bordering on the Tyrol, 42 m. W. of Venice; has fine palaces designed by
Palladio, a native of the place; manufactures woollen and silk fabrics,
and wooden wares; was a place of some importance under the Lombards.
VICHY, a fashionable watering-place in Central France, on the
Allier, at the foot of the volcanic mountains of Auvergne; has hot
alkaline springs, much resorted to for their medicinal virtues.
VICKSBURG (13), largest city on the Mississippi, on a bluff above
the river, fortified by the Confederates in the Civil War; after a siege
of over a year surrendered to General Grant, 4th July 1864, with 30,000
men.
VICO, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, Italian philosopher, born at Naples, where
he was for 40 years professor of rhetoric; his great work "Scienza
Nuova," by which he became the father of the philosophy of history, which
he resolved Calvinistically into a spiritual development of the purpose
of God (1668-1744).
VICTOR, CLAUDE PERRIN, marshal of France, served with distinction
all through the wars of Napoleon, and held command, not to his honour,
under the Bourbons after his fall (1764-1841).
VICTOR, ST., the name of two martyrs, one of Marseilles and one of
Milan, distinguished for their zeal in overthrowing pagan altars.
VICTOR EMMANUEL II., king of Sardinia, and afterwards of united
Italy, born in Turin, eldest son of Charles Albert; became king in 1849
on the abdication of his father; distinguished himself in the war against
Austria, adding Austrian Lombardy and Tuscany to his dominions, and by
the help of Garibaldi, Naples and Sicily, till in 1861 he was proclaimed
King of Italy, and in 1870 he entered Rome as his capital city
(1820-1878).
VICTORIA (1,140), a colony of Great Britain, the smallest and most
populous in Australia, lying S. of New South Wales, from which it was
separated in 1851; originally settled as Port Phillip in 1834, it
developed gradually as a pastoral and agricultural region till, in 1851,
the discovery of gold led to an enormous increase in both the population
and the revenue, and the sudden rise of a community, with Melbourne for
centre, which, for wealth and enterprise, eclipsed every other in the
southern hemisphere of the globe; the wealth thus introduced led to a
further development of its resources, and every industry began to
flourish to a proportionate extent; the chief exports are wool, gold,
live-stock, bread-stuffs, hides and leather, and the imports are no less
manifold; the climate is remarkably healthy, and ice and snow are hardly
known; there is no State religion; 75 per cent. of the people are
Protestants, 22 per cent. Catholics, and ½ per cent. Jews, and every
provision is made for education in the shape of universities, State
schools, technical schools and private schools, and the legislative
authority is vested in a Parliament of two chambers, a Legislative
Council of 48, and a Legislative Assembly of 95.
VICTORIA, ALEXANDRINA, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland and Empress of India, born at Kensington Palace, the only
child of the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III., who died in 1820,
leaving her an infant eight months old; educated under the eye of her
mother with special regard to her prospective destiny as Queen;
proclaimed, on the death of William IV., on 20th June 1837; crowned at
Westminster 28th June 1838; married Prince Albert 10th February 1840; in
1877 added "Empress of India" to her titles; during 1861 became a widow
through the death of Prince Albert. Her reign was long and prosperous;
1887 being celebrated as her "Jubilee" year, and 1897 as her "Diamond
Jubilee"; was the mother of four sons and five daughters; had
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, William II., Emperor of Germany,
being a grandchild, and Nicholas II., Czar of Russia, being married to
another; _b_. 1819; died at Osborne, Isle of Wight, Jan. 22, 1901.
VICTORIA CROSS, a naval and military decoration in the shape of a
Maltese cross, instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856 for conspicuous
bravery in the presence of an enemy.
VICTORIA NYANZA, a lake in East Central Africa, on the Equator, is
about the size of Ireland, 300 m. long and 20 m. broad, at an elevation
of 3500 ft. above the sea-level; discovered by Captain Speke in 1858, and
circumnavigated by Stanley in 1875; is regarded as the head-source of the
Nile, the waters of it flowing through Albert Nyanza 80 m. to the N.,
between which two lakes lies the territory of Uganda.
VIDAR, in the Scandinavian mythology the god of wisdom and silence,
whose look penetrates the inmost thoughts of men.
VIENNA (1,364), the capital of the Austrian empire, on a southern
branch of the Danube, in a situation calculated to make it the central
city of the Continent; it is the residence of the emperor and the seat of
the government; has noble buildings, a university, and numerous large
libraries, a large promenade called the Prater, and a varied industry,
and ample means of both external and internal communication; in the SW.
of it is Schönbrunn, the summer residence of the emperor, amid gardens of
matchless beauty; it has been the scene of the signing of important
treaties, and it was here the Congress met to undo the work of Napoleon
in 1815.
VIENNE (22), an ancient town of France, on the Rhône, 19 m. S. of
Lyons; was the chief town of the Allobroges in Cæsar's time, and
possesses relics of its connection with Rome; it manufactures silk and
woollen fabrics, paper and iron goods, and has a trade in grain and wine.
VIGFUSSON, GUDBRAND, Scandinavian scholar, born in Iceland, of good
family; well familiar with the folk-lore of his country from boyhood, and
otherwise educated at home, he entered Copenhagen University in 1850,
occupying himself with the study of his native literature, and of every
document he could lay his hands on, and out of which he hoped to obtain
any light; in 1855 he published a work on the chronology of the sagas,
and this was followed by editions of the sagas themselves; after this he
came to Oxford, where he produced an Icelandic-English Dictionary and
other works in the same interest, and died and was buried there
(1827-1889).
VIGNY, ALFRED, COMTE DE, French poet of the Romanticist school, born
at Loches; entered the army, but left after a few years for a life of
literary ease; produced a small volume of exquisitely finished poems
between 1821 and 1829, and only another "Poèmes Philosophiques," which
were not published till after his death; wrote also romances and dramas,
and translated into French "Othello" and "Merchant of Venice"
(1798-1864).
VIGO (15), a seaport in Galicia, NW. of Spain, on a bay of the name;
beautifully situated, and a favourite health resort.
VIKINGS (creekers), name given to the Scandinavian sea-rovers and
pirates who from the 8th to the 10th centuries ravaged the shores chiefly
of Western Europe.
VILLARI, Italian author, born at Naples; professor of History at
Florence; has written the Lives of Savonarola and Macchiavelli; _b_.
1827.
VILLARS, DUC DE, marshal of France, born at Moulins; one of the most
illustrious of Louis XIV.'s generals, and distinguished in diplomacy as
well as war; served in Germany under Turenne, and in the war of the
Spanish Succession; suppressed the Camisards in the Cévennes, but was
defeated by Marlborough at Malplaquet (1653-1734).
VILLENAGE, in feudal times the condition of a "villein," one of the
lowest class in a state of menial servitude.
VILLENEUVE, SILVESTRE, French admiral, born at Vilensoles,
Basses-Alpes; entered the navy at 15, became captain at 30; commanded the
rear at the battle of the Nile; was placed in command at Toulon, steered
his fleet to the West Indies to draw Nelson off the shores of France, but
was chased back by Nelson and blockaded in Cadiz to the defeat of
Napoleon's scheme for invading England, but felt constrained to risk a
battle with the English admiral, which he did to his ruin at Trafalgar
(1763-1806).
VILLEROI, DUC DE, marshal of France; was a courtier but no soldier,
being defeated in Italy by Prince Eugene and at Ramillies by Marlborough;
was guardian to Louis XV. (1644-1730).
VILLIERS, CHARLES PELHAM, reformer, brother of the Earl of
Clarendon; bred to the bar; entered Parliament; M.P. for Wolverhampton,
which he represented to the end; was an advocate from the first, and one
of the sturdiest, for free trade and poor-law reform, and had a marble
statue raised in his honour at Wolverhampton before his death
(1802-1898).
VILLON, FRANÇOIS, French poet, born in Paris; studied at the
university, but led a singular life; had again and again to flee from
Paris; was once condemned to death, but set free after a four years'
imprisonment into which the sentence was commuted; is the author of two
poems, entitled the "Petit Testament" and the "Grand Testament," with
minor pieces bearing on the swindling tricks of Villon, the name he
assumed, and his companions (1431-1485).
VINCENNES (24), an eastern suburb of Paris, in the famous Bois de
Vincennes, which contains a large artillery park and training place for
troops; it is a favourite resort for Parisians of the middle class.
VINCENT, ST., a Spanish martyr who in 304 was tortured to death; is
represented with the instruments of his torture, a spiked gridiron for
one, and a raven beside him such as drove away the beasts and birds of
prey from his dead body.
VINCENT DE PAUL, ST., a Romish priest, born in Gascony, of humble
parents; renowned for his charity; he founded the congregation of the
Sisters of Charity, and that of the Priests of the Missions, afterwards
called Lazarites, from the priory of St. Lazare, where they first
established themselves, and instituted the Foundling Hospital in Paris;
he was canonised by Pope Clement XII. in 1737 (1576-1660).
VINDHYA MOUNTAINS, a range of hills, 500 m. in length, forming the
N. scarp of the plateau of the Deccan in India, the highest peak of which
does not exceed 6000 ft.
VINEGAR BIBLE, an edition of the Bible printed at Oxford, in which
the page containing the "Parable of the Vineyard" in Luke xx. was headed
"Parable of the Vinegar."
VINEGAR HILL, a hill (385 ft.) near Enniscorthy, co. Wexford,
Ireland, where General Lake defeated the Irish rebels on June 21, 1798,
to the utter annihilation then and after of almost every man of them.
VINET, ALEXANDRE RODOLPHE, a Protestant theologian, born near
Lausanne, where he studied and ultimately became professor of Practical
Theology; was a zealous defender of the liberty of conscience and of the
freedom of the Church from State connection and control; he was a
littérateur as well as an able and eloquent divine (1797-1847).
VIOTTI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, celebrated violinist, born in Piedmont
(1753-1824).
VIRCHOW, RUDOLF, eminent pathologist, born in Pomerania; is
distinguished as a politician as well as a man of science, and is in the
former regard a strenuous Liberal; his services not only in the interests
of medicine but of science generally and its social applications have
been very great; _b_. 1821.
