The Nuttall Encyclopaedia by Edited by Rev. James Wood (page 49)

and excellent waterway, and navigable in its lower course for 150 m.

TAPLEY, MARK, body-servant to Martin Chuzzlewit, in Dickens’s novel of the name.

TAPTI, a river of Bombay; has its source in the Betul district of the Central Provinces, and flows westward across the peninsula 450 m. to the Gulf of Cambay; is a shallow and muddy stream, of little commercial use.

TARA, HILL OF, a celebrated eminence, cone-shaped (507 ft.), in county Meath, 7 m. SE. of Navan; legend points to it as the site of the residence of the kings of Ireland, where something like a parliament was held every three years.

TARANAKI (22), a provincial district of New Zealand, occupying the SW. corner of North Island; remarkable for its dense forests, which cover nearly three-fourths of its area, and for its beds (2 to 5 ft. deep) of titaniferous iron-sand which extend along its coasts, out of which the finest steel is manufactured; New Plymouth (4) is the capital.

TARANTO (25), a fortified seaport of South Italy, situated on a rocky islet which lies between the Gulf of Taranto and the Mare Piccolo, a broad inlet on the E., 72 m. S. of Bari; is well built, and contains various interesting buildings, including a cathedral and castle; is connected with the mainland on the E. by a six-arched bridge, and by an ancient aqueduct on the W.; some textile manufactures are carried on, and oyster and mussel fisheries and fruit-growing are important; as the ancient Tarentum its history goes back to the time when it was the chief city of Magna Graecia; was captured by the Romans in 272 B.C., and after the fall of the Western Empire was successively in the hands of Goths, Lombards, and Saracens, and afterwards shared the fate of the kingdom of Naples, to which it was united in 1063.

TARAPACA (47), a maritime province of North Chili, taken from Peru in 1883; its immense deposits of nitrate of soda are a great source of wealth to the country; capital IQUIQUE (q. v.)

TARARE (12), a town of France, dep. of Rhone, 21 m. NW. of Lyons; busy with the manufacture of muslins, silks, and other fine textiles.

TARASCON (7), a picturesque old town of France, 18 m. SW. of Avignon; is surrounded by walls, has a 15th-century castle (King Rent’s), a Gothic church, silk and woollen factories.

TARBES (25), an old historic town of France, on the Adour, 100 m. SW. of Toulouse; has a fine 12th-century cathedral, a Government cannon factory, etc.

TARE AND TRET, commercial terms, are deductions usually made from the gross weight of goods. Tare is the weight of the case or covering, box, or such-like, containing the goods; deducting this the _net weight_ is left. Tret is a further allowance (not now so commonly deducted) made at the rate of 4 lb. for every 104 lb. for waste through dust, sand, etc.

TARENTUM. See TARANTO.

TARGUMS, translations, dating for the most part as early as the time of Ezra, of several books of the Old Testament into Aramaic, which both in Babylonia and Palestine had become the spoken language of the Jews instead of Hebrew, executed chiefly for the service of the Synagogue; they were more or less of a paraphrastic nature, and were accompanied with comments and instances in illustration; they were delivered at first orally and then handed down by tradition, which did not improve them. One of them, on the Pentateuch, bears the name of Onkelos, who sat at the feet of Gamaliel along with St. Paul, and another the name of Jonathan, in the historical and prophetical books, though there are others, the Jerusalem Targum and the Pseudo-Jonathan, which are of an inferior stamp and surcharged with fancies similar to those in the TALMUD (q. v.).

TARIFA (13), an interesting old Spanish seaport, the most southerly town of Europe, 21 m. SW. of Gibraltar, derives its name from the Moorish leader Tarif, who occupied it 710 A.D.; held by the Moors for more than 500 years; still thoroughly Moorish in appearance, dingy, crowded, and surrounded by walls; is connected by causeway with the strongly-fortified Isleta de Tarifa.

TARNOPOL (26), a town of Galicia, Austria, on the Sereth, 80 m. SE. of Lemberg; does a good trade in agricultural produce; inhabitants chiefly Jews.

TARNOV (25), a town of Galicia, Austria, on the Biala, 48 m. SE. of Cracow; is the see of a bishop, with cathedral, monastery, etc.; manufactures linen and leather.

TARPEIAN ROCK, a precipitous cliff on the W. of the Capitoline Hill at Rome, from which in ancient times persons guilty of treason were hurled; named after Tarpeia, a vestal virgin, who betrayed the city to the Sabine soldiers, then besieging Rome, on condition that they gave her what they wore on their left arms, meaning their golden bracelets; instead the soldiers flung their shields (borne on their left arms) upon her, so keeping to the letter of their promise, but visiting perfidy with merited punishment; at the base of the rock her body was buried.

TARQUINIUS, name of an illustrious Roman family of Etruscan origin, two of whose members, according to legend, reigned as king in Rome: LUCIUS TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS, fifth king of Rome; the friend and successor of Ancus Martius; said to have reigned from 616 to 578 B.C., and to have greatly extended the power and fame of Rome; was murdered by the sons of Ancus Martius. LUCIUS TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS, seventh and last king of Rome (534-510), usurped the throne after murdering his father-in-law, King Servius Tullius; ruled as a despot, extended the power of Rome abroad, but was finally driven out by a people goaded to rebellion by his tyranny and infuriated by the infamous conduct of his son Sextus (the violator of Lucretia); made several unsuccessful attempts to regain the royal power, failing in which he retired to Cumae, where he died.

TARRAGONA (27), a Spanish seaport, capital of a province (349) of its own name, situated at the entrance of the Francoli into the Mediterranean, 60 m. W. of Barcelona; contains many interesting remains of the Roman occupation, including an aqueduct, still used, and the Tower of the Scipios; possesses also a 12th-century Gothic cathedral; has a large shipping and transport trade, and manufactures silk, jute, lace, &c.

TARRYTOWN (4), a village of New York State, on the Hudson, 21 m. N. of New York; associated with the arrest of Major Andre in 1780, and the closing scenes of Washington Irving’s life.

TARSHISH, a place frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, now generally identified with Tartessus, a Phoenician settlement in the SW. of Spain, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, which became co-extensive with the district subsequently known as Andalusia; also conjectured to have been Tarsus, and also Yemen.

TARSUS (8), a city of great antiquity and interest, the ancient capital of Cilicia, now in the province of Adana, in Turkey in Asia, on the Cydnus, 12 m. above its entrance into the Mediterranean; legend ascribes its foundation to Sennacherib in 690 B.C.; in Roman times was a famous centre of wealth and culture, rivalling Athens and Alexandria; associated with the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra and the deaths of the emperors Tacitus and Maximinus; here St. Paul was born and notable Stoic philosophers; in the hands of the Turk has decayed into a squalid residence of merchants busy with the export of corn, cotton, wool, hides, &c. In winter the population rises to 30,000.

TARTARS (originally TATARS), a name of no precise ethnological signification, used in the 13th century to describe the Mongolic, Turkish, and other Asiatic hordes, who, under GENGHIS KHAN (q. v.), were the terror of Eastern Europe, and now bestowed upon various tribes dwelling in Tartary, Siberia, and the Asiatic steppes.

TARTARUS, a dark sunless waste in the nether deeps, as far below earth as heaven is above it, into which Zeus hurled the Titans that rebelled against him; the term was subsequently sometimes used to denote the whole nether world and sometimes the place of punishment.

TARTESSUS, the Greek and Roman name for the Scriptural Tarshish.

TARTINI, GIUSEPPE, a famous Italian violinist and composer, born at Pirano, in Istria; got into trouble over his clandestine marriage with the niece of the archbishop of Padua, and fled for sanctuary to a monastery at Assisi; subsequently reunited to his wife established himself in Padua as a teacher and composer; wrote a “Treatise on Music,” and enjoyed a wide celebrity, and still ranks as one of the great violinists of the past (1692-1770).

TARTUFFE, a knave, a creation of Moliere’s, who makes a cloak of religion to cover his knaveries, and the name of the play in which the character appears, Moliere’s greatest.

TASHKAND or TASHKENT (100), capital of Russian Turkestan, on the Tchirshik, 300 m. NE. of Samarcand; an ancient place still surrounded by its 12 m. circuit of wall, and fortified; Russian enterprise has done much for it, introducing schools, &c.; carries on a brisk trade, and manufactures silks, leather, porcelain ware, &c.

TASMAN SEA, the sea lying between the New Zealand group and the islands of Australia and Tasmania.

TASMANIA (146), an island and colony of Britain, lying fully 100 m. S. of Australia, from which it is separated by Bass Strait; about the size of Scotland; the beauty of its mountain and lake scenery has won it the name of “the Switzerland of the South”; extensive stretches of tableland diversified by lakes–largest Great Lake, 90 m. in circumference–occupy the centre; wide fertile valleys stretch down to the coastal plains, often richly wooded with lofty eucalyptus and various pine trees; rivers are numerous, and include the Derwent and Tamar, which form excellent waterways into the interior; enjoys a genial and temperate climate, more invigorating than that of Australia; sheep-farming and latterly mining (coal in particular), and fruit-growing are the principal industries; gold, silver, and tin are also wrought; the flora, as also the fauna, is practically identical with that of Australia; has a long, irregular coast-line, with many excellent harbours; chief exports are wool, tin, fruit, timber, coal, and gold; was discovered in 1642 by Tasman, a Dutchman, and first settled by Englishmen in 1803; the aborigines are now completely extinct; was till 1852 a penal settlement, and received representative government in 1855; is divided into 18 counties; government is conducted by a legislative council, a house of assembly, and a crown-appointed governor; most of the colonists belong to the Church of England; compulsory education is in vogue; is well supplied with railways and telegraphs; was formerly called Van Diemen’s Land after Van Diemen, the Dutch governor-general of Batavia, who despatched Tasman on his voyage of discovery.

TASSO, BERNARDO, an Italian poet of some repute in his own day, but now chiefly remembered as the father of the greater Torquato, born in Venice (1493-1569).

TASSO, TORQUATO, an illustrious Italian poet, son of preceding, born at Sorrento, near Naples; educated at a Jesuit school in Naples, he displayed unusual precocity, and subsequently studied law at the university of Padua, but already devoted to poetry, at 18 published his first poem “Rinaldo,” a romance in 12 cantos, the subject-matter of which is drawn from the Charlemagne legends; in 1566 he entered the service of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, by whom he was introduced to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, brother of the cardinal, within whose court he received the needful impulse to begin his great poem “La Gerusalemme Liberata”; for the court stage he wrote his pastoral play “Aminta,” a work of high poetic accomplishment, which extended his popularity, and by 1575 his great epic was finished; in the following year the symptoms of mental disease revealed themselves, and after a confinement of a few days he fled from Ferrara, and for two years led the life of a wanderer, the victim of his own brooding, religious melancholy, passing on foot from city to city of Italy; yielding to a pent-up longing to revisit Ferrara he returned, but was coldly received by the duke, and after an outburst of frenzy placed in confinement for seven years; during these years the fame of his epic spread throughout Italy, and the interest created in its author eventually led to his liberation; in 1595 he was summoned by Pope Clement VIII., from a heartless and wandering life, to appear at Rome to be crowned upon the Capitol the poet-laureate of Italy, but, although he reached the city, his worn-out frame succumbed before the ceremony could take place; “One thing,” says Settembrini, the literary historian of Italy, “Tasso had, which few in his time possessed, a great heart, and that made him a true and great poet, and a most unhappy man;” Fairfax’s translation of the “Jerusalem Delivered” is one of his great translations in the English language (1544-1595).

TATAR, a word derived from a Turanian root signifying “to pitch a tent,” hence appropriate to nomadic tribes, became converted by European chroniclers into Tartar, a fanciful derivative from Tartaros (Gr. hell), and suggestive of fiends from hell. Tartary, as a geographical expression of the Middle Ages, embraced a vast stretch of territory from the Dnieper, in Eastern Europe, to the Sea of Japan; but subsequently dwindled away to Chinese and Western Turkestan.

TATE, NAHUM, poet-laureate, born in Dublin, where he was educated at Trinity College; came to London to ply the craft of letters, and in 1690 succeeded Shadwell in the laureateship; improvident, and probably intemperate, he died in the Mint, the refuge of bankrupts in those days; wrote some dramatic pieces, but is to be remembered mainly for his metrical version of the Psalms, executed in conjunction with Nicholas Brady, which superseded the older version done by STERNHOLD (q. v.) and Hopkins (1652-1715).

TATIUS, ACHILLES, a Greek romancer who flourished about the beginning of the 4th century A.D.; wrote the romance of “Leucippe and Cleitophon.”

TATTERSALL’S, a noted horse-mart and haunt of racing men at Knightsbridge, London, established by Richard Tattersall (1724-1795), an auctioneer, who in 1766 obtained a 99 years’ lease from Lord Grosvenor of premises in Hyde Park Corner; the present premises were occupied on the expiry