becomes the dominical letter again.
Dominican Republic, or St. Domingo (610), a republic forming the E. part of the island of Haiti, and consisting of two-thirds of it; it belonged alternately to France and Spain till 1865, when, on revolt, the Spaniards were expelled, and a republic established; the capital is St. Domingo (15), and the chief port Puerto Plata.
Dominicans, a religious order of preaching friars, founded at Toulouse in 1215 by St. Dominic, to aid in the conversion of the heretic Albigenses to the faith, and finally established as the order whose special charge it was to guard the orthodoxy of the Church. The order was known by the name Black Friars in England, from their dress; and Jacobins in France, from the street of Paris in which they had their head-quarters.
Dominie, Sampson, a schoolmaster in “Guy Mannering,” “a poor, modest, humble scholar, who had won his way through the classics, but fallen to the leeward in the voyage of life.”
Dominis, Marco Antonio de, a vacillating ecclesiastic, born in Dalmatia; was educated by the Jesuits; taught mathematics in Padua; wrote a treatise in which an explanation was for the first time given of the phenomenon of the rainbow; became archbishop of Spalatro; falling under suspicion he passed over to England, professed Protestantism, and was made dean of Windsor; reconciled to the Papacy, returned to the Church of Rome, and left the country; his sincerity being distrusted, was cast into prison, where he died, his body being afterwards disinterred and burned (1566-1624).
Domitian, Roman emperor, son of Vespasian, brother of Titus, whom he succeeded in 81, the last of the twelve Cæsars; exceeded the expectations of every one in the beginning of his reign, as he had given proof of a licentious and sanguinary character beforehand, but soon his conduct changed, and fulfilled the worst fears of his subjects; his vanity was wounded by the non-success of his arms, and his vengeful spirit showed itself in a wholesale murder of the citizens; many conspiracies were formed against his life, and he was at length murdered by an assassin, who had been hired by his courtiers and abetted by his wife Domitia, in 96.
Domrémy, a small village on the Meuse, in the dep. of Vosges; the birthplace of Joan of Arc.
Don, a Russian river, the ancient Tanaïs; flows southward from its source in the province of Tula, and after a course of 1153 m. falls into the Sea of Azov; also the name of a river in Aberdeenshire, and another in Yorkshire.
Don Juan, the member of a distinguished family of Seville, who seduces the daughter of a noble, and when confronted by her father stabs him to death in a duel; he afterwards prepares a feast and invites the stone statue of his victim to partake of it; the stone statue turns up at the least, compels Don Juan to follow him, and delivers him over to the abyss of hell, the depths of which he had qualified himself for by his utter and absolute depravity.
Don Quixote, the title of a world-famous book written by Miguel Cervantes, in satire of the romances of chivalry with which his countrymen were so fascinated; the chief character of which gives title to it, a worthy gentleman of La Mancha, whose head is so turned by reading tales of knight-errantry, that he fancies he is a knight-errant himself, sallies forth in quest of adventures, and encounters them in the most commonplace incidents, one of his most ridiculous extravagancies being his tilting with the windmills, and the overweening regard he has for his Dulcinea del Tobosa.
Donaldson, John William, a philologist, born in London; Fellow of Cambridge and tutor of Trinity College; author of “New Cratylus; or Contributions towards a more Accurate Knowledge of the Greek Language,” a work of great erudition and of value to scholars; contributed also to the philological study of Latin, and wrote a grammar of both languages; he failed when he intruded into the field of biblical criticism (1811-1861).
Donatello, a great Italian sculptor, born at Florence, where he was apprenticed to a goldsmith; tried his hand at carving in leisure hours; went to Rome and studied the monuments of ancient art; returned to Florence and executed an “Annunciation,” still preserved in a chapel in Santa Croce, which was followed by marble statues of St. Peter, St. Mark, and St. George, before one of which, that of St. Mark, Michael Angelo exclaimed, “Why do you not speak to me?”; he executed tombs and figures, or groups in bronze as well as marble; his schoolmasters were the sculptors of Greece, and the real was his ultimate model (1383-1460).
Donati, an Italian astronomer, born at Pisa; discoverer of the comet of 1858, called Donati's comet (1826-1873).
Donatists, a sect in N. Africa, founded by Donatus, bishop of Carthage, in the 4th century, that separated from the rest of the Church and formed itself into an exclusive community, with bishops and congregations of its own, on the ground that no one was entitled to be a member of Christ's body, or an overseer of Christ's flock, who was not of divine election, and that in the face of an attempt, backed by the Emperor Constantine, to thrust a bishop on the Church at Carthage, consecrated by an authority that had betrayed and sold the Church to the world; the members of it were subject to cruel persecutions in which they gloried, and were annihilated by the Saracens in the 7th century.
Donatus, a Latin grammarian and rhetorician of the 4th century, the teacher of St. Jerome; the author of treatises in grammar known as Donats, and, along with the sacred Scriptures, the earliest examples of printing by means of letters cut on wooden blocks, and so appreciated as elementary treatises that they gave name to treatises of the kind on any subject; he wrote also scholia to the plays of Terence.
Donau, the German name for the Danube.
Doncaster (26), a market and manufacturing town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, well built, in a pleasant country, on the right bank of the Don, 33 m. S. of York; famous for its races, the St. Leger in particular, called after Colonel St. Leger, who instituted them in 1776.
Dondra Head, the southern extremity of Ceylon, once the site of the capital.
Donegal (185), a county in the NW. of Ireland, in the province of Ulster, the most mountainous in the country; is mossy and boggy, and is indented along the coast with bays, and fringed with islands.
Donetz, a tributary of the Russian Don, the basin of which forms one large coal-field, reckoned to be as large as all Yorkshire, and is reckoned one of the largest of any in the world.
Dongola, New, a town in Nubia, on the left bank of the Nile, above the third cataract, 20° N. and over 700 m. from Cairo; was founded by the Mamelukes.
Donizetti, a celebrated Italian composer, born at Bergamo, Lombardy, and studied at Bologna; devoted himself to dramatic music; produced over 60 operas, among the number “Lucia di Lammermoor,” the “Daughter of the Regiment,” “Lucrezia Borgia,” and “La Favorita,” all well known, and all possessing a melodious quality of the first order (1797-1848).
Donne, John, English poet and divine, born in London; a man of good degree; brought up in the Catholic faith; after weighing the claims of the Romish and Anglican communions, joined the latter; married a young lady of sixteen without consent of her father, which involved him in trouble for a time; was induced to take holy orders by King James; was made his chaplain, and finally became Dean of St. Paul's; wrote sermons, some 200 letters and essays, as well as poems, the latter, amid many defects, revealing a soul instinct with true poetic fire (1573-1631). See “Professor Saintsbury on Donne.”
Donnybrook, a village now included in Dublin, long celebrated for its fairs and the fights it was the scene of on such occasions.
Donon, the highest peak of the Vosges Mountains.
Doo, George Thomas, a celebrated English line-engraver, and one of the best in his day (1800-1886).
Doon, a river rendered classic by the muse of Burns, which after a course of 30 m. joins the Clyde 2 m. S. of Ayr.
Dora, the child-wife of “David Copperfield,” Dickens's novel.
Dora d'Istria, the pseudonym of Helena Ghika, born in Wallachia, of noble birth; distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments; was eminent as a linguist; translated the “Iliad” into German; wrote works, the fruits of travels (1829-1888).
Doran, John, an English man of letters, born In London, of Irish descent; wrote on miscellaneous subjects; became editor of the Athenæum and Notes and Queries (1807-1878).
Dorat, Jean, a French poet, born at Limoges; a Greek scholar; contributed much to the revival of classical literature in France, and was one of the French Pléiade (q. v.); d. 1588.
Dorcas Society, a society for making clothing for the poor. See Acts ix. 39.
Dorchester (7), the county town of Dorset, on the Frome; was a Roman town, and contains the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre.
Dordogne, a river in the S. of France, which, after a course of 300 m., falls into the estuary of Garonne; also a dep. (478) through which it flows.
Doré, Gustave, a French painter and designer, born in Strasburg; evinced great power and fertility of invention, having, it is alleged, produced more than 50,000 designs; had a wonderful faculty for seizing likenesses, and would draw from memory groups of faces he had seen only once; among the books he illustrated are the “Contes Drolatiques” of Balzac, the works of Rabelais and Montaigne, Dante's “Inferno,” also his “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso,” “Don Quixote,” Tennyson's “Idylls,” Milton's works, and Coleridge's “Ancient Mariner”; among his paintings were “Christ Leaving the Prætorium,” and “Christ's Entry into Jerusalem”; he has left behind him works of sculpture as well as drawings and pictures; his art has been severely handled by the critics, and most of all by Ruskin, who treats it with unmitigated scorn (1832-1883).