VIRGIL, great Latin poet, born near Mantua, author in succession of
the "Eclogues," the "Georgics," and the "Æneid"; studied at Cremona and
Milan, and at 16 was sent to Rome to study rhetoric and philosophy, lost
a property he had in Cremona during the civil war, but recommended
himself to Pollio, the governor, who introduced him to Augustus, and he
went to settle in Rome; here, in 37 B.C., he published his "Eclogues," a
collection of 10 pastorals, and gained the patronage of Mæcenas, under
whose favour he was able to retire to a villa at Naples, where in seven
years he, in 30 B.C., produced the "Georgics," in four books, on the art
of husbandry, after which he devoted himself to his great work the
"Æneid," or the story of Æneas of Troy, an epic in 12 books, connecting
the hero with the foundation of Rome, and especially with the Julian
family, and which was finished in 19 B.C.; on his deathbed he expressed
a wish that it should be burned, and left instructions to that effect in
his will; he was one of the purest-minded poets perhaps that ever lived
(70-19 B.C.).
VIRGIN ISLANDS (45), a group of islands in the West Indies, few of
them of any size, belonging partly to Denmark, Britain, and Spain.
VIRGIN QUEEN, appellation popularly given to Queen Elizabeth.
VIRGINIA (1,655), one of the United States of America, a State
somewhat larger than Scotland, between Maryland and North Carolina, so
named by its founder Sir Walter Raleigh in honour of Queen Elizabeth; is
divided from West Virginia by the Appalachians; it is well watered; the
soil, which is fertile, yields the finest cotton and tobacco, and
minerals, particularly coal and iron, are abundant; the largest city is
Richmond, with flour-mills.
VIRGINIA, WEST (762), formed originally one State with the
preceding, but separated in 1861 to join the Federal cause; is nearly the
same in size and resources; is a great mining region, and is rich in coal
and iron; its largest city is Wheeling, on the Ohio.
VISHNU, the Preserver, the second god of the Hindu triad, BRAHMA (q. v.)
being the first and SIVA (q. v.) the third; revealed himself by a
succession of avatars, RÂMA (q. v.) being the seventh and KRISHNA (q. v.)
the eighth; he has had nine avatars, and on the tenth he will come to
judgment; he is extensively worshipped, and his worshippers, the
Vaishnavas, are divided into a great number of sects.
VISIGOTHS, a branch of the Goths that settled in the South of France
and in Spain.
VISTULA, a central river of Europe, which rises in the Carpathians
and after a course of 600 m. falls into the Baltic; it is almost
navigable throughout, and carries down great quantities of timber, grain,
and other produce to the Baltic ports.
VITALIS, ST., a martyr of the 1st century, who was stoned to death,
is represented as buried in a pit with stones on his head.
VITELLIUS, AULUS, Roman emperor; reigned only eight months and some
days of the year 69; was notorious for his excesses, and was murdered
after being dragged through the streets of Rome.
VITRUVIUS, POLLIO, Roman architect and engineer; wrote on
architecture, lived in the days of Augustus.
VITTORIA (127), the capital of Alava, a Basque province in the North
of Spain, famous as the scene of one of Wellington's victories in June
1813; has a fine old 12th-century cathedral and extensive manufactures;
it is one of the most prosperous towns in Spain.
VIVES, LUDOVICUS, a humanist, born at Valencia, studied in Paris;
wrote against scholasticism, taught at Oxford, and was imprisoned for
opposing Henry VIII.'s divorce; died at Bruges (1492-1540).
VIVIAN, an enchantress in Arthurian legend. See MERLIN.
VLADIMIR (12), capital of a government in the centre of Russia, 120
m. NE. of Moscow; once practically the capital of the country, with many
remains of its ancient grandeur.
VLADIMIR I. THE GREAT OR ST., grand-duke of Russia; converted to
Christianity through his wife Anna Romanovna, laid the foundation of the
Russian empire; has been canonised by the Russian Church; _d_. 1015.
VLADIMIR II., surnamed Monomachus; succeeded to the throne of Russia
in 1113, and consolidated it by the establishment and enforcement of just
laws; was married to Gida, a daughter of King Harold of England
(1063-1126).
VOGLER, ABBÉ, composer, born in Würzburg; distinguished once both as
a musical performer and teacher; lives only in Browning's "Dramatis
Personæ" (1749-1814).
VOGT, CARL, German naturalist, born at Giessen; a materialist and
disciple of Darwin; has written on geology and anthropology; _b_. 1817.
VOGULS, a Finnish tribe on the E. slope of the Urals; are
Christianised, but still practise many Shamanist rites; number some
20,000.
VOLAPÜK, a universal language by Schleyer, a German pastor; as yet
practically limited to its applicability to commercial intercourse.
VOLGA, a river of European Russia, the largest in Europe, which
rises in the Valdai Hills, and after a course of 2200 m. falls by a delta
with 200 mouths into the Caspian Sea; it is navigable almost throughout,
providing Russia with 7200 m. of water-carriage, and has extensive
fisheries, especially of salmon and sturgeon.
VOLNEY, French philosopher, born at Craon; travelled in Egypt and
Syria; wrote an account of his travels in his "Voyage"; was imprisoned
during the Reign of Terror; patronised and promoted to honour by
Napoleon, and by the Bourbons on their return; his principal work,
"LES RUINES, OU MÉDITATIONS SUR LES RÉVOLUTIONS DES EMPIRES," was
an embodiment of 18th-century enlightenment (q. v.) (1757-1820).
VOLSUNGS, a race figuring in Norse and German legend of the 12th
century, and with the fate in whose history it is so widely occupied, and
that of its heroes.
VOLTA, ALESSANDRINO, Italian physicist, born at Como; professor of
Physics at Pavia; made electrical discoveries which laid the foundation
of what is called after him voltaic electricity; volt, the unit of
electric motive force, being a term among sundry others in electric
science similarly derived (1745-1827).
VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY, a current of electricity generated by chemical
action between metals and different liquids as arranged in a voltaic
battery.
VOLTAIRE, FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET DE, great French "persifleur" and
"Coryphæus of Deism," born in Paris, son of a lawyer; trained to scoff at
religion from his boyhood, and began his literary career as a satirist
and in the production of lampoons which cost him twice over imprisonment
in the Bastille, on his release from which he left France in 1726 and
went to England, where he stayed three years, and got acquainted with the
free-thinking class there; on his return to Paris he engaged in some
profitable commercial speculations and published his "Charles XII.,"
which he had written in England, and retired to the château of Cirey,
where he lived five years with Madame du Châtelet, engaged in study and
diligent with his pen, with whom he left France and went to Poland, after
her death paying his famous visit to Frederick the Great, with whom
before three years were out he quarrelled, and from whom he was glad to
escape, making his head-quarters eventually within the borders of France
at Ferney, from which he now and again visited Paris, where on his last
visit he was received with such raptures of adulation that he was quite
overcome, and had to be conveyed home to die, giving up the ghost exactly
two months after. He was a man of superlative adroitness of faculty and
shiftiness, without aught that can be called great, but more than any
other the incarnation of the spirit of his time; said the word which all
were waiting to hear and who replied yea to it--a poor word indeed yet a
potent, for it gave the death-blow to superstition, but left religion out
in the cold. The general, the great offence Carlyle charges Voltaire
with is, that "he intermeddled in religion without being himself in any
measure religious; that he entered the Temple and continued there with a
levity which, in any temple where men worship, can beseem no brother man;
that, in a word, he ardently, and with long-continued effort, warred
against Christianity, without understanding, beyond the mere superficies,
what Christianity was" (1694-1778).
VOLUNTARYISM, the doctrine that the Church should not depend on the
State, but should be supported exclusively by the voluntary contributions
of its members.
VOODOO, name given to a system of magic and superstitious rites
prevalent among certain negro races.
VORTIGERN, a British prince of the 5th century, who, on the
withdrawal of the Romans, invited the Saxons to aid him against the
incursions of the Picts, to, as it proved, their own installation into
sovereign power in South Britain.
VOSGES, a range of mountains in the NE. of France, since 1871
forming the Franco-German frontier by the inclusion of Alsace in German
territory; they separate the basin of the Moselle from that of the Rhine.
VOSS, JOHANN HEINRICH, German poet and scholar, born in Mecklenburg;
spent most of his life in Heidelberg; his fame rests chiefly on his
idyllic poem "Luise" and his translations, particularly of Homer
(1751-1826).
VOSSIUS, GERARD, Dutch philologist, born near Heidelberg; wrote a
history of Pelagianism, which brought him disfavour with the orthodox;
was made a prebendary of Canterbury through the influence of Laud; was,
on some apology to orthodoxy in 1633, called to the chair of History in
the Gymnasium of Amsterdam; he was a friend of Grotius; he fell from a
ladder in his library, and was found dead (1577-1649).
VULCAN, the Roman god of fire and an artificer In metals, identified
with the Greek HEPHÆSTUS (q. v.); had a temple to his honour in
early Rome; was fabled to have had a forge under Mount Etna, where he
manufactured thunderbolts for Jupiter, the Cyclops being his workmen.
VULGATE, a version of the Bible in Latin executed by ST.
JEROME (q. v.), and was in two centuries after its execution
universally adopted in the Western Christian Church as authoritative for
both faith and practice, and from the circumstance of its general
reception it became known as the Vulgate (i. e. the commonly-accepted
Bible of the Church), and it is the version accepted as authentic to-day
by the Roman Catholic Church, under sanction of the Council of Trent.
"With the publication of it," says Ruskin, "the great deed of fixing, in
their ever since undisturbed harmony and majesty, the canon of Mosaic and
Apostolic Scripture, was virtually accomplished, and the series of
historic and didactic books which form our present Bible (including the
Apocrypha) were established in and above the nascent thought of the
noblest races of men living on the terrestrial globe, as a direct message
to them from its Maker, containing whatever it was necessary for them to
learn of His purposes towards them, and commanding, or advising, with
divine authority and infallible wisdom, all that it was best for them to
do and happiest to desire. Thus, partly as a scholar's exercise and
partly as an old man's recreation, the severity of the Latin language was
softened, like Venetian crystal, by the variable fire of Hebrew thought,
and the 'Book of Books' took the abiding form of which all the future art
of the Western nations was to be an hourly expanding interpretation."
VYASA, the mythical author of the Hindu Mahâbhârata and the Puránas;
was the illegitimate child of a Brahman and a girl of impure caste of the
fisher class.
W
WAAL, a S. branch of the Rhine, in Holland.
WACE, Anglo-Norman poet, born in Guernsey; author of two metrical
chronicles, "Geste des Brétons" and "Roman de Rou," the latter recording
the fortunes of the dukes of Normandy down to 1106 (1120-1183).
WACE, HENRY, Principal of King's College, London; has lectured ably
on Christian apologetics, and written valuable works in defence of
Christianity; _b_. 1836.
WADE, GEORGE, English general; commanded in Scotland during the
rebellion of 1715, has the credit of the construction in 1725-35 of the
military roads into the Highlands, to frustrate any further attempts at
rebellion in the north (1668-1748).
WADMAN, WIDOW, a lady in "Tristram Shandy" who pays court to Uncle
Toby.
WADY, an Arabic name for the channel of a stream which is flooded in
rainy weather and at other seasons dry.
WAGNER, WILHELM RICHARD, the great musical composer, born at
Leipzig; showed early a faculty for music, and began the enthusiastic
study of it under Beethoven; in 1835 became conductor of the orchestra of
the theatre of Magdeburg, and held the same post afterwards at Riga and
Königsberg; his principal works were "Rienzi" (1840), "The Flying
Dutchman" (1843), "Tannhäuser" (1845), "Lohengrin" (1850), "Tristan and
Isolde" (1859), "The Mastersingers of Nürnberg" (1859-60), and the "Ring
of the Nibelungen," the composition of which occupied 25 years; this last
was performed in 1876 at Bayreuth in a theatre erected for the purpose in
presence of the emperor of Germany and the principal musical artists of
the world; "Parsifal" was his last work; his musical ideas were
revolutionary, and it was some time before his works made their way in
England (1813-1883).
WAGRAM, a village, 10 m. NE. of Vienna, where Napoleon gained a
great victory over the Austrians under the Archduke Charles, on July 5
and 6, 1809.
WAHABIS, a Mohammedan sect which arose among the Nedj tribe in
Central Arabia, whose aims were puritanic and the restoration of Islamism
to its primitive simplicity in creed, worship, and conduct; in creed they
were substantially the same as the SUNNITES (q. v.).
WAIKATO, the largest river in New Zealand, in the North Island, the
outlet of the waters of Lake Taupo, the largest lake; has a course of 170
m.
WAKEFIELD (37), a borough of Yorkshire, 9 m. S. of Leeds; has large
woollen and other manufactures.
WALCHEREN, an island in the province of Zeeland, in the delta formed
by the Maas and Scheldt; was the destination of an unfortunate expedition
sent to the help of the Austrians against Napoleon in Antwerp, in which
7000 of the army composing it died of marsh fever, from which 10,000 were
sent home sick and the rest recalled.
WALDECK-PYRMONT (57), two high-lying territories in North Germany
forming one principality and subject to imperial authority; consists of
hill and valley.
WALDENSES, a Christian community founded in 1170 in the south of
France, on the model of the primitive Church, by Peter Walden, a rich
citizen of Lyons, and who were driven by persecution from country to
country until they settled in Piedmont under the name of the
VAUDOIS (q. v.), where they still exist.
WALES (1,519), one of three divisions of Great Britain; is 135 m. in
length and from 37 to 95 m. in breadth, and bounded on the NW. and S. by
the sea; it is divided into 12 counties, of which 6 form North Wales and
6 South Wales; is a mountainous country, intersected by beautiful
valleys, which are traversed by a number of streams; it is largely
agricultural; has mines of coal and iron, lead and copper, as well as
large slate-quarries, which are extensively wrought; the Church of
England is the church established, but the majority of the people are
Nonconformists; it is represented in Parliament by 30 members; the
natives are Celts, and the native language Celtic, which is still the
language of a goodly number of the people.
WALES, PRINCE OF, title borne by eldest son of the English monarch;
first conferred in 1301 on eldest son of Edward I. after subjugation of
Wales (1282); since 1901 borne by Prince George, formerly Duke of York;
entered the navy in 1877, and attained the post of commander in 1890;
became heir of the throne on death of his brother, Duke of Clarence
(1892); married Princess Mary of Teck (1893), and has by this marriage
four sons and a daughter; _b_. 1865.
WALFISH BAY, a dependency of Cape Colony, in the middle of the
coast-line of German South-West Africa.
WALKER, GEORGE, defender of Londonderry against the army of James
II., born in co. Tyrone, of English parents; was in holy orders, and by
his sermons encouraged the town's-people during the siege, which lasted
105 days; he afterwards fought in command of his Derry men at the battle
of the Boyne, where he lost his life.
WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL, English naturalist, born at Usk, in
Monmouthshire; was devoted to the study of natural history, in the
interest of which he spent four years (1848-52) in the valley of the
Amazon, and eight years after (1854-62) in the East India Archipelago,
from the latter of which expedition especially he returned with thousands
of specimens of natural objects, particularly insects and birds, and
during his absence he wrought out a theory in the main coincident with
Darwin's natural selection in corroboration thereof; he has since devoted
much of his time to the study of spiritualism, and in spite of himself
has come to be convinced of its claims to scientific regard; he has
written on his travels, "Contributions to the Theory of Natural
Selection," "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," &c.; _b_. 1823.
WALLACE, SIR WILLIAM, the champion of Scottish independence, born in
Renfrewshire, second son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie; was early
seized with a desire to free his country from foreign oppressors, and ere
long began to figure as chief of a band of outlaws combined to defy the
authority of Edward I., who had declared himself Lord of Scotland, till
at length the sense of the oppression became wide-spread, and he was
appointed to lead in a general revolt, while many of the nobles held
aloof or succumbed to the usurper; he drove the English from one
stronghold after another, finishing with the battle of Stirling, and was
installed thereafter guardian of the kingdom; such a reverse was more
than the "proud usurper" could brook; he accordingly mustered a large
army, and at Falkirk literally crushed Wallace and his followers with an
overwhelming force, the craven nobles still standing aloof, one of them
in the end proving traitor, and handing Wallace over to the enemy, who
carried him off to London, and had him hanged, beheaded, and quartered.
WALLACE COLLECTION, a collection of works of art bequeathed to the
nation by Lady Wallace, and now being housed in Hertford House,
Manchester Square, London.
WALLENSTEIN, general of the Imperial army in the Thirty Years' War,
born in Bohemia, of a Protestant family, but on the death of his parents
was, in his childhood, adopted and educated by the Jesuits, and bred up
in the Catholic faith; bent on a military life, he served first in one
campaign and then another; rose in imperial favour, and became a prince
of the empire, but the jealousy of the nobles procured his disgrace, till
the success of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War and the death
of Tully led to his recall, when he was placed at the head of the
imperial army as commander-in-chief; drove the Saxons out of Bohemia, and
marched against the Swedes, but was defeated, and fell again into
disfavour; was deprived of his command, charged with treason, and
afterwards murdered in the castle of Egra; he was a remarkable man, great
in war and great in statesmanship, but of unbounded ambition; is the
subject of a drama by Schiller, in three parts (1583-1634).
WALLER, EDMUND, poet, born in Hertfordshire to great wealth, and
educated at Eton and Cambridge; early gave evidence of his genius for
poetry, which, however, was limited in practice to the production of
merely occasional pieces; he was in great favour at court; was a member
of the Long Parliament; leant to the Royalist side, though he wrote a
panegyric on Cromwell, which, too, is considered his best poem; he
revived, or rather "remodelled," the heroic couplet form of verse, which
continued in vogue for over a hundred years after (1605-1687).
WALLOONS, name given to the descendants of the ancient Belgæ, a race
of a mixed Celtic and Romanic stock, inhabiting Belgium chiefly, and
speaking a language called Walloon, a kind of Old French; in Belgium they
number to-day two and a quarter millions.
WALPOLE, HORACE, Earl of Orford, born in London, educated at Eton
and Cambridge; travelled on the Continent with Gray, the poet, who had
been a school-fellow, but quarrelled with him, and came home alone;
entered Parliament in 1741, and continued a member till 1768, but took
little part in the debates; succeeded to the earldom in 1791; his tastes
were literary; wrote "Anecdotes of Painting in England," and inaugurated
a new era in novel-writing with his "Castle of Otranto," but it is by his
"Letters" he will live in English literature, which, "malicious, light as
froth, but amusing, retail," as Stopford Brooke remarks, "with liveliness
all the gossip of the time"; he is characterised by Carlyle as "one of
the clearest-sighted men of his century; a determined despiser and
merciless dissector of cant" (1717-1797).
WALPOLE, SIR ROBERT, Earl of Orford, Whig statesman, born at
Houghton, Norfolk, educated at Eton and Cambridge; entered Parliament in
1701, and became member for King's Lynn in 1702; was favoured by the Whig
leaders, and promoted to office in the Cabinet; was accused of corruption
by the opposite party when in power, and committed to the Tower; on his
release after acquittal was re-elected for King's Lynn; in 1715 became
First Lord of the Treasury, and in 1721 became Prime Minister, which he
continued to be for twenty-one years, but not without opposition on
account of his pacific policy; on being driven against his will into a
war with Spain, which proved unsuccessful, he retired into private life;
he stood high in repute for his financial policy; it was he who
established the first Sinking Fund, and who succeeded as a financier in
restoring confidence after the bursting of the SOUTH SEA BUBBLE
(q. v.); it is to his policy in defeating the plans of the Jacobites
that the Hanoverian dynasty in great part owe their permanent occupancy
of the British throne; it was a favourite maxim of his. "Every man has
his price," and he was mortified to find that Pitt could not be bought by
any bribe of his (1677-1745).
WALPURGIS NIGHT, the eve of the 1st May, when the witches hold high
revel and offer sacrifices to the devil their chief, the scene of their
festival in Germany being the BROCKEN (q. v.). This annual
festival was in the popular belief conceded to them in recompense for the
loss they sustained when by St. Walpurga the Saxons were persuaded to
renounce paganism with its rites for Christianity.
WALSINGHAM, SIR FRANCIS, English statesman, born at Chiselhurst; was
ambassador at Paris, and was there during the St. Bartholomew massacre,
and was afterwards appointed one of Queen Elizabeth's Secretaries of
State; he was an insidious inquisitor, and had numerous spies in his pay,
whom he employed to ferret out evidence to her ruin against Mary, Queen
of Scots, and he had the audacity to sit as one of the Commissioners at
her trial (1536-1590).
WALSTON, ST., patron saint of husbandmen, of British birth; gave up
wealth for agriculture, and died at the plough; is represented with a
scythe in his hand and cattle near him.
WALTER, JOHN, London printer; the founder proper, though his father
was the projector, of the _Times_ newspaper, and forty years in the
management of it, under which it became the "leading journal" of the day,
a success due to his discernment and selection of the men with the
ability to conduct it and contribute to it (1773-1847).
WALTER THE PENNILESS, a famous mob leader, adjutant of Peter the
HERMIT (q. v.) in the first Crusade.
WALTON, IZAAK, the angler, born in Stafford; settled as a
linen-draper, first in Fleet Street and then in Chancery Lane, London;
married a lady, a grand-niece of Cranmer, and on her death a sister of
Bishop Ken, by whom he had several children; he associated with some of
the best clergymen of the Church of England, among the number Dr. Donne,
and was much beloved by them; on the death of his second wife he went to
Winchester and stayed with his friend Dr. Morley, the bishop; his
principal work was the "Complete Angler; or, the Contemplative Man's
Recreation," which was extended by his friend Charles Cotton, and is a
classic to this day; he wrote in addition Lives of Hooker, Dr. Donne,
Bishop Sanderson, Sir Henry Wotton, and George Herbert, all done, like
the "Angler," in a uniquely charming, simple style (1593-1683).
WANDERING JEW. See JEW, WANDERING.
WAPENSHAW, originally gatherings of the people of a district in
ancient times in Scotland, at which every man was bound to appear duly
armed according to his rank, and make exhibition of his skill in the use
of his weapons, against a time of war.
WARBECK, PERKIN, an impostor who affected to be Richard, Duke of
York, second son of Edward IV., alleged to have been murdered in the
Tower, and laid claim to the crown of England in preference to Henry VII.
In an attempt to make good this claim he was taken prisoner, and hanged
at Tyburn in 1499.
WARBURTON, WILLIAM, an English divine, born at Newark; was bishop of
Gloucester; was author of the famous "Divine Legation of Moses,"
characterised by Gibbon as a "monument of the vigour and weakness of the
human mind"; is a distracted waste of misapplied logic and learning; a
singular friendship subsisted between the author and Pope (1698-1779).
WARD, ARTEMUS, the pseudonym of C. F. BROWNE (q. v.).
WARD, MRS. HUMPHRY, English authoress, born at Hobart Town; is a
niece of Matthew Arnold; translated Amiel's "Journal," a suggestive
record, but is best known by her romance of "Robert Elsmere," published
in 1888, a work which was a help to some weak people and an offence to
others of the same class; _b_. 1851.
WARD, WILLIAM GEORGE, English theologian; was a zealous promoter of
the Tractarian Movement, and led the way in carrying out its principles
to their logical issue by joining the Church of Rome; he was a
broad-minded man withal, and won the regard of men of every school;
became editor of the _Dublin Review_ (1812-1882).
WARRINGTON (55), a parliamentary borough in Lancashire, on the
Mersey, 20 m. E. of Liverpool; an old town, but with few relics of its
antiquity; manufactures iron-ware, glass, soap, &c.; sends one member to
Parliament.
WARS OF THE ROSES, name given to a civil war in England from 1452 to
1486, between the Houses of York and Lancaster, so called from the badge
of the former being a _white_ rose and that of the latter being a _red_;
it terminated with the accession of Henry VII., who united in his person
the rival claims.
WARSAW (465), formerly the capital of Poland, now of the province of
Russian Poland; stands on the left bank of the Vistula, 700 m. SW. of St.
Petersburg; is almost in the heart of Europe, and in a position with many
natural advantages; is about as large as Birmingham, and the third
largest city in the Russian empire; it has a university with 75
professors and 1000 students, and has a large trade and numerous
manufactures.
WARTBURG, an old grim castle overhanging EISENACH (q. v.),
where Luther was confined by his friends when it was too hot for him
outside, and where, not forgetful of what he owed his country, he kept
translating the Bible into the German vernacular, and where they still
show the oaken table at which he did it, and the oaken ink-holder which
he threw at the devil's head, as well as the ink-spot it left on the
wall.
WARTON, THOMAS, English poet, born at Basingstoke; was professor of
Poetry at Oxford, and Poet-Laureate; wrote a "History of English Poetry"
of great merit, and a few poetic pieces in faint echo of others by Pope
and Swift for most part (1728-1790).
WARWICK (11), the county town of Warwickshire, on the Avon, 21 m.
SE. of Birmingham; it dates from Saxon times, and possesses a great
baronial castle, the residence of the earls of Warwick, erected in 1394
on an eminence by the river grandly overlooking the town; it is the seat
of several industries, and has a considerable trade in agricultural
produce.
WARWICK, RICHARD NEVILLE, EARL OF, eldest son of the Earl of
Salisbury, THE KING-MAKER (q. v.); fought in the "Wars of the
Roses," and was in the end defeated by Edward IV. and slain (1428-1471).
WARWICKSHIRE (805), central county of England; is traversed by the
Avon, a tributary of the Severn; the north portion, which was at one time
covered by the forest of Arden, is now, from its mineral wealth, one of
the busiest industrial centres of England; it contains the birthplace of
Shakespeare; Birmingham is the largest town.
WASH, THE, an estuary of the E. coast of England, between the
counties of Norfolk and Lincoln, too shallow for navigation.
WASHINGTON (278), capital of the United States, in the district of
Columbia, on the left bank of the Potomac, 35 in. SW. of Baltimore; was
founded in 1791, and made the seat of the Government in 1800; it is
regularly laid out, possesses a number of noble buildings, many of them
of marble, the chief being the Capitol, an imposing structure, where the
Senate and Congress sit; near it, 1½ m. distant, is the White House, the
residence of the President, standing in grounds beautifully laid out and
adorned with fountains and shrubbery.
WASHINGTON (340), a NW. State of the American Union, twice the size
of Ireland; lies N. of Oregon; is traversed by the Cascade Mountains, the
highest 8138 ft., and has a rugged surface of hill and valley, but is a
great wheat-growing and grazing territory, covered on the W. by forests
of pine and cedar; Olympia is the capital. Washington is the name of
hundreds of places in the States.
WASHINGTON, GEORGE, one of the founders and first President of the
United States, born at Bidges Creek, Westmoreland Co., Virginia, of a
family from the North of England, who emigrated in the middle of the 17th
century; commenced his public life in defending the colony against the
encroachments of the French, and served as a captain in a campaign
against them under General Braddock; In the contest between the colony
and the mother-country he warmly espoused that of the colony, and was in
1775 appointed commander-in-chief; his first important operation in that
capacity was to drive the English out of Boston, but the British rallying
he was defeated at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777; next year, in
alliance with the French, he drove the British out of Philadelphia, and
in 1781 compelled Cornwallis to capitulate in an attack he made on
Yorktown, and on the evacuation of New York by the British the
independence of America was achieved, upon which he resigned the command;
in 1789 he was elected to the Presidency of the Republic, and in 1793 was
re-elected, at the end of which he retired into private life after paying
a dignified farewell (1732-1799).
WATERBURY (46), a city of Connecticut, U.S., 88 m. NE. of New York,
with manufactures of metallic wares; world-famous for its cheap watches.
WATERFORD (21), a town in a county of the same name (98), in
Munster, Ireland, at the junction of the Suir and the Barrow; has a
splendid harbour formed by the estuary, and carries on an extensive
export trade with England, particularly in bacon and butter, the chief
industries of the county being cattle-breeding and dairy-farming.
WATERLOO, a village 11 m. S. of Brussels, which gives name to a
battle in which the French under Napoleon were defeated by an army under
Wellington on June 18, 1815.
WATLING STREET, a great Roman road extending from Dover and
terminating by two branches in the extreme N. of England after passing
through London, the NE. branch, by York, and the NW. by or to Chester.
WATSON, WILLIAM, poet, born in Yorkshire; the first poem which
procured him recognition was "Wordsworth's Grave," and his subsequent
poems have confirmed the impression produced, in especial his "Lachrymæ
Musarum," one of the finest tributes paid to the memory of Tennyson on
the occasion of his death; among his later productions the most important
is a volume entitled "Odes and other Poems," published in 1894; has also
written an admirable volume of essays, "Excursions in Criticism"; _b_.
1858.
WATT, JAMES, inventor of the modern steam-engine, born in Greenock,
son of a merchant; began life as a mathematical-instrument maker, opened
business in Glasgow under university patronage, and early began to
experiment on the mechanical capabilities of steam; when in 1703, while
engaged in repairing the model of a Newcomen's engine, he hit upon the
idea which has immortalised his name. This was the idea of a separate
condenser for the steam, and from that moment the power of steam in the
civilisation of the world was assured; the advantages of the invention
were soon put to the proof and established, and by a partnership on the
part of Watts with MATTHEW BOULTON (q. v.) Watt had the
satisfaction of seeing his idea fairly launched and of reaping of the
fruits. Prior to Watt's invention the steam-engine was of little other
use than for pumping water (1736-1819).
WATTEAU, ANTOINE, celebrated French painter and engraver, born at
Valenciennes; his pictures were numerous and the subjects almost limited
to pseudo-pastoral rural groups; the tone of the colouring is pleasing,
and the design graceful (1684-1721).
WATTS, GEORGE FREDERICK, eminent English painter, born in London; is
distinguished as a painter at once of historical subjects, ideal
subjects, and portraits; did one of the frescoes in the Poets' Hall of
the Houses of Parliament and the cartoon of "Caractacus led in Triumph
through the Streets of Rome"; has, as a "poet-painter," by his "Love and
Death," "Hope," and "Orpheus and Eurydice," achieved a world-wide fame;
he was twice over offered a baronetcy, but on both occasions he declined;
_b_. 1817.
WATTS, ISAAC, Nonconformist divine, born at Southampton, son of a
schoolmaster; chose the ministry as his profession, was for a time pastor
of a church in Mark Lane, but after a succession of attacks of illness he
resigned and went on a visit to his friend Sir Thomas Abney, with whom he
stayed for 36 years, at which time his friend died, and he resumed
pastoral duties as often as his health permitted; he wrote several books,
among which was a book on "Logic," long a university text-book, and a
great number of hymns, many of them of wide fame and much cherished as
helps to devotion (1674-1748).
WATTS, THEODORE, critic, born at St. Ives, bosom friend of
Swinburne, who pronounces him "the first critic of our time--perhaps the
largest-minded and surest-sighted of any age"; his influence is great,
and it has been exercised chiefly through contributions to the
periodicals of the day; has assumed the surname of Dunton after his
mother; _b_. 1836.
WAUGH, EDWIN, a Lancashire poet, born at Rochdale, bred a
bookseller; wrote, among other productions, popular songs, full of
original native humour, the first of them "Come Whoam to thy Childer and
Me" (1817-1890).
WAYLAND, the smith, a Scandinavian Vulcan, of whom a number of
legends were current; figures in Scott's "Kenilworth."
WAZIRIS, a tribe of independent Afghans inhabiting the Suleiman
Mountains, on the W. frontier of the Punjab.
WEALTH, defined by Ruskin to be the possession of things in
themselves valuable, that is, of things available for the support of
life, or inherently possessed of life-giving power.
WEBER, KARL MARIA VON, German composer, born near Lübeck, of a famed
musical family; early gave proof of musical talent; studied at Vienna
under Abbé Vogler, and at Dresden became founder and director of the
German opera; his first great production was "Der Freischütz," which
established his fame, and was succeeded by, among others, "Oberon," his
masterpiece, first produced in London, where, shortly after the event, he
died, broken in health; he wrote a number of pieces for the piano,
deservedly popular (1786-1826).
WEBER, WILHELM EDUARD, German physicist, born at Wittenberg;
professor at Göttingen; distinguished for his contributions to
electricity and magnetism, both scientific and practical (1801-1891).
WEBSTER, DANIEL, American statesman and orator, born at New
Hampshire; bred to the bar, and practised in the provincial courts;
by-and-by went to Boston, which was ever after his home; entered Congress
in 1813, where, by his commanding presence and his animated oratory, he
soon made his mark; was secretary for foreign affairs under President
Harrison, and negotiated the Ashburton Treaty in settlement of the
"boundary-line" question between England and the States; was much admired
by Emerson, and was, when he visited England, commended by him to the
regard of Carlyle as a man to "hear speak," as "_with a cause_ he could
strike a stroke like a smith"; Carlyle did not take to him; he was too
political for his taste, though he recognised in him a "man--never have
seen," he wrote Emerson, "so much _silent Berserkir-rage_ in any other
man" (1782-1852).
WEBSTER, JOHN, English dramatist of the 17th century; did a good
deal as a dramatist in collaboration with others, but some four plays are
exclusively his own work, the two best the "White Devil" and the "Duchess
of Malfi."
WEBSTER, NOAH, lexicographer, born at Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.;
bred to law; tried journalism; devoted 20 years to his "Dictionary of the
English Language" (1758-1843).
WEDGWOOD, JOSIAH, celebrated English potter, born at Burslem, son of
a potter; in 1759 started a pottery on artistic lines in his native
place; devoted himself first to the study of the material of his art and
then to its ornamentation, in which latter he had at length the good
fortune to enlist Flaxman as a designer, and so a ware known by his name
became famous for both its substantial and artistic excellence far and
wide over the country and beyond; he was a man of varied culture and of
princely generosity, having by his art amassed a large fortune
(1730-1793).
WEDNESBURY (69), a town in Staffordshire, 8 m. NW. of Birmingham;
iron-ware manufacture the chief industry; has an old church on the site
of an old temple to Woden, whence the name, it is alleged.
WEDNESDAY, fourth day of the week, Woden's Day, as Thursday is
Thor's. It is called Midwoch, i. e. Midweek, by the Germans.
WEEK, division of time of seven days, supposed to have been
suggested by the interval between the quarters of the moon.
WEEPING PHILOSOPHER, a sobriquet given to HERACLITUS (q. v.)
from a melancholy disposition ascribed to him, in contrast with
DEMOCRITUS (q. v.), designated the laughing philosopher.
WEI-HAI-WEI, a city in a deep bay on the Shantung promontory, China,
40 m. E. of Chefoo, and nearly opposite Port Arthur, which is situated on
the northern side of the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili; was leased to
Great Britain in 1898, along with the islands in the bay and a belt of
land along the coast; its harbour is well sheltered, and accommodates a
large number of vessels.
WEIMAR (24), capital of the grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar, in a valley
on the left bank of the Ilm, 13 m. E. of Erfurt, and famous as for many
years the residence of the great Goethe and the illustrious literary
circle of which he was the centre, an association which constitutes the
chief interest of the place.
WEINGARTNER, FELIX, composer and musical conductor, born at Zara,
Dalmatia; has composed symphonic poems, operas, and songs; _b_. 1863.
WEISMANN, AUGUST, biologist, born at Frankfort-on-the-Main; studied
medicine at Göttingen; devoted himself to the study of zoology, the
first-fruit of which was a treatise on the "Development of Diptera," and
at length to the variability in organisms on which the theory of descent,
with modifications, is based, the fruit of which was a series of papers
published in 1882 under the title of "Studies on the Theory of Descent";
but it is with the discussions on the question of heredity that his name
is most intimately associated. The accepted theory on the subject assumes
that characters acquired by the individual are transmitted to offspring,
and this assumption, in his "Essays upon Heredity," he maintains to be
wholly groundless, and denies that it has any foundation in fact;
heredity, according to him, is due to the continuity of the germ-plasm,
or the transmission from generation to generation of a substance of a
uniform chemical and molecular composition; _b_. 1834.
WEISS, BERNHARD, German theologian, born at Königsberg; became
professor at Kiel and afterwards at Berlin; has written on the theology
of the New Testament, an introduction to it, and a "Leben Jesu," all able
works; _b_. 1827.
WEISSENFELS (23), a town of Prussian Saxony, 35 m. SW. of Leipzig,
with an old castle of the Duke of Weissenfels and various manufactures.
WEISSNICHTWO (Know-not-where), in Carlyle's "Sartor," an imaginary
European city, viewed as the focus, and as exhibiting the operation, of
all the influences for good and evil of the time we live in, described in
terms which characterised city life in the first quarter of the 19th
century; so universal appeared the spiritual forces at work in society at
that time that it was impossible to say _where_ they were and _where_
they were _not_, and hence the name of the city, Know-not-where.
WEIZSÄCHER, KARL, eminent German theologian; studied at Tübingen and
Berlin; succeeded BAUR (q. v.) as professor at Tübingen; was a
New Testament critic, and the editor of a theological journal, and
distinguished for his learning and lucid style; _b_. 1822.
WELLDON, JAMES EDWARD COWELL, bishop of Calcutta; educated at Eton
and Cambridge; has held several appointments, both scholastic and
clerical; has translated several of the works of Aristotle, and was
Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge in 1897; _b_. 1854.
WELLER, SAM, Mr. Pickwick's servant, and an impersonation of the
ready wit and best quality of London low life.
WELLESLEY, a small province, part of Penang Territory, in the
Straits Settlements; of great fertility, and yields tropical products in
immense quantities, such as spices, tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, and
tobacco.
WELLESLEY, RICHARD COWLEY, MARQUIS OF, statesman and administrator,
born in Dublin, eldest son of the Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, and
eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington, and his senior by nine years;
educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he distinguished himself in
classics; in 1781 succeeded his father in the Irish House of Peers;
entered Parliament in 1784; was a supporter of Pitt, and in 1797
appointed Governor-General of India in succession to Cornwallis, and
raised to the English peerage as Baron Wellesley; in this capacity he
proved himself a great administrator, and by clearing out the French and
crushing the power of Tippoo Saib, as well as increasing the revenue of
the East India Company, laid the foundation of the British power in
India, for which he was raised to the marquisate, and voted a pension of
£5000; he afterwards became Foreign Secretary of State and Viceroy of
Ireland (1760-1842).
WELLHAUSEN, JULIUS, Old Testament scholar, born at Hameln; held the
post of professor of Theology at Greifswald, but resigned the post from
conscientious scruples and became professor of Oriental Languages at
Marburg in 1885; is best known among us as a biblical critic on the lines
of the so-called higher criticism, the criticism which seeks to arrange
the different parts of the Bible in their proper historical connection
and order; _b_. 1844.
WELLINGBOROUGH (15), a market-town in Northamptonshire, 10 m. NE. of
Northampton; has some fine buildings; the manufacture of shoes a chief
industry.
WELLINGTON (33), the capital of New Zealand, in the North Island, on
Cook Strait; has a spacious harbour, with excellent accommodation for
shipping, a number of public buildings, including government offices, and
two cathedrals, a Roman Catholic and an Anglican, and a considerable
trade; in 1865 it superseded Auckland as the capital of the whole of New
Zealand.
WELLINGTON, ARTHUR WELLESLEY (or WESLEY), DUKE OF, born
probably in Dublin, third son of the Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer,
educated first at Chelsea, then at Eton, and then at a military school at
Angers, in France; entered the army in 1787 as an ensign in the 73rd, and
stepped gradually upwards in connection with different regiments, till in
1793 he became lieutenant-colonel of the 33rd; sat for a time in the
Irish Parliament as a member for Trim, and went in 1794 to the
Netherlands, and served in a campaign there which had disastrous issues
such as disgusted him with military life, and was about to leave the army
when he was sent to India, where he distinguished himself in the storming
of Seringapatam, and in the command of the war against the Mahrattas,
which he brought to a successful issue in 1803, returning home in 1805;
next year he entered the Imperial Parliament, and in 1807 was appointed
Chief Secretary for Ireland; in 1808 he left for Portugal, where he was
successful against the French in several engagements, and in 1809 was
appointed commander-in-chief of the Peninsular army; in this capacity his
generalship became conspicuous in a succession of victories, in which he
drove the French first out of Portugal and then out of Spain, defeating
them finally at Toulouse on the 12th April 1814, and so ending the
Peninsular War; on his return home he was loaded with honours, and had
voted to him from the public treasury a grant of £400,000; on the return
of Napoleon from Elba he was appointed general of the allies against him
in the Netherlands and on 18th June 1815 defeated him in the
ever-memorable battle of Waterloo; this was the crowning feat in
Wellington's military life, and the nation showed its gratitude to him
for his services by presenting him with the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in
Hampshire, worth £263,000, the price paid for it to Lord Rivers, the
proprietor; in 1827 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, and
in 1828 was Prime Minister of the State; as a statesman he was opposed to
Parliamentary reform, but he voted for the emancipation of the Catholics
and the abolition of the Corn Laws; he died in Walmer Castle on 1st
September 1852, aged 84, and was buried beside Nelson in a crypt of St.
Paul's (1769-1852).
WELLINGTON COLLEGE, a college founded in 1853 at Wokingham, Berks,
in memory of the Duke of Wellington, primarily for the education of the
sons of deceased military officers; there is a classical school to
prepare for the university, and a modern side to prepare for the army,
&c.
WELLS, a small episcopal city in Somersetshire, 20 m. SW. of Bath;
it derives its name from hot springs near it, and is possessed of a
beautiful cruciform cathedral in the Early English style, adorned with
some 600 statues of saints, 151 of which are life-size, and some of them
colossal.
WELLS, CHARLES JEREMIAH, English poet, born in London; author of a
dramatic poem entitled "Joseph and his Brethren," published in 1824, a
poem which failed to attract attention at the time, and the singular
merits of which were first recognised by Swinburne in 1875, the author
having meantime given up literature for the law, to which he had been
bred (1800-1879).
WELSH, DAVID, a Scottish divine, a gentlemanly scholarly man,
professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh; was Moderator
of the General Assembly on the occasion of the Disruption of the Scottish
Church (1843), and headed the secession on the day of the exodus
(1793-1845).
WELSH, or WELCH, JOHN, a Scottish divine, a Nithsdale man;
became Presbyterian minister of Ayr, and was distinguished both as a
preacher and for his sturdy opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of
James VI., for which latter he suffered imprisonment and exile; he was an
ancestor of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and was married to a daughter of John
Knox, who, when the king thought to win her over by offering her husband
a bishopric, held out her apron before sovereign majesty, and threatened
she would rather kep (catch) his head there than that he should live and
be a bishop; she figures in the chapter in "Sartor" on Aprons, as one of
Carlyle's apron-worthies (1570-1625).
WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISTS, the largest Nonconformist body in
Wales, of native growth, and that originated in the middle of the 18th
century in connection with a great religious awakening; has an
ecclesiastical constitution on Presbyterian lines, and is in alliance
with the Presbyterian Church of England; it consists of 1330 churches,
and has a membership of over 150,000, that is, on their communion roll,
and two theological seminaries, one at Trevecca and one at Bala.
WELSHPOOL (6), town in Montgomeryshire, North Wales, on the left
bank of the Severn, 19 m. W. of Shrewsbury, the manufacture of flannels
and woollen goods being the chief industry.
WENDS, a horde of savage Slavs who, about the 6th century, invaded
and took possession of vacant lands on the southern shores of the Baltic,
and extended their inroads as far as Hamburg and the ocean, south also
far over the Elbe in some quarters, and were a source of great trouble to
the Germans in Henry the Fowler's time, and after; they burst in upon
Brandenburg once, in "never-imagined fury," and stamped out, as they
thought, the Christian religion there by wholesale butchery of its
priests, setting up for worship their own god "Triglaph, ugliest and
stupidest of all false gods," described as "something like three whales'
cubs combined by boiling, or a triple porpoise dead-drunk." They were at
length "fairly beaten to powder" by Albert the Bear, "and either swept
away or else damped down into Christianity and keeping of the peace,"
though remnants of them, with their language and customs, exist in
Lusatia to this day.
WENDT, HANS, German theologian, born in Hamburg, professor at Kiel
and at Heidelberg; has written an excellent "Leben Jesu" among other able
works; _b_. 1853.
WENEGELD, among the old Saxons and other Teutonic races a fine, the
price of homicide, of varying amount, paid in part to the relatives of
the person killed and in part to the king or chief.
WENER, LAKE, the largest lake in Sweden, in the SW., 150 ft. above
the sea-level and 100 m. long by 50 m. of utmost breadth, contains
several islands, and abounds in fish.
WENTWORTH. See STRAFFORD.
WEREWOLF, a person transformed into a wolf, or a being with a
literally wolfish appetite, under the presumed influence of a charm or
some demoniac possession.
WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS, a dramatist of a mystic stamp,
born at Königsberg; is the subject of an essay by Carlyle, and described
by him as a man of a very _dissolute_ spiritual texture; wrote the
"Templars of Cyprus," the "Story of the Fallen Master," &c. (1768-1823).
WERTHER, the hero of Goethe's sentimental romance, "THE SORROWS
OF WERTHER" (q. v.).
WESLEY, CHARLES, hymn-writer, born at Epworth, educated at Eton and
Oxford; was associated with his more illustrious brother in the
establishment of Methodism; his hymns are highly devotional, and are to
be found in all the hymnologies of the Church (1708-1788).
WESLEY, JOHN, the founder of Methodism, born at Epworth, in
Lincolnshire, son of the rector; was educated at the Charterhouse and at
Lincoln College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow; while there he and
his brother, with others, were distinguished for their religious
earnestness, and were nicknamed Methodists; in 1735 he went on a mission
to Georgia, U.S., and had for fellow-voyagers some members of the
Moravian body, whose simple piety made a deep impression on him; and on
his return in two years after he made acquaintance with a Moravian
missionary in London, and was persuaded to a kindred faith; up to this
time he had been a High Churchman, but from this time he ceased from all
sacerdotalism and became a believer in and a preacher of the immediate
connection of the soul with, and its direct dependence upon, God's grace
in Christ alone; this gospel accordingly he went forth and preached in
disregard of all mere ecclesiastical authority, he riding about from
place to place on horseback, and finding wherever he went the people in
thousands, in the open air generally, eagerly expectant of his approach,
all open-eared to listen to his word; to the working-classes his visits
were specially welcome, and it was among them they bore most fruit; "the
keynote of his ministry he himself gave utterance to when he exclaimed,
'Church or no Church, the people must be saved.'" Saved or Lost? was with
him the one question, and it is the one question of all genuine Methodism
to this hour (1703-1791).
WESSEL, JOHANN, a Reformer before the Reformation, born at
Gröningen; was a man of powerful intellect; taught in the schools, and
was called by his disciples _Lux Mundi_ (1420-1489).
WESSEX, a territory in the SW. of England, inhabited by Saxons who
landed at Southampton in 514, known as the West Saxons, and who gradually
extended their dominion over territory beyond it till, under Egbert,
their king, they became supreme over the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
WEST, BENJAMIN, painter, born near Springfield, Pennsylvania, of
Quaker parentage; was self-taught, painted portraits at the age of 16,
went to Italy in 1760, and produced such work there that he was elected
member of several of the Italian academies; visited England on his way
back to America in 1763, where he attracted the attention of George III.,
who patronised him, for whom he painted a goodly number of pictures to
adorn Windsor Castle; he remained in England 40 years, painting hundreds
of pictures, and was in 1792 elected President of the Royal Academy in
succession to Sir Joshua Reynolds; among his paintings were "The Death of
General Wolfe," "Edward III. at Crécy," and "The Black Prince at
Poitiers" (1738-1817).
WEST AFRICA, name given to the region SW. of the Sahara, consisting
of low lands with high lands behind, and through the valleys of which
rivers flow down, and including Senegambia, Upper Guinea, and Lower
Guinea, the coast of which is occupied by trading stations belonging to
the French, the English, the Germans, the Belgians, and the Portuguese,
and who are severally forcing their way into the inland territory
connected with their several stations.
WEST AUSTRALIA (161), the largest of the Australian colonies, though
least populous, formerly called the Swan River Settlement, 1500 m. long
and 1000 m. broad, and embracing an area nearly equal to one-third of the
whole Australian continent; great part of it, particularly in the centre,
is desert, and the best soil is in the W. and NE.; emigration to it
proceeded slowly at first, but for the last 20 years it has been steadily
increasing, especially since the discovery of gold, and it is now opening
up; in 1890 it received a constitution and became self-governing like the
other possessions of Great Britain in Australia; Perth, on the Swan
River, is the capital, and the chief exports are wool and gold.
WEST BROMWICH (59), a manufacturing town of the "Black Country," in
Staffordshire, 5 m. NW. of Birmingham; has important industries connected
with the manufacture of iron ware; is of modern growth, and has developed
rapidly.
WEST INDIES (3,000), an archipelago of islands extending in a curve
between North and South America from Florida on the one side to the delta
of the Orinoco on the other, in sight of each other almost all the way,
and constituting the summits of a sunken range of mountains which run in
a line parallel to the ranges of North America; they are divided into the
Great Antilles (including Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico), the
Lesser Antilles (including the Leeward and the Windward Isles), and the
Bahamas; lie all, except the last, within the Torrid Zone, and embrace
unitedly an area larger than that of Great Britain; they yield all manner
of tropical produce, and export sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton, spices,
&c.; except Cuba, HAYTI (q. v.), and Porto Rico, they belong to
the Powers of Europe--Great Britain, France, Holland, and Denmark, and
till lately Spain. The name Indies was applied to them because when
Columbus first discovered them he believed he was close upon India, as he
calculated he would find he was by sailing west.
WEST POINT, an old fortress, the seat of the United States Military
Academy, on the right bank of the Hudson River, 12 m. N. of New York; the
Academy is on a plateau 188 ft. above the road; it was established in
1802 for training in the science and practice of military engineering,
and the cadets are organised into a battalion of four companies officered
from among themselves, all under strictest discipline.
WEST VIRGINIA. See VIRGINIA.
WESTCOTT, BROOK FOSS, biblical scholar, born near Birmingham;
studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and obtained a Fellowship; took
orders in 1851, and became Bishop of Durham in 1890; edited along with
Dr. Hort an edition of the Greek New Testament, the labour of years, and
published a number of works bearing on the New Testament and its
structure and teachings; _b_. 1825.
WESTKAPPEL DYKE, one of the strongest dykes in the Netherlands;
protects the W. coast of Walcheren; is 4000 yards long, and surmounted by
a railway line.
WESTMACOTT, SIR RICHARD, sculptor, born in London; studied at Rome
under Canova; acquired great repute as an artist on his return to
England, and succeeded Flaxman as professor of Sculpture in the Royal
Academy; he executed statues of Pitt, Addison, and others, and a number
of monuments in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's; his latest work was the
sculptured pediment of the British Museum (1775-1856).
WESTMACOTT, RICHARD, sculptor and writer on art, born in London, son
of preceding; was distinguished for the grace, simplicity, and purity of
his style as an artist; succeeded his father as professor of Sculpture in
the Royal Academy, and wrote a "Handbook of Sculpture" (1799-1872).
WESTMEATH (71), an inland county in Leinster, Ireland; is mostly
level and gently undulating; the soil in many parts is good, but little
cultivated; the only cereal crop raised is oats, but the herbage it
yields supplies food for fattening cattle, which is a chief industry.
WESTMINSTER, a city of Middlesex, on the N. bank of the Thames, and
comprising a great part of the West End of London; originally a village,
it was raised to the rank of a city when it became the seat of a bishop
in 1451, but it was as the seat of the abbey that it developed into a
bishop's see; the abbey, for which it is so famous, was erected as it now
exists at the same period, during 1245-72, on the site of one founded by
Edward the Confessor during 1045-65; in Westminster Parliaments were held
as early as the 13th century, and it is as the seat of the legislative
and legal authority of the country that it figures most in modern times,
though the most interesting chapters in its history are connected with
the abbey round which it sprang up. See Dean Stanley's "Memorials of
Westminster."
WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES, a convocation of divines assembled
under authority of Parliament, at which delegates from England and
Scotland adopted the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT (q. v.), fixed
the establishment of the Presbyterian form of Church government in the
three kingdoms, drew up the "Confession of Faith," the "Directory of
Public Worship," and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms; it held its first
meeting on 1st July 1643, and did not break up till 22nd February 1649.
WESTMINSTER HALL, a structure attached to the Houses of Parliament
at Westminster, built by King William Rufus, and roofed and remodelled by
Richard II.; was the scene of the trials of Wallace, Sir Thomas More,
Strafford, Charles I., Warren Hastings, and others, as well as the
installation of Cromwell as Lord Protector, and till 1883 the seat of the
High Courts of Justice; is a place of great historic interest; has a roof
composed of 13 great timber beams, and one of the largest in the world to
be unsupported.
WESTMORLAND (i. e. westmoorland) (60), a northern county of
England, 32 m. from N. to S. and 40 m. from E. to W.; is in the Lake
District, and mountainous, with tracts of fertile land and forest land,
as well as rich pasture lands.
WESTON-SUPER-MARE (15), a watering-place in Somersetshire, on the
Bristol Channel, looking across it towards Wales.
WESTPHALIA, a German duchy, now a Prussian province; made with other
territories in 1807 into a kingdom by Napoleon for his brother Jerome,
and designed to be the centre of the Confederation of the Rhine; was
assigned to Prussia in 1813 according to the Treaty of Vienna.
WETSTEIN, JOHANN JACOB, biblical scholar, born at Basel; was devoted
to the study of the New Testament text; published a Greek Testament with
his emendations and "Prolegomena" connected therewith; his emendations,
one in particular, brought his orthodoxy under suspicion for a time
(1693-1754).
WETTE, DE. See DE WETTE.
WETTER, LAKE, one of the largest lakes in Sweden, 70 m. long, 13 m.
broad, and 270 ft. above the sea-level; its clear blue waters are fed by
hidden springs, it rises and falls periodically, and is sometimes subject
to sudden agitations during a calm.
WETTERHORN (i. e. peak of tempests), a high mountain of the
Bernese Oberland, with three peaks each a little over 12,000 ft. in
height.
WEXFORD (111), a maritime county in Leinster, Ireland; is an
agricultural county, and exports large quantities of dairy produce; has a
capital (11) of the same name, a seaport at the mouth of the river
Slaney.
WEYDEN, ROGER VAN DER, Flemish painter, born at Tourney; was trained
in the school of Van Eyck, whose style he contributed to spread; his most
famous work, a "Descent from the Cross," now in Madrid (1400-1464).
WEYMOUTH (13), a market-town and watering-place in Dorsetshire, 8 m.
S. of Dorchester; has a fine beach and an esplanade over a mile in
length; it came into repute from the frequent visits of George III.
WHARTON, PHILIP, DUKE OF, an able man, but unprincipled, who led a
life of extravagance; professed loyalty to the existing government in
England; intrigued with the Stuarts, and was convicted of high-treason,
and died in Spain in a miserable condition (1698-1731).
WHATELY, RICHARD, archbishop of Dublin, born in London; studied at
Oriel College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow, and had Arnold,
Keble, Newman, Pusey, and other eminent men as contemporaries; was a man
of liberal views and sympathies, and much regarded for his sagacity and
his skill in dialectics; his post as archbishop was no enviable one; is
best known by his "Logic," for a time the standard work of the subject;
he opposed the Tractarian movement, but was too latitudinarian for the
evangelical party (1787-1863).
WHEATSTONE, SIR CHARLES, celebrated physicist and electrician, born
near Gloucester; was a man of much native ingenuity, and gave early proof
of it; was appointed professor of Experimental Philosophy in King's
College, London, and distinguished himself by his inventions in
connection with telegraphy; the stereoscope was of his invention
(1802-1875).
WHEEL, BREAKING ON THE, a very barbarous mode of inflicting death at
one time, in which the limbs of the victim were stretched along the
spokes of a wheel, and the wheel being turned rapidly round, the limbs
were broken by repeated blows from an iron bar; this is what the French
_roué_ means, applied figuratively to a person broken with dissipation,
or what we call a rake.
WHEELING (39), largest city in West Virginia, U.S., on the Ohio
River, 67 m. SW. of Pittsburg; contains some fine buildings; is a country
rich in bituminous coal; has extensive manufactures; is a great railway
centre, and carries on an extensive trade.
WHEWELL, WILLIAM, professor of the "science of things in general,"
born at Lancaster, son of a joiner; studied at Trinity College,
Cambridge, of which he became successively fellow, tutor, professor, and
master; was a man of varied attainments, of great intellectual and even
physical power, and it was of him Sydney Smith said, "Science was his
_forte_ and omniscience his _foible_"; wrote "Astronomy and General
Physics in reference to Natural Theology," the "Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences," the "History of Moral Philosophy," an essay on the
"Plurality of Worlds," &c. (1794-1866).
WHICHCOTE, BENJAMIN, Cambridge Platonist, born in Shropshire; was a
Fellow and Tutor of Emmanuel College; was distinguished for his personal
influence over his pupils, many of them eminent men; he gave a
philosophical turn to their theological opinions (1609-1683).
WHIGS, name given at the end of the 17th century to the Covenanters
of Scotland, and afterwards extended to the Liberal party in England from
the leniency with which they were disposed to treat the whole
Nonconformist body, to which the persecuted Scottish zealots were of kin;
they respected the constitution, and sought only to reform abuses.
WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOT M'NEILL, painter and etcher, born at Lowell,
Massachusetts; studied military engineering at WEST POINT (q. v.),
and art at Paris, and settled at length as an artist in London,
where he has exhibited his paintings frequently; has executed some famous
portraits, in especial one of his mother, and a remarkable one of Thomas
Carlyle, now the property of Glasgow Corporation; paintings of his
exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery, London, provoked a criticism from
Ruskin, which was accounted libellous, and as plaintiff he got a farthing
damages, without costs; very much, it is understood, to his critic's
disgust, and little to his own satisfaction, as is evident from the
character of the pamphlet he wrote afterwards in retaliation, entitled
"Whistler _versus_ Ruskin: Art and Art Critics"; _b_. 1834.
WHISTON, WILLIAM, divine and mathematician, born in Leicestershire;
educated at Clare College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow; gained
reputation from his "Theory of the Earth"; succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as
Lucasian professor, but was discharged from the office and expelled from
the university for Arianism; removed to London, where he lived a
separatist from the Church, and died a Baptist; wrote "Primitive
Christianity," and translated "Josephus"; he was a crotchety but a
conscientious man (1667-1752).
WHITBY, a seaport and famous bathing-place in the North Riding of
Yorkshire, 54½ m. NE. of York; is situated at the mouth of the Esk, and
looks N. over the German Ocean; it consists of an old fishing town
sloping upwards, and a fashionable new town above and behind it, with the
ruins of an abbey; Captain Cook was a 'prentice here, and it was in
Whitby-built ships, "the best and stoutest bottoms in England," that he
circumnavigated the globe.
WHITBY, DANIEL, English divine, born in Northamptonshire; became
rector of St. Edmunds, Salisbury; involved himself in ecclesiastical
controversy first with the Catholics, then with the High Church party,
and got into trouble; had one of his books burned at Oxford; his most
important work "Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament"; died an
Arian (1638-1726).
WHITE, ALEXANDER, a Scottish divine, born in Kirriemuir, of humble
parentage; a man of deep religious sympathies and fervid zeal, with an
interest before all in spiritual things; studied the arts in Aberdeen and
theology in Edinburgh, in the latter of which cities he ministers to a
large attached flock; is the author of books, originally for most part
addresses, calculated to awaken in others an interest in divine things
akin to his own; _b_. 1837.
WHITE, SIR GEORGE STEWART, English general, has had a brilliant
career; entered the army in 1853; won the Victoria Cross twice over;
served in the Mutiny, in the Afghan Campaign (1879-1880), in the Nile
Expedition (1885), in the Burmese War (1885-1887), and was made
Commander-in-Chief in India in 1893, Quartermaster-General in 1898, and
is now distinguishing himself by his generalship and heroism in the South
African War; _b_. 1835.
WHITE, GILBERT, English naturalist, born in the village of Selborne,
Hants; educated at Oriel College, Oxford, in which he obtained a
Fellowship, which he retained all his life; became curate of Selborne,
and passed an uneventful life studying the habits of the animals around
him, where he "had not only no great men to look on, but not even men,
only sparrows and cockchafers; yet has he left us a 'Biography' of these,
which, under the title of 'Natural History of Selborne,' still remains
valuable to us, which has copied a little sentence or two _faithfully_
from the inspired volume of Nature, and so," adds Carlyle, "is itself not
without inspiration" (1720-1793).
WHITE, HENRY KIRKE, minor poet, born at Nottingham; published a book
of poems in 1803, which procured him the patronage of Southey; got a
sizarship in St. John's, Cambridge; through over-zeal in study undermined
his constitution and died of consumption, Southey editing his "Remains"
(1785-1806).
WHITE, JOSEPH BLANCO, man of letters of an unstable creed, born in
Seville, of Irish parentage; first ordained a priest; left the Catholic
Church, and took orders in the Church of England; left the English,
became a Unitarian, and settled to miscellaneous literary work; left an
autobiography which reveals an honest quest of light, but to the last in
doubt; he lives in literature by a sonnet "Night and Death" (1775-1841).
WHITE HORSE, name given to the figure of a horse on a hill-side,
formed by removing the turf, and showing the white chalk beneath; the
most famous is one at Uffington, in Berkshire, alleged to commemorate a
victory of King Alfred.
WHITE HOUSE, name popularly given to the official residence of the
President of the United States, being a building of freestone painted
white.
WHITE LADY, a lady dressed in white fabled in popular mediæval
legend to appear by day as well as at night in a house before the death
of some member of the family; was regarded as the ghost of some deceased
ancestress.
WHITE MOUNTAINS, a range of mountains in Maine and New Hampshire,
U.S., forming part of the Appalachian system; much frequented by tourists
on account of the scenery, which has won for it the name of the
"Switzerland of America"; Mount Washington, one of the hills, has a hotel
on the summit approached by a railway.
WHITE NILE, one of the two streams forming the Nile, which flows out
of the Albert Nyanza, and which unites with the Blue Nile from Abyssinia
near Khartoum.
WHITE SEA, a large inlet of the Arctic Ocean, in the N. of Russia,
which is entered by a long channel and branches inward into three bays;
it is of little service for navigation, being blocked with ice all the
year except in June, July, and August, and even when open encumbered with
floating ice, and often enveloped in mists at the same time.
WHITEBOYS, a secret Irish organisation that at the beginning of
George III.'s reign asserted their grievances by perpetrating agrarian
outrages; so called from the white smocks the members wore in their
nightly raids.
WHITEFIELD, GEORGE, founder of Calvinistic Methodism, born at
Gloucester; was an associate of WESLEY (q. v.) at Oxford, and
afterwards as preacher of Methodism both in this country and America,
commanding crowded audiences wherever he went, and creating, in Scotland
particularly, a deep religious awakening, but who separated from Wesley
on the matter of election; died near Boston, U.S. (1714-1770).
WHITEHAVEN (18), a seaport of Cumberland, 38 m. SW. of Carlisle,
with coal and hematite iron mines in the neighbourhood; has
blast-furnaces, iron-works, and manufactures of various kinds, with a
considerable coasting traffic.
WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE, a statesman of the Commonwealth, born in
London; studied law at the Middle Temple: sat in the Long Parliament, and
was moderate in his zeal for the popular side; at the Restoration his
name was included in the Act of Oblivion, but he took no part afterwards
in public affairs; left "Memorials" of historical value (1605-1675).
WHITGIFT, JOHN, archbishop of Canterbury, born at Great Grimsby; was
educated at Cambridge, and became Fellow and Master of Pembroke College;
escaped persecution under Queen Mary, and on the accession of Elizabeth
was ordained a priest; after a succession of preferments, both as a
theologian and an ecclesiastic, became archbishop in 1583; attended Queen
Elizabeth on her deathbed, and crowned James I.; was an Anglican prelate
to the backbone, and specially zealous against the Puritans;
contemplated, with no small apprehension, the accession of James, "in
terror of a Scotch mist coming down on him with this new Majesty from the
land of Knox, or Nox, Chaos, and Company"; his last words were, with
uplifted hands and eyes, a prayer for the Church, uttered in King James's
hearing (1530-1604).
WHITHORN, a small town in Wigtownshire, 12 m. S. of Wigtown,
celebrated as the spot where St. Ninian planted Christianity in Scotland,
and founded a church to St. Martin in 397.
WHITMAN, WALT, the poet of "Democracy," born in Long Island, U.S.,
of parents of mingled English and Dutch blood; was a large-minded,
warm-hearted man, who led a restless life, and had more in him than he
had training to unfold either in speech or act; a man eager, had he known
how, to do service in the cause of his much-loved mankind; wrote "Leaves
of Grass," "Drum-Taps," and "Two Rivulets" (1819-1892).
WHITNEY, ELI, an American inventor, born in Massachusetts; invented
the cotton-gin, a machine for cleaning seed-cotton, and became a
manufacturer of firearms, by which he realised a large fortune
(1765-1825).
WHITNEY, WILLIAM DWIGHT, American philologist, born in
Massachusetts; studied at Yale College, where he became professor of
Sanskrit, in which he was a proficient, and to the study of which he
largely contributed; has done much for the science of language
(1827-1894).
WHITSUNDAY, the seventh Sunday after Easter, a festival day of the
Church kept in commemoration of the descent of the Holy Ghost.
WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF, the American "Quaker Poet," born at
Haverhill, in Massachusetts, the son of a poor farmer; wrought, like
Burns, at field work, and acquired a loving sympathy with Nature, natural
people, and natural scenes; took to journalism at length, and became a
keen abolitionist and the poet-laureate of abolition; his poems are few
and fugitive (1807-1893).
WHITTINGTON, SIR RICHARD, Lord Mayor of London, born at Pauntley,
Gloucestershire; came to London, prospered in business, was elected Lord
Mayor thrice over, and knighted; this is the Whittington of the nursery
tale, "Dick Whittington and his Cat" (1538-1623).
WHITWORTH, SIR JOSEPH, eminent mechanician, born at Stockport; the
rival of Lord Armstrong in the invention of ordnance; invented artillery
of great range and accuracy; was made a baronet in 1869 (1803-1887).
WHYTE-MELVILLE, GEORGE JOHN, novelist of the sporting-field, born at
Mount Melville, near St. Andrews; entered the army, and for a time served
in it; met his death while hunting (1821-1878).
WICK (8), county-town of Caithness, on Wick River, 161 m. NE. of
Inverness, is the chief seat of the herring fishery in Scotland; Wick
proper, with its suburbs Louisburgh and Boathaven, is on the N. of the
river, and Pultneytown on the S.; has a few manufactures, with
distilleries and breweries.
WICKED BIBLE, an edition of the Bible with the word _not_ omitted
from the Seventh Commandment, for issuing which in 1632 the printers were
fined and the impression destroyed.
WICKLOW (61), a maritime county, with a capital of the name in
Leinster, Ireland; is in great part mountainous and barren; has mines and
quarries, and some fertile parts.
WICLIFFE, JOHN, or WYCLIF, the "Morning Star of the Reformation," born at
Hipswell, near Richmond, Yorkshire; studied at Oxford, and became Master
of Balliol in 1361, professor of Divinity in 1372, and rector of
Lutterworth in 1375; here he laboured and preached with such faithfulness
that the Church grew alarmed, and persecution set in, which happily,
however, proved scatheless, and only the more emboldened him in the work
of reform which he had taken up; and of that work the greatest was his
translation of the Bible from the Vulgate into the mother-tongue, at
which, with assistance from his disciples, he laboured for some 10 or 15
years, and which was finished in 1380; he may be said to have died in
harness, for he was struck with paralysis while standing before the altar
at Lutterworth on 29th December 1384, and died the last day of the year;
his remains were exhumed and burned afterwards, and the ashes thrown into
the river Swift close by the town, "and thence borne," says Andrew
Fuller, "into the main ocean, the emblem of his doctrine, which now is
dispersed all the world over" (1325-1384).
WIDDIN (14), a town on the right bank of the Danube, Bulgaria; is a
centre of industry and trade; was a strong place, but by decree of the
Berlin Congress in 1879 the fortress was demolished.
WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN, eminent German littérateur, born near
Biberach, a small village in Swabia, son of a pastor of the pietist
school; studied at Tübingen; became professor of Philosophy at Erfurt,
and settled in Weimar in 1772 as tutor to the two sons of the Duchess
Amalia, where he by-and-by formed a friendship with Goethe and the other
members of the literary coterie who afterwards settled there; he wrote in
an easy and graceful style, and his best work is a heroic poem entitled
"Oberon" (1733-1813).
WIELICZKA (6), a town in Austrian Galicia, near Cracow, famous for
its salt mines, which have been wrought continuously since 1250, the
galleries of which extend to more than 50 m. in length, and the annual
output of which is over 50,000 tons.
WIER, JOHANN, physician, born in North Brabant; was distinguished as
the first to attack the belief in witchcraft, and the barbarous treatment
to which suspects were subjected; the attack was treated as profane, and
provoked the hostility of the clergy, and it would have cost him his life
if he had not been protected by Wilhelm IV., Duke of Jülich and Clèves,
whose physician he was (1516-1566).
WIERTZ, ANTOINE, a Belgian painter, born at Dinant, did a great
variety of pictures on a variety of subjects, some of them on a large
scale, and all in evidence of a high ideal of his profession, and an
original genius for art (1806-1865).
WIESBADEN (65), capital of Hesse-Nassau, a famous German
watering-place, abounding in hot springs, 5 m. NW. of Mainz; has a number
of fine buildings and fine parade grounds, picture-gallery, museum, and
large library; is one of the best-frequented spas in Europe, and is
annually visited by 60,000 tourists or invalids; it was famed for its
springs among the old Romans.