Doria, Andrea, a naval commander, born in Genoa, of noble descent, though his parents were poor; a man of patriotic instincts; adopted the profession of arms at the age of 19; became commander of the fleet in 1513; attacked with signal success the Turkish corsairs that infested the Mediterranean; served under Francis I. to free his country from a faction that threatened its independence, and, by his help, succeeded in expelling it; next, in fear of the French supremacy, served, under Charles V., and entering Genoa, was hailed as its liberator, and received the title of “Father and Defender of his country”; the rest of his life, and it was a long one, was one incessant wrestle with his great rival Barbarossa, the chief of the corsairs, and which ended in his defeat (1466-1560).
Dorians, one of the four divisions of the Hellenic race, the other three being the Achæans, the Æolians, and the Ionians; at an early period overran the whole Peloponnesus; they were a hardy people, of staid habits and earnest character.
Doric, the oldest, strongest, and simplest of the four Grecian orders of architecture.
Dorine, a petulant domestic in Molière's “Tartuffe.”
Doris, a small mountainous country of ancient Greece, S. of Thessaly, and embracing the valley of the Pindus.
Doris, the wife of Nereus, and mother of the Nereids.
Dorislaus, Isaac, a lawyer, born at Alkmaar, in Holland; came to England, and was appointed Judge-Advocate; acted as such at King Charles's trial, and was for that latter offence assassinated at the Hague one evening by certain high-flying Royalist cut-throats, Scotch several of them; “his portrait represents him as a man of heavy, deep-wrinkled, elephantine countenance, pressed down by the labours of life and law” (1595-1649).
Dorking (7), a market-town picturesquely situated in the heart of Surrey, 24 m. SW. of London; gives name to a breed of fowls; contains a number of fashionable villas.
Dorn, a distinguished German orientalist; wrote a History of the Afghans, and on their language (1805-1881).
Dorner, Isaak August, a German theologian, born at Würtemberg; studied at Tübingen; became professor of Theology in Berlin, after having held a similar post in several other German universities; his principal works were the “History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ,” and the “History of Protestant Theology” (1809-1884).
Dornoch, the county town of Sutherland, a small place, but a royal burgh; has a good golf course.
Doros, a son of Helen and grandson of Deucalion, the father of the Dorians, as his brother Æolis was of the Æolians.
Dorothea, St., a virgin of Alexandria, suffered martyrdom by being beheaded in 311. Festival, Feb. 6.
Dorpat (38), a town on the Embach, in Livonia, Russia, 150 m. NE. of Riga, with a celebrated university founded by Gustavus Adolphus in 1632; it has a well-equipped staff, and is well attended; the majority of the population is German.
D'Orsay, Count, a man of fashion, born in Paris; entered the French army; forsook it for the society of Lord and Lady Blessington; married Lady B.'s daughter by a former marriage; came to England with her ladyship on her husband's death; started a joint establishment in London, which became a rendezvous for all the literary people and artists about town; was “Phoebus Apollo of Dandyism”; paid homage to Carlyle at Chelsea one day in 1839; “came whirling hither in a chariot that struck all Chelsea into mute amazement with splendour,” says Carlyle, who thus describes him, “a tall fellow of six feet three, built like a tower, with floods of dark auburn hair, with a beauty, with an adornment unsurpassable on this planet: withal a rather substantial fellow at bottom, by no means without insight, without fun, and a sort of rough sarcasm, rather striking out of such a porcelain figure”; having shown kindness to Louis Napoleon when in London, the Prince did not forget him, and after the coup d'état appointed him to a well-salaried post, but he did not live to enjoy it (1798-1852).
Dorset (194), maritime county in the S. of England, with a deeply indented coast; it consists of a plain between two eastward and westward reaching belts of downs; is mainly a pastoral county; rears sheep and cattle, and produces butter and cheese.
Dort, or Dordrecht (34), a town on an island in the Maas, in the province of South Holland, 12 m. SE. of Rotterdam; admirably situated for trade, connected as it is with the Rhine as well, on which rafts of wood are sent floating down to it; is famous for a Synod held here in 1618-19, at which the tenets of Arminius were condemned, and the doctrines of Calvin approved of and endorsed as the doctrines of the Reformed Church.
Dortmund (89), a town in Westphalia; a great mineral and railway centre, with large iron and steel forges, and a number of breweries.
Dory, John, the hero of an old ballad.
Do-the-Boys'-Hall, a scholastic establishment in “Nicholas Nickleby.”
Douay (31), a town on the Scarpe, in the dep. of Nord, France, 20 m. S. of Lille, and one of the chief military towns of the country; has a college founded in 1568 for the education of Catholic priests intended for England, and is where a version of the Bible in English for the use of Catholics was issued.
Doubs, a tributary of the Saône, which it falls into below Dôle; gives name to the dep. (303), which it traverses.
Doubting Castle, a castle belonging to Giant Despair in the “Pilgrim's Progress,” which only one key could open, the key Promise.
Douce, Francis, a learned antiquary, born in London; for a time keeper of MSS. in the British Museum; author of “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” and an illustrated volume, “The Dance of Death”; left in the Museum a chest of books and MSS. not to be opened till 1900; was a man of independent means, and a devoted archæologist (1757-1834).
Douglas (19), the largest town and capital as well as chief port of the Isle of Man, 74 m. from Liverpool; much frequented as a bathing-place; contains an old residence of the Dukes of Atholl, entitled Castle Mona, now a hotel. See Man, Isle of.
Douglas-1, the name of an old Scotch family, believed to be of Celtic origin, and that played a conspicuous part at one time in the internal and external struggles of the country; they figure in Scottish history in two branches, the elder called the Black and the later the Red Douglases or the Angus branch, now represented by the houses of Hamilton and Home. The eldest of the Douglases, William, was a kinsman of the house of Murray, and appears to have lived about the end of the 12th century. One of the most illustrious of the family was the Good Sir James, distinguished specially as the “Black” Douglas, the pink of knighthood and the associate of Bruce, who carried the Bruce's heart in a casket to bury it in Palestine, but died fighting in Spain, 1330.
Douglas, Gawin or Gavin, a Scottish poet and bishop of Dunkeld, third son of Archibald, Earl of Angus, surnamed “Bell-the-Cat”; political troubles obliged him to leave the country and take refuge at the Court of Henry VII., where he was held in high regard; died here of the plague, and was buried by his own wish in the Savoy; besides Ovid's “Art of Love,” now lost, he translated (1512-1513) the “Æneid” of Virgil into English verse, to each book of which he prefixed a prologue, in certain of which there are descriptions that evince a poet's love of nature combined with his love as a Scotchman for the scenery of his native land; besides this translation, which is his chief work, he indited two allegorical poems, entitled the “Palace of Honour,” addressed to James IV., and “King Hart” (1474-1522).
Douglas, Sir Howard, an English general and writer on military subjects, born at Gosport; saw service in the Peninsula; was Governor of New Brunswick and Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands (1776-1861).
Douglas, John, bishop of Salisbury, born at Pittenweem, Fife; wrote “The Criterion of, or a Discourse on, Miracles” against Hume; was a friend of Samuel Johnson's (1721-1807).
Douglas, Stephen Arnold, an American statesman, born in Brandon, Vermont; a lawyer by profession, and a judge; a member of Congress and the Senate; was a Democrat; stood for the Presidency when Lincoln was elected; was a leader in the Western States; a splendid monument is erected to his memory in Chicago (1813-1861).
Douglass, Frederick, American orator, born a slave in Maryland; wrought as a slave in a Baltimore shipbuilder's yard; escaped at the age of 21 to New York; attended an anti-slavery meeting, where he spoke so eloquently that he was appointed by the Anti-Slavery Society to lecture in its behalf, which he did with success and much appreciation in England as well as America; published an Autobiography, which gives a thrilling account of his life (1817-1895).
Doulton, Sir Henry, the reviver of art pottery, born in Lambeth; knighted in the Jubilee year for his eminence in that department; b. 1820.
Douro, a river, and the largest, of the Spanish Peninsula, which rises in the Cantabrian Mountains; forms for 40 m. the northern boundary of Portugal, and after a course of 500 m. falls into the Atlantic at Oporto; is navigable only where it traverses Portugal.
Douster-swivel, a German swindling schemer in the “Antiquary.”
Dove, in Christian art the symbol of the Holy Ghost, or of a pure, or a purified soul, and with an olive branch, the symbol of peace and the gospel of peace.
Dove, Heinrich Wilhelm, a German physicist, born at Liegnitz, Silesia; professor of Natural Philosophy in Berlin; was eminent chiefly in the departments of meteorology and optics; he discovered how by the stereoscope to detect forged bank-notes (1803-1879).
Dover (33), a seaport on the E. coast of Kent, and the nearest in England to the coast of France, 60 m. SE. of London, and with a mail service to Calais and Ostend; is strongly fortified, and the chief station in the SE. military district of England; was the chief of the Cinque Ports.
Dover, Strait of, divides France from England and connects the English Channel with the North Sea, and at the narrowest 20 m. across; forms a busy sea highway; is called by the French Pas de Calais.
Dovrefeld, a range of mountains in Norway, stretching NE. and extending between 62° and 63° N. lat., average height 3000 ft.
Dow or Douw, Gerard, a distinguished Dutch genre-painter, born at Leyden; a pupil of Rembrandt; his works, which are very numerous, are the fruit of a devoted study of nature, and are remarkable for their delicacy and perfection of finish; examples of his works are found in all the great galleries of Europe (1613-1675).
Dowden, Edward, literary critic, professor of English Literature in Dublin University, born in Cork; is distinguished specially as a Shakesperian; is author of “Shakespeare: a Study of his Mind and Art,” “Introduction to Shakespeare,” and “Shakesperian Sonnets, with Notes”; has written “Studies in Literature,” and a “Life of Shelley”; is well read in German as well as English literature; has written with no less ability on Goethe than on Shakespeare; b. 1843.
Down (266), a maritime county in the SE. of the province of Ulster, Ireland, with a mostly level and fairly fertile soil, and manufactures of linen.
Downs, The, a safe place of anchorage, 8 m. long by 6 m. broad, for ships between Goodwin Sands and the coast of Kent.
Downs, The North and South, two parallel ranges of low broad hills covered with a light soil and with a valley between, called the Weald, that extend eastward from Hampshire to the sea-coast, the North terminating in Dover cliffs, Kent, and the South in Beachy Head, Sussex; the South famous for the breed of sheep that pastures on them.
Doyle, Dr. Conan, novelist, nephew of Richard and grandson of John, born in Edinburgh; studied and practised medicine, but gave it up after a time for literature, in which he had already achieved no small success; several of his productions have attracted universal attention, especially his “Adventures” and his “Memoir of Sherlock Holmes”; wrote a short play “A Story of Waterloo,” produced with success by Sir Henry Irving; b. 1859.
Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings, an English poet, born near Tadcaster; bred to the bar, but devoted to poetry and horse-racing; became professor of Poetry at Oxford; author of “Miscellaneous Verses,” “Two Destinies,” “Retreat of the Guards,” “The Thread of Honour,” and “The Private of the Buffs” (1810-1858).
Doyle, John, an eminent caricaturist, of Irish origin, under the initials H. B. (1797-1868).
Doyle, Richard, eminent caricaturist, born in London, son of the preceding; contributed to Punch, of which he designed the cover, but left the staff, in 1850 owing to the criticisms in the journal adverse to the Catholic Church; devoted himself after that chiefly to book illustration and water-colour painting (1824-1883).
Dozy, Reinhart, an Orientalist and linguist, born at Leyden, where he became professor of History; devoted himself to the study of the history of the Arabs or Moors in North-Western Africa and Spain, his chief work being “The History of the Mussulmans of Spain”; wrote also a “Detailed Dictionary of the Names of the Dress of the Arabs” (1820-1883).
Drachenfels (Dragon's Rock), one of the Siebengebirge, 8 m. SE. of Bonn, 1056 ft. above the Rhine, and crowned by a castle with a commanding view; the legendary abode of the dragon killed by Siegfried in the “Lay of the Nibelungen.”
Draco, a celebrated Athenian law-giver, who first gave stability to the State by committing the laws to writing, and establishing the Ephetæ, or court of appeal, 621 B.C.; only he punished every transgressor of his laws with death, so that his code became unbearable, and was superseded ere long by a milder, instituted by Solon, who affixed the penalty of death to murder alone; he is said to have justified the severity of his code by maintaining that the smallest crime deserved death, and he knew no severer punishment for greater; it is said he was smothered to death in the theatre by the hats and cloaks showered on him as a popular mark of honour; he was archon of Athens.
Dragon, a fabulous monster, being a hideous impersonation of some form of deadly evil, which only preternatural heroic strength and courage can subdue, and on the subdual and slaying of which depends the achievement of some conquest of vital moment to the human race or some members of it; is represented in mediæval art as a large, lizard-like animal, with the claws of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the tail of a serpent, with open jaws ready and eager to devour, which some knight high-mounted thrusts at to pierce to death with a spear; in the Greek mythology it is represented with eyes ever on the watch, in symbol of the evil that waylays us to kill us if we don't kill it, as in guarding the “Apples of the Hesperides” and the “Golden Fleece,” because these are prizes that fall only to those who are as watchful of him as he is of them; and it is consecrated to Minerva to signify that true wisdom, as sensible of the ever-wakeful dragon, never goes to sleep, but is equally ever on the watch.
Dragonnades, the name given to the persecution at the instance of Louis XIV. to force the Huguenots of France back into the bosom of the Catholic Church by employment of dragoons.
Dragon's Teeth, the teeth of the dragon that Cadmus slew, and which when sown by him sprang up as a host of armed men, who killed each other all to the five who became the ancestors of the Thebans, hence the phrase to “sow dragon's teeth,” to breed and foster strife.
Drake, Sir Francis, a great English seaman of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, born near Tavistock, in Devon; served in the Royal Navy under his relative, Sir John Hawkins, and distinguished himself with signal success by his valour and daring against the pride of Spain, towards which, as the great Catholic persecuting power, he had been taught to cherish an invincible hatred; came swoop down like a hawk on its ports across seas, and bore himself out of them laden with spoil; in 1577 sailed for America with five ships, passed through the Strait of Magellan, the first Englishman to do it; plundered the W. coast as far as Peru; lost all his ships save one; crossed the Pacific, and came home by way of the Cape—the first to sail round the world—with spoil to the value of £300,000, his successes contributing much to embolden his countrymen against the arrogance of the Catholic king; and he was vice-admiral in the fleet that drove back the Armada from our shores (1540-1596).
Drake, Friedrich, a German sculptor, born at Pyrmont; studied under Rauch; executed numerous statues and busts, among others busts of Oken and Ranke, Bismarck and Moltke; his chief works are the “Eight Provinces of Prussia,” represented by large allegorical figures, and the “Warrior crowned by Victory” (1805-1882).
Drake, Nathan, a physician, born at York; author of “Shakespeare and his Times” (1766-1836).
Drakenberg Mountains, a range of mountains in S. Africa, 6500 ft. high, between Natal and the Orange Free State.
Dramatic unities, three rules of dramatic construction prescribed by Aristotle, observed by the French dramatists, but ignored by Shakespeare, that (1) a play should represent what takes place within eight hours, (2) there must be no change of locality, and (3) there must be no minor plot.
Drammen (20), a Norwegian seaport on a river which falls into Christiania Bay, 30 m. SW. of Christiania; trade chiefly in timber.
Draper, John William, a chemist, scientist, and man of letters, born at Liverpool; settled in the United States; wrote on chemistry, physiology, and physics generally, as well as works of a historical character, such as the “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe” and the “History of the Conflict between Science and Religion,” an able book (1811-1882).
Drapier, a pseudonym adopted by Swift in his letters to the people of Ireland anent Wood's pence, and which led to the cancelling of the patent.
Drave, a river from the Eastern Alps which flows eastward, and after a course of 380 miles falls into the Danube 10 m. below Essek.
Dravidians, races of people who occupied India before the arrival of Aryans, and being driven S. by them came to settle chiefly in the S. of the Dekkan; they are divided into numerous tribes, each with a language of its own, but of a common type or group, some of them literary and some of them not, the chief the Tamil; the tribes together number over 20 millions.
Drawcansir, a blustering, bullying boaster in Buckingham's play the “Rehearsal”; he kills every one of the combatants, “sparing neither friend nor foe.”
Drayton, Michael, an English poet, born In Warwickshire, like Shakespeare; was one of the three chief patriotic poets, Warner and Daniel being the other two, which arose in England after her humiliation of the pride of Spain, although he was no less distinguished as a love poet; his great work is his “Polyolbion,” in glorification of England, consisting of 30 books and 100,000 lines; it gives in Alexandrines “the tracts, mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned isle of Britain, with intermixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, pleasures, and commodities of the same digested in a poem”; this was preceded by other works, and succeeded by a poem entitled “The Ballad of Agincourt,” pronounced one of the most spirited martial lyrics in the language (1563-1631).
Drelincourt, a French Protestant divine, born at Sedan; author of “Consolations against the Fear of Death” (1595-1669).
Drenthe (137), a province of Holland lying between Hanover and the Zuyder Zee; the soil is poor, and the population sparse.
Dresden (250), the capital of Saxony, on the Elbe, 116 m. SE. of Berlin; a fine city, with a museum rich in all kinds of works of art, and called in consequence the “Florence of Germany”; here the Allies were defeated by Napoleon in 1813, when he entered the city, leaving behind him 30,000 men, who were besieged by the Russians and compelled to surrender as prisoners of war the same year.
Dreyfus, l'Affaire. On 23rd December 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, captain of French Artillery; was by court-martial found guilty of revealing to a foreign power secrets of national defence, and sentenced to degradation and perpetual imprisonment; he constantly maintained his innocence, and, in time, the belief that he had been unjustly condemned became prevalent, and a revision of the trial being at length ordered, principally through the exertions of Colonel Picquart and Zola, the well-known author, Dreyfus was brought back from Cayenne, where he had been kept a close prisoner and cruelly treated, and a fresh trial at Rennes began on 6th August 1899, and lasted till 9th September; the proceedings, marked by scandalous “scenes,” and by an attempt to assassinate one of prisoner's counsel—disclosed an alarmingly corrupt condition of affairs in some lines of French public life under the Republic of the time, and terminated in a majority verdict of “guilty”; M. Dreyfus was set at liberty on 20th September, the sentence of ten years' imprisonment being remitted; b. 1860.
Dreyse, Nicholaus von, inventor of the needle-gun, born at Sömmerda, near Erfurt, the son of a locksmith, and bred to his father's craft; established a large factory at Sömmerda for a manufactory of firearms; was ennobled 1864 (1787-1867).
Drogheda (11), a seaport in co. Louth, near the mouth of the Boyne, 32 m. N. of Dublin, with manufactures and a considerable export trade; was stormed by Cromwell in 1649 “after a stout resistance,” and the garrison put to the sword; surrendered to William III. after the battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Dromore, a cathedral town in co. Down, Ireland, 17 m. SW. of Belfast, of which Jeremy Taylor was bishop.
Droogs, steep rocks which dot the surface of Mysore, in India, and resemble hay-ricks, some of these 1500 ft. high, some with springs on the top, and scalable only by steps cut in them.
Droste-Hülshoff, Fraulein von, a German poetess, born near Münster; was of delicate constitution; wrote tales as well as lyrics in record of deep and tender experiences (1797-1848).
Drouet, Jean Baptiste, notable king-taker, a violent Jacobin and member of the Council of the Five Hundred; had been a dragoon soldier; was postmaster at St. Menehould when Louis XVI., attempting flight, passed through the place, and by whisper of surmise had the progress of Louis and his party arrested at Varennes, June 21, 1791, for which service he received honourable mention and due reward in money; was taken captive by the Austrians at last; perched on a rock 100 ft. high, descended one night by means of a paper kite he had constructed, but was found at the foot helpless with leg broken (1763-1824).
Drouet, Jean Baptiste, Comte d'Erlon, marshal of France, born at Rheims; distinguished in the wars of the Republic and the Empire; on Napoleon's return from Elba seized on the citadel of Lille, and held it for the emperor; commanded the first corps d'armée at Waterloo; left France at the Restoration; returned after the July Revolution; became governor of Algiers, and was created marshal (1765-1844).
Drouot, a French general, son of a baker at Nancy; Napoleon, whom, as commander of artillery, he accompanied over all his battlefields in Europe and to Elba, used to call him the Sage of the Grande Armée (1774-1847).
Drouyn de Lhuys, French statesman and diplomatist, born in Paris; was ambassador at the Hague and Madrid; distinguished himself by his opposition to Guizot; served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Louis Napoleon; withdrew into private life after the collapse at Sedan (1805-1881).
Droysen, a German historian, born in Pomerania; professor in Berlin; author of the “History of Prussian Policy,” “History of Alexander the Great,” and “History of Hellenism” (1808-1884).
Droz, the name of a Swiss family of mechanicians, one of them, Jean Pierre, an engraver of medals (1746-1833); also of a French moralist and historian, author of “History of Louis XVI.” (1773-1850).
Droz, Gustav, a highly popular and brilliant novelist, born in Paris; author of “Monsieur, Madam, et Bébé,” “Entre Nous,” and “Cahier bleu de Mlle. Cibot” (1832-1895).
Druids, a sacred order of learned men under a chief called the Archdruid, among the ancient Celtic nations, particularly of Gaul and Britain, who, from their knowledge of the arts and sciences of the day, were the ministers of religion and justice, as well as the teachers of youth to the whole community, and exercised an absolute control over the unlearned people whom they governed; they worshipped in oak groves, and the oak tree and the mistletoe were sacred to them; the heavenly bodies appear to have been also objects of their worship, and they appear to have believed in the immortality and transmigration of the soul; but they committed nothing to writing, and for our knowledge of them we have to depend on the reports of outsiders.
Drumclog Moss, a flat wilderness of broken bog and quagmire in Lanarkshire, where the Covenanters defeated Claverhouse's dragoons in 1679.
Drummond, Henry, popular scientist and Christian teacher, born in Stirling; was educated at Edinburgh and Tübingen; studied for the Free Church; lectured on natural science; became famous by the publication of “Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” a book which took with the Christian public at once, and had an enormous sale, which was succeeded by “Tropical Africa,” a charmingly-written book of travel, and by a series of booklets, commencing with “The Greatest Thing in the World,” intended to expound and commend the first principles of the Christian faith; his last work except one, published posthumously, entitled the “Ideal Life,” was the “Ascent of Man,” in which he posits an altruistic element in the process of evolution, and makes the goal of it a higher and higher life (1851-1897).
Drummond, Captain Thomas, civil engineer, born in Edinburgh; inventor of the Drummond Light; was employed in the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain and Ireland; became Under-Secretary for Ireland, and was held in high favour by the Irish (1797-1840).
Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, a Scottish poet, named the “Petrarch of Scotland,” born in Hawthornden; studied civil law at Bourges, but poetry had more attractions for him than law, and on the death of his father he returned to his paternal estate, and devoted himself to the study of it and the indulgence of his poetic tastes. “His work was done,” as Stopford Brooke remarks, “in the reign of James I., but is the result of the Elizabethan influence extending to Scotland. Drummond's sonnets and madrigals have some of the grace of Sidney, and he rose at intervals into grave and noble verse, as in his sonnet on John the Baptist.” He was a devoted Royalist; his first poem was “Tears” on the death of James I.'s eldest son Henry, and the fate of Charles I. is said to have cut short his days; the visit of Ben Jonson to him at Hawthornden is well known (1585-1649).
Drummond Light, an intensely-brilliant and pure white light produced by the play of an oxyhydrogen flame upon a ball of lime, so called from the inventor, Captain Thomas Drummond.
Drury, Dru, a naturalist, born in London; bred a silversmith; took to entomology; published “Illustrations of Natural History”; his principal work “Illustrations of Exotic Entomology” (1725-1803).
Drury Lane, a celebrated London theatre founded in 1663, in what was a fashionable quarter of the city then; has since that time been thrice burnt down; was the scene of Garrick's triumphs, and of those of many of his illustrious successors, though it is now given up chiefly to pantomimes and spectacular exhibitions.
Druses, a peculiar people, numbering some 80,000, inhabiting the S. of Lebanon and Anti-lebanon, with the Maronites on the N., whose origin is very uncertain, only it is evident, though they speak the Arab language, they belong to the Aryan race; their religion, a mixture of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan beliefs, is grounded on faith in the unity and the incarnation of God; their form of government is half hierarchical and half feudalistic; in early times they were under emirs of their own, but in consequence of the sanguinary, deadly, and mutually exterminating strife between them and the Christian Maronites in 1860, they were put under a Christian governor appointed by the Porte.
Drusus, M. Livius, a tribune of the people at Rome in 122 B.C., but a stanch supporter of the aristocracy; after passing a veto on a popular measure proposed by Gracchus his democratic colleague, proposed the same measure himself in order to show and prove to the people that the patricians were their best friends; the success of this policy gained him the name of “patron of the senate.”
Drusus, M. Livius, tribune of the people, 91 B.C., son of the preceding, and an aristocrat; pursued the same course as his father, but was baffled in the execution of his purpose, which was to broaden the constitution, in consequence of which he formed a conspiracy, and was assassinated, an event which led to the Social War (q. v.).
Drusus, Nero Claudius, surnamed “Germanicus,” younger brother of Tiberius and son-in-law of Marc Antony; distinguished himself in four successive campaigns against the tribes of Germany, but stopped short at the Elbe, scared by the apparition of a woman of colossal stature who defied him to cross, so that he had to “content himself with erecting some triumphal pillars on his own safe side of the river and say that the tribes across were conquered”; falling ill of a mortal malady, his brother the emperor hastened across the Alps to close his eyes, and brought home his body, which was burned and the ashes buried in the tomb of Augustus.
Dryads, nymphs of forest trees, which were conceived of as born with the tree they were attached to and dying along with it; they had their abode in wooded mountains away from men; held their revels among themselves, but broke them off at the approach of a human footstep.
Dryas, the father of Lycurgus, a Thracian king, and slain by him, who, in a fit of frenzy against the Bacchus worshippers, mistook him for a vine and cut him down. See Lycurgus.
Dryasdust, a name of Sir Walter Scott's invention, and employed by him to denote an imaginary character who supplied him with dry preliminary historical details, and since used to denote a writer who treats a historical subject with all due diligence and research, but without any appreciation of the human interest in it, still less the soul of it.
Dryburgh, an abbey, now a ruin, founded by David I., on the Tweed, in Berwickshire, 3 m. SE. of Melrose; the burial-place of Sir Walter Scott.
Dryden, John, a celebrated English poet, “glorious John,” born in Northamptonshire, of a good family of Puritan principles; educated at Westminster School and Cambridge; his first poetic production of any merit was a set of “heroic stanzas” on the death of Cromwell; at the Restoration he changed sides and wrote a poem which he called “Astræa Redux” in praise of the event, which was ere long followed by his “Annus Mirabilis,” in commemoration of the year 1666, which revealed at once the poet and the royalist, and gained him the appointment of poet-laureate, prior to which and afterwards he produced a succession of plays for the stage, which won him great popularity, after which he turned his mind to political affairs and assumed the role of political satirist by production of his “Absalom and Achitophel,” intended to expose the schemes of Shaftesbury, represented as Achitophel and Monmouth as Absalom, to oust the Duke of York from the succession to the throne; on the accession of James II. he became a Roman Catholic, and wrote “The Hind and the Panther,” characterised by Stopford Brooke as “a model of melodious reasoning in behalf of the milk-white hind of the Church of Rome,” and really the most powerful thing of the kind in the language; at the Revolution he was deprived of his posts, but it was after that event he executed his translation of Virgil, and produced his celebrated odes and “Fables” (1631-1700).
Dualism, or Manichæism, the doctrine that there are two opposite and independently existing principles which go to constitute every concrete thing throughout the universe, such as a principle of good and a principle of evil, light and darkness, life and death, spirit and matter, ideal and real, yea and nay, God and Devil, Christ and Antichrist, Ormuzd and Ahriman.
Du Barry, Countess, mistress of Louis XV., born at Vaucouleurs, daughter of a dressmaker; came to Paris, professing millinery; had fascinating attractions, and was introduced to the king; governed France to its ruin and the dismissal of all Louis' able and honourable advisers; fled from Paris on the death of Louis, put on mourning for his death; was arrested, brought before the Revolutionary tribunal, condemned for wasting the finances of the State, and guillotined (1746-1793).
Du Bellay, a French general, born at Montmirail; served under Francis I. (1541-1590).
Dublin (360), the capital of Ireland, at the mouth of the Liffey, which divides it in two, and is crossed by 12 bridges; the principal and finest street is Sackville Street, which is about 700 yards long and 40 wide; it has a famous university and two cathedrals, besides a castle, the residence of the Lord-Lieutenant; and a park, the Phoenix, one of the finest in Europe; manufactures porter, whisky, and poplin.
Dubois, Guillaume, cardinal and prime minister of France; notorious for his ambition and his debauchery; appointed tutor to the Duke of Orleans; encouraged him in vice, and secured his attachment and patronage in promotion, so that in the end he rose to the highest honours, and even influence, in both Church and state; notwithstanding his debauchery he was an able man and an able minister (1656-1723).
Dubois, Reymond, a German physiologist, born in Berlin, of French descent; professor of Physiology at Berlin; distinguished for his researches in animal electricity; b. 1818.
Dubois de Crancé, a violent French revolutionary, born at Charleville; besieged and captured Lyons, giving no quarter; was Minister of War under the Directory; secured the adoption of the principle of conscription in recruiting the army (1747-1814).
Dubourg, a French magistrate, member of the parlement of Paris; burnt as a heretic for recommending clemency in the treatment of the Huguenots (1521-1559).
Dubufe, a distinguished French portrait-painter (1820-1883).
Dubuque (36), a town in Iowa, U.S., on the Mississippi, with lead-mines and a trade in grain, timber, &c.
Ducamp, Maxime, a French littérateur, born in Paris; has written “Travels in the East”; is the author of “Paris,” its civic life, as also an account of its “Convulsions”; b. 1822.
Du Cange, Charles, one of the most erudite of French scholars, born at Amiens, and educated among the Jesuits; wrote on language, law, archæology, and history; devoted himself much to the study of the Middle Ages; contributed to the rediscovery of old French literature, and wrote a history of the Latin empire; his greatest works are his Glossaries of the Latin and Greek of the Middle Ages (1614-1688).
Ducat, a coin, generally in gold, that circulated in Venice, and was current in Germany at one time, of varied value.
Du Chaillu, Paul Belloni, an African traveller, born in Louisiana; his principal explorations confined to the equatorial region of West Africa, and the result an extension of our knowledge of its geography, ethnology, and zoology, and particularly of the character and habits of the ape tribes, and above all the gorilla; b. 1837.
Du Châtelet, Marquise de, a scientific lady and friend of Voltaire's, born in Paris; “a too fascinating shrew,” as he at length found to his cost (1706-1749).
Duchesne, André, French historian and geographer, born in Touraine; styled the “Father of French History”; famous for his researches in it and in French antiquities, and for histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively; his industry was unwearied; he left more than 100 folios in MS. (1584-1640).
Duchobortzi, a religious community in Russia of Quaker principles, and of a creed that denied the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ; they became a cause of trouble to the empire by their fanaticism, and were removed to a high plateau in Transcaucasia, where they live by cattle-rearing.
Ducis, Jean, a French dramatist, born at Versailles; took Shakespeare for his model; declined Napoleon's patronage, thinking it better, as he said, to wear rags than wear chains (1733-1816).
Ducking Stool, a stool or chair in which a scolding woman was confined, and set before her own door to be pelted at, or borne in a tumbrel through the town to be jeered at, or placed at the end of a see-saw and ducked in a pool.
Duclos, Charles, a witty and satirical French writer, born at Dinan; author of “Observations,” and “A History of the Manners of the Eighteenth Century,” and “Mémoires of the Reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.”; he mingled much in French society of the period, and took studious note of its passing whims (1704-1772).
Ducornet, a French historical-painter, born at Lille; being born without arms, painted with his foot (1805-1856).
Ducos, Roger, French politician, born at Bordeaux, member of the National Convention and of the Directory (1754-1816).
Ducrot, a French general, born at Nivers; served in Algeria, in the Italian campaign of 1859, and as head of a division in the German War; was imprisoned for refusing to sign the capitulation treaty of Sedan, but escaped and took part in the defence of Paris when besieged by the Germans (1817-1882).
Du Deffand, Marquise. See Deffand.
Dudley (90), the largest town in Worcestershire, 8½ m. NW. of Birmingham, in the heart of the “Black Country,” with coal-mines, iron-works, and hardware manufactures.
Dudley, Edmund, an English lawyer and privy-councillor; was associated with Empson as an agent in carrying on the obnoxious policy of Henry VII., and beheaded along with him at the instance of Henry VIII. on a charge of high treason in 1510.
Dudley, John, grand-marshal of England, son of the preceding, father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey; beheaded in 1558 for his part in an insurrection in her favour.
Duff, Alexander, an eminent Indian missionary, born at Moulin, near Pitlochry, Perthshire; a man of Celtic blood, apostolic zeal, and fervid eloquence; was the first missionary sent out to India by the Church of Scotland; sailed in 1830, returned in 1840, in 1849, and finally in 1863, stirring up each time the missionary spirit in the Church; he was the originator of a new method of missionary operations in the East by the introduction of English as the vehicle of instruction in the Christian faith, which met at first with much opposition, but was finally crowned with conspicuous success; died in Edinburgh (1806-1873).
Duff, James Grant, Indian soldier and statesman, born at Banff; conspicuous as a soldier for his services in subduing the Mahratta chiefs, and as a statesman for establishing friendly relations between the Mahrattas and the East India Company (1789-1858).
Dufferin, Marquis of, and Earl of Ava, statesman and diplomatist; held office under Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone; was in succession Governor-General of Canada, ambassador first at St. Petersburg, then at Constantinople, and finally Governor-General of India; has since acted as ambassador at Rome and Paris; is a man of literary as well as administrative ability; b. 1826.
Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, an Irish patriot, born in co. Monaghan; bred for the bar; took to journalism in the interest of his country's emancipation; was one of the founders of the Nation newspaper; was twice over tried for sedition, but acquitted; emigrated at length to Australia, where he soon plunged into Colonial politics, and in his political capacity rendered distinguished services to the Australian colonies, especially in obtaining important concessions from the mother-country; he is the author of the “Ballad Poetry of Ireland,” and an interesting record of his early experiences in “Young Ireland”; b. 1816.
Dufour, a Swiss general, born at Constance; commanded the army directed against the Sonderbund (q. v.), and brought the war there to a close (1787-1875).
Dufresne, Charles. See Du Cange.
Dufresny, French painter and poet, born at Paris (1765-1825).
Dufresny, Charles Rivière, French dramatist, a universal genius, devoted to both literature and the arts; held in high esteem by Louis XIV.; wrote a number of comedies, revealing a man of the world, instinct with wit, and careless of style (1648-1724).
Dugdale, Sir William, antiquary, born in Warwickshire; was made Chester herald, accompanied Charles I. throughout the Civil War; his chief work was the “Monasticum Anglicanum,” which he executed conjointly with Roger Duckworth; wrote also on the antiquities of Warwickshire and heraldry; left 27 folio MSS. now in the Bodleian Library (1605-1686).
Dugommier, French general, pupil of Washington, born at Guadeloupe; distinguished himself in Italy; commanded at the siege of Toulon, which he took; fell at the battle of Sierra-Negra, in Spain, which he had invaded (1736-1794).
Duguay-Trouin, René, a celebrated French sea-captain, born at St. Malo; distinguished at first in privateer warfare during the reign of Louis XIV., and afterwards as a frigate captain in the royal navy, to which the royal favour promoted him; was much beloved by the sailors and subordinate officers; died poor (1673-1736).
Du Guesclin, Bertrand, constable of France, born in Côtes du Nord; one of the most illustrious of French war-captains, and distinguished as one or the chief instruments in expelling the English from Normandy, Guienne, and Poitou; was taken prisoner at the battle of Auray in 1364, but ransomed for 100,000 francs, and again by the Black Prince, but soon liberated; he was esteemed for his valour by foe and friend alike, and he was buried at St. Denis in the tomb of the kings of France (1314-1380).
Duhesme, a French general; covered with wounds at Waterloo, he was cruelly massacred by the Brunswick hussars in the house to which he had fled for refuge (1760-1815).
Duilius, Caius, a Roman consul; distinguished for having on the coast of Sicily gained the first naval victory recorded in the annals of Rome, 260 B.C.
Dulce Domum (for Sweet Home), a song sung by the pupils at Winchester College on the approach of and at the break-up of the school for the summer holidays.
Dulcinea del Tobosa, the name Don Quixote gave to his beloved Aldonza Lorenzo, a coarse peasant-girl of Tobosa, conceived by him as a model of all feminine perfection, and as such adored by him.
Dulia, an inferior kind of worship paid to angels and saints, in contradistinction to Latria (q. v.).
Dulong, a French chemist, born at Rouen; discoverer, by accidental explosion, of the chloride of nitrogen (1785-1838).
Duluth (52), a port on Lake Superior, with a fine harbour, and a great centre of commerce.
Dulwich, a southern Surrey suburb of London, with a flourishing college founded in 1619, and a picture gallery attached, rich especially in Dutch paintings. See Alleyn, Edward.
Dumachus, the impenitent thief, figures in Longfellow's “Golden Legend” as one of a band of robbers who attacked St. Joseph on his flight into Egypt.
Dumas, Alexandre, the Elder, a celebrated French author, born at Villers-Cotterets, son of General Dumas, a Creole; lost his father at four, and led for a time a miscellaneous life, till, driven by poverty, he came to Paris to seek his fortune; here he soon made his mark, and became by-and-by the most popular dramatist and romancier of his time; his romances are numerous, and he reached the climax of his fame by the production of “Monte Cristo” in 1844, and the “Three Musketeers” the year after; he was unhappy in his marriage and with his wife, as afterwards, he squandered his fortune in reckless extravagance; before the end it was all spent, and he died at Dieppe, broken in health and impaired in intellect, ministered to by his son and daughter (1806-1876).
Dumas, Alexandre, the Younger or fils, dramatist and novelist, born in Paris, son of the preceding; he made his début as a novelist with “La Dame aux Camélias” in 1848, which was succeeded by a number of other novels; he eventually gave himself up to the production of dramas, in which he was more successful than in romance (1824-1895).
Dumas, Jean Baptiste André, a distinguished French chemist, born at Alais; was admitted to the Académie française at the age of 25; at the Revolution of 1848 he became a member of the National Assembly; was created a senator under the Empire, but retired into private life after Sedan; he was distinguished for his studies in chemistry, both theoretical and practical, and ranks among the foremost in the science (1800-1884).
Du Maurier, artist, born in Paris; started in London as a designer of wood engravings; did illustrations for Once a Week, the Cornhill Magazine, &c.., and finally joined the staff of Punch, to which he contributed numerous clever sketches; he published a novel, “Peter Ibbetson,” in 1891, which was succeeded in 1895 by “Trilby,” which had such a phenomenal success in both England and America (1834-1897).
Dumb Ox, Thomas Aquinas (q. v.), so called from his taciturnity before he opened his mouth and began, as predicted, to fill the world with his lowing.
Dumbarton (17), the county town of Dumbartonshire, and a royal burgh, at the mouth of the Leven, on the Clyde, 15 m. from Glasgow; shipbuilding the chief industry; it was the capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde; adjoining is a castle of historic interest, 250 ft. high, kept up as a military fortress; the county, which is fertile, and was originally part of Lennox, is traversed by the Leven, with its bleach-fields and factories.
Dumbdrudge, an imaginary village referred to in “Sartor,” where the natives toil and drudge away and say nothing about it, as villagers all over the world used contentedly to do, and did for most part, at the time “Sartor” was written, though less so now.
Dumbiedikes, a Scotch laird who figures in the “Heart of Midlothian,” in love with Jeanie Deans.
Dumesnil, Marie Françoise, a celebrated French tragédienne, born near Alençon; like Mrs. Siddons, surpassed all others at the time in the representation of dignity, pathos, and strong emotion; made her first appearance in 1737, retired in 1775 (1711-1803).
Dumfries (18), an agricultural market-town, county town of Dumfriesshire and a seaport, stands on the left bank of the Nith, with Maxwelltown as suburb on the right, 90 m. SW. of Edinburgh; manufactures tweeds and hosiery, and trades in cattle; here Robert Burns spent the last five years of his life, and his remains lie buried.
Dumfriesshire (74), a south-western Border county of Scotland; an agricultural district, which slopes from a northern pastoral region to the Solway, and is traversed by the fertile valleys of Nithsdale and Annandale.
Dumnorix, a chief of the Æduan nation in Gaul, who gave some trouble to Cæsar in his conquest of Gaul.
Dumont, Augustin-Alexandre, a sculptor, born in Paris (1801-1884).
Dumont, Jean, an eminent French publicist, who settled in Austria and served the emperor; wrote on international law (1660-1726).
Dumont, Louis, a French publicist, born at Geneva, a friend of Mirabeau, memoirs of whom he wrote, and who, coming to England, formed a close intimacy with Jeremy Bentham, and became his disciple and expounder (1759-1829).
Dumont d'Urville, Jules, a celebrated French navigator, born at Condé-sur-Noireau; made a three years' voyage round the world, and visited the Antarctic regions, of which he made a survey; he was distinguished as a scientist no less than a sea-captain; lost his life in a railway accident at Versailles (1790-1842).
Dumoulin, a celebrated French jurist, born at Paris; did for French law what Cujas (q. v.) did for Roman (1500-1560).
Dumouriez, a French general, born at Cambrai, “a wiry, elastic, unwearied man ... creature,” as he boasted in his old age, “of God and his own sword ... on the whole, one of Heaven's Swiss”; took when already grey to the Revolution and fought on its behalf; gained the battles of Valmy and Jemmapes; conquered Belgium, but being distrusted, passed over to the ranks of the enemies of France; a man really “without faith; wanted above all things work, work on any side”; died an exile in England (1739-1824). See Carlyle's “French Revolution.”
Düna, a river of Russia, which rises near the source of the Volga, and after a W. and NW. course of 650 m. falls into the Gulf of Riga; it is connected with the Dnieper by the Beresina Canal.
Dunbar, an ancient seaport and town of Haddingtonshire, on the coast of the Forth, 29 m. E. of Edinburgh; is a fishing station, and manufactures agricultural implements and paper; was, with its castle, which has stood many a siege, a place of importance in early Scottish history; near it Cromwell beat the Scots under Leslie on September 3, 1650.
Dunbar, William, a Scottish poet, entered the Franciscan order and became an itinerant preaching friar, in which capacity he wandered over the length and breadth of the land, enjoying good cheer by the way; was some time in the service of James IV., and wrote a poem, his most famous piece, entitled “The Thistle and the Rose,” on the occasion of the King's marriage with the Princess Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. His poems were of three classes—allegoric, moral, and comic, the most remarkable being “The Dance,” in which he describes the procession of the seven deadly sins in the infernal regions. Scott says he “was a poet unrivalled by any that Scotland has produced” (1480-1520).
Dunblane, a town in Perthshire, 5 m. N. of Stirling, with a beautiful cathedral, which dates back as far as 1240; of the diocese the saintly Leighton was bishop.
Duncan, Adam, Viscount, a British admiral, born at Dundee; entered the navy in 1746; steadily rose in rank till, in 1795, he became admiral of the Blue and commander of the North Sea fleet in 1795; kept watching the movements of the Dutch squadron for two years, till, at the end of that term, it put to sea, and came up with it off Camperdown, and totally defeated it, June 11, 1797 (1731-1804).
Duncan, Thomas, a Scotch artist, born at Kinclaven, Perthshire; painted fancy and Scoto-historical subjects, and a number of excellent portraits; his career, which was full of promise, was cut short by an early death (1807-1845).
Dunciad, The, a satire of Pope's in four books, the “fiercest” as well as the best of his satires, in which, with merciless severity, he applies the lash to his critics, and in which Colley Cibber figures as the King of Dunces.
Duncker, Max, a historical writer, born in Berlin; held a professorship at Halle and Tübingen, and became a minister of State; wrote among other works a work of great learning, in seven vols., entitled the “History of Antiquity” (1811-1886).
Duncombe, T. S., an English politician, M.P. for Finsbury, one of the extreme Liberal party of the time, presented to the House of Commons the Chartist petition in 1842; denounced Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary of the day, for opening Mazzini's letter, and advocated Jewish emancipation (1796-1861).
Dundalk (12), capital of co. Louth, Ireland, 50 m. N. of Dublin; a place of considerable trade and manufactures; is an ancient city; Edward Bruce, the last king of all Ireland, was crowned and resided here; it was besieged and taken more than once, by Cromwell for one.
Dundas (of Arniston), the name of a Scottish family, many of the members of which have distinguished themselves at the bar and on the bench.
Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville, a junior member of the above family; trained for the bar; rose to be Lord Advocate for Scotland and M.P. for the county of Edinburgh; opposed at first to Pitt, he became at last his ablest coadjutor in Parliament, and did important services in connection with the military and naval defences of the country; his power was sovereign in Scotland; his statue, mounted on a lofty column, adorns one of the principal squares of the New Town of Edinburgh (1741-1811).
Dundee (153), the third largest city in Scotland, stands on the Firth of Tay, 10 m. from the mouth; has a large seaport; is a place of considerable commercial enterprise; among its numerous manufactures the chief is the jute; it has a number of valuable institutions, and sends two members to Parliament.
Dundonald, Thomas Cochrane, Earl of, entered the navy at the age of 17; became captain of the Speedy, a sloop-of-war of 14 guns and 54 men; captured in ten months 33 vessels; was captured by a French squadron, but had his sword returned to him; signalised himself afterwards in a succession of daring feats; selected to burn the French fleet lying at anchor in the Basque Roads, he was successful by means of fire-ships in destroying several vessels, but complained he was not supported by Lord Gambier, the admiral, a complaint which was fatal to his promotion in the service; disgraced otherwise, he went abroad and served in foreign navies, and materially contributed to the establishment of the republic of Chile and the empire of Brazil; in 1830 he was restored by his party, the Whigs, to his naval rank, as a man who had been the victim of the opposite party, and made a vice-admiral of the Blue in 1841; he afterwards vindicated himself in his “Autobiography of a Seaman” (1775-1860).
Dundreary, Lord, a character of the play “Our American Cousin”; the personification of a good-natured, brainless swell; represented uniquely on the stage by Mr. Sothern.
Dunedin (47), the capital of Otago, in New Zealand, situated well south on the E. side of the South Isle, at the head of a spacious bay, and the largest commercial city in the colony; founded by Scotch emigrants in 1848, one of the leaders a nephew of Robert Burns.
Dunes, low hills of sand extending along the coast of the Netherlands and the N. of France.
Dunfermline (19), an ancient burgh in the W. of Fife; a place of interest as a residence of the early kings of Scotland, and as the birthplace of David II., James I., and Charles I., and for its abbey; it stands in the middle of a coal-field, and is the seat of extensive linen manufactures.
Dunkeld, a town in Perthshire, 15 m. NW. of Perth, with a fine 14th-century cathedral.
Dunkers, a sect of Quakerist Baptists in the United States.
Dunkirk (40), the most northern seaport and fortified town of France, on the Strait of Dover; has manufactures and considerable trade.
Dunnet Head, a rocky peninsula, the most northerly point in Scotland, the rocks from 100 to 600 ft. high.
Dunnottar Castle, an old castle of the Keiths now in ruins, on the flat summit of a precipitous rock 1½ m. S. of Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Scotland, and connected with the mainland by a neck of land called the “Fiddle Head”; famous in Scottish history as a State prison, and as the place of safe-keeping at a troubled period for the Scottish regalia, now in Edinburgh Castle.
Dunois, Jean, a French patriot, called the Bastard of Orleans, born in Paris, natural son of Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI.; one of the national heroes of France; along with Joan of Arc, compelled the English to raise the siege of Orleans, and contributed powerfully, by his sword, to all but expel the English from France after the death of that heroine (1402-1468).
Duns Scotus, Johannes, one of the most celebrated of the scholastics of the 14th century, whether he was native of England, Scotland, or Ireland is uncertain; entered the Franciscan order, and from his acuteness got the name of “Doctor Subtilis”; lectured at Oxford to crowds of auditors, and also at Paris; was the contemporary of Thomas Aquinas, and the head of an opposing school of Scotists, as against Thomists, as they were called; whereas Aquinas “proclaimed the Understanding as principle, he proclaimed the Will, from whose spontaneous exercise he derived all morality; with this separation of theory from practice and thought from thing (which accompanied it) philosophy became divided from theology, reason from faith; reason took a position above faith, above authority (in modern philosophy), and the religious consciousness broke with the traditional dogma (at the Reformation).”
Dunstan, St., an English ecclesiastic, born at Glastonbury; a man of high birth and connection as well as varied accomplishments; began a religious life as a monk living in a cell by himself, and prevailed in single combat on one occasion with the devil; became abbot of Glastonbury, in which capacity he adopted the rôle of statesman, and arose to great authority during the reign of Edgar, becoming archbishop of Canterbury, ruling the nation with vigour and success, but with the death of Edgar his power declined, and he retired to Canterbury, where he died of grief and vexation; he is the patron saint of goldsmiths (924-988).
Dunton, Watts. See Watts, Theodore.
Dupanloup, a French prelate, bishop of Orleans, born at St. Felix, in Savoy; a singularly able and eloquent man; devoted himself to educational emancipation and reform; protested vigorously against papal infallibility; yielded at length, and stood up in defence of the Church (1802-1878).
Duperré, a French admiral, born at La Rochelle; contributed along with Marshal Bourmont to the taking of Algiers (1775-1846).
Duperron, cardinal, a Swiss by birth and a Calvinist by religious profession; went to Paris, turned papist, and rose to ecclesiastical eminence in France under Henry IV. (1556-1618).
Dupin, André, French jurist and statesman; distinguished at the time of the revolution of the three days as a supporter of Louis Philippe, and of the house of Orleans after him (1783-1865).
Dupleix, Joseph, a French merchant, head of a factory at Chandernagore, who rose to be governor of the French settlements in India, and in the management of which he displayed conspicuous ability, defending them against the English and receiving the dignity of marquis; jealousy at home, however, led to his recall, and he was left to end his days in neglect and poverty, though he pled hard with the cabinet at Versailles to have respect to the sacrifices he made for his country (1697-1763).
Duplessis, Mornay, a soldier, diplomatist, and man of letters; a leader of the Huguenots, who, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, visited England, where he was received with favour by Elizabeth in 1575; entered the service of the King of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France, but on Henry's reconciliation with the Church of Rome, retired into private life and devoted himself to literary pursuits; he was called the “Pope of the Huguenots”; d. 1623.
Dupont, Pierre, French song-writer; his songs, “Le Chant des Ouvriers” and “Les Boeufs,” the delight of the young generation of 1848 (1820-1872).
Dupont de l'Eure, a French politician, born at Neubourg; filled several important offices in the successive periods of revolution in France; was distinguished for his integrity and patriotism, and made President of the Provisional Government in 1848 (1767-1855).
Dupont de Nemours, French political economist; took part in the Revolution; was opposed to the excesses of the Jacobin party, but escaped with his life; wrote a book entitled “Philosophie de l'Universe” (1739-1817).
Dupuis, Charles François, a French savant; was a member of the Convention of the Council of the Five Hundred, and President of the Legislative Body during the Revolution period; devoted himself to the study of astronomy in connection with mythology, the result of which was published in his work in 12 vols., entitled “Origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Religion Universelle”; he advocated the unity of the astronomical and religious myths of all nations (1742-1809).
Dupuy, M. Charles, French statesman, born at Puy; elected to the Chamber in 1885; became Premier in 1893 and in 1894; was in office when Dreyfus was condemned and degraded, and resigned in 1895; b. 1851.
Dupuytren, Baron, a celebrated French surgeon, born at Pierre-Buffière; he was a man of firm nerve, signally sure and skilful as an operator, and contributed greatly, both by his inventions and discoveries, to the progress of surgery; a museum of pathological anatomy, in which he made important discoveries, bears his name (1777-1835).
Duquesne, Abraham, Marquis, an illustrious naval officer of France, born at Dieppe; distinguished himself in many a naval engagement, and did much to enhance the naval glory of the country; among other achievements plucked the laurels from the brow of his great rival, De Ruyter, by, in 1676, defeating the combined fleets of Spain and Holland under his command; Louis XIV. offered him a marshal's baton if he would abjure Calvinism, but he declined; he was the only one of the Huguenots excepted from proscription in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but his last days were saddened by the banishment of his children (1610-1688).
Dura Den, a glen near Cupar-Fife, famous for the number of ganoid fossil fishes entombed in its sandstone.
Durance, a tributary of the Rhône, which, after a rapid course of 180 m., falls into that river by its left bank 3 m. below Avignon.
Durand, an Indian officer; served in the Afghan and Sikh Wars, and became Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab (1828-1871).
Durandal, the miraculous sword of Orlando, with which he could cleave mountains at a blow.
Durban (27), the port of Natal, largest town in the colony, with a land-locked harbour.
Durbar, a ceremonious State reception in India.
Dürer, Albert, the great early German painter and engraver, born at Nürnberg, son of a goldsmith, a good man, who brought him up to his own profession, but he preferred painting, for which he early exhibited a special aptitude, and his father bound him apprentice for three years to the chief artist in the place, at the expiry of which he travelled in Germany and other parts; in 1506 he visited Venice, where he met Bellini, and painted several pictures; proceeded thence to Bologna, and was introduced to Raphael; his fame spread widely, and on his return he was appointed court-painter by the Emperor Maximilian, an office he held under Charles V.; he was of the Reformed faith, and a friend of Melanchthon as well as an admirer of Luther, on whose incarceration in Wartburg he uttered a long lament; he was a prince of painters, his drawing and colouring perfect, and the inventor of etching, in which he was matchless; he carved in wood, ivory, stone, and metal; was an author as well as an artist, and wrote, among other works, an epoch-making treatise on proportion in the human figure; “it could not be better done” was his quiet, confident reply as a sure workman to a carper on one occasion (1471-1528).
D'Urfey, Tom, a facetious poet; author of comedies and songs; a great favourite of Charles II. and his court; of comedies he wrote some 30, which are all now discarded for their licentiousness, and a curious book of sonnets, entitled “Pills to Purge Melancholy”; came to poverty in the end of his days; Addison pled on his behalf, and hoped that “as he had made the world merry, the world would make him easy” (1628-1723).
Durgâ, in the Hindu mythology the consort of Siva.
Durham (15), an ancient city on the Wear, with a noble cathedral and a castle, once the residence of the bishop, now a university seat, in the heart of a county of the same name (1,106), rich in coal-fields, and with numerous busy manufacturing towns.
Durham, Admiral, entered the navy in 1777; was officer on the watch when the Royal George went down off Spithead, and the only one with Captain Waghorn who escaped; served as acting-lieutenant of a ship under Lord Howe at the relief of Gibraltar, and commanded the Defence, a ship of 74 guns, at the battle of Trafalgar (1763-1815).
Durham, John G. L., Earl of, an English statesman, born in Durham Co.; a zealous Liberal and reformer, and a member of the Reform Government under Earl Grey, which he contributed much to inaugurate; was ambassador in St. Petersburg, and was sent governor-general to Canada in 1839, but owing to some misunderstanding took the extraordinary step of ultroneously returning within the year (1792-1840).
Durward, Quentin, a Scottish archer in the service of Louis XI., the hero of a novel of Scott's of the name.
Düsseldorf (176), a well-built town of Rhenish Prussia, on the right bank of the Rhine; it is a place of manufactures, and has a fine picture-gallery with a famous school of art associated.
Dutens, Joseph, a French engineer and political economist (1763-1848).
Dutens, Louis, a French savant, born at Tours; after being chaplain to the British minister at Turin, settled in England, and became historiographer-royal; was a man of varied learning, and well read in historical subjects and antiquities (1730-1812).
Dutrochet, a French physiologist and physicist, known for his researches on the passage of fluids through membranous tissues (1776-1847).
Duumvirs, the name of two Roman magistrates who exercised the same public functions.
Duval, Claude, a French numismatist, and writer on numismatics; keeper of the imperial cabinet of Vienna; was originally a shepherd boy (1695-1775).
Dwight, Timothy, an American theologian, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and much esteemed in his day both as a preacher and a writer; his “Theology Explained and Defended,” in 5 vols., was very popular at one time, and was frequently reprinted (1752-1817).
Dwina, a Russian river, distinguished from the Düna (q. v.), also called Duna, and an important, which flows N. to the White Sea.
Dyaks, the native name of tribes of Malays of a superior class aboriginal to Borneo.
Dyce, Alexander, an English literary editor and historian, born in Edinburgh; edited several of the old English poets and authors, some of them little known before; also the poems of Shakespeare, Pope, &c.; was one of the founders of the Percy Society, for the publication of old English works (1798-1869).
Dyce, William, a distinguished Scottish artist, born in Aberdeen, studied in Rome; settled for a time in Edinburgh, and finally removed to London; painted portraits at first, but soon took to higher subjects of art; his work was such as to commend itself to both German and French artists; he gave himself to fresco-painting, and as a fresco-painter was selected to adorn the walls of the Palace of Westminster and the House of Lords; his “Baptism of Ethelbert,” in the latter, is considered his best work (1806-1864).
Dyck, Van. See Vandyck.
Dyer, John, English poet; was a great lover and student of landscape scenery, and his poems, “Grongar Hill” and the “Fleece,” abound in descriptions of these, the scenery of the former lying in S. Wales (1700-1758).
Dynam, the unit of work, or the force required to raise one pound one foot in one second.
Dynamite, a powerful explosive substance, intensely local in its action; formed by impregnating a porous siliceous earth or other substance with some 70 per cent. of nitro-glycerine.
Dynamo, a machine by which mechanical work is transformed into powerful electric currents by the inductive action of magnets on coils of copper wire in motion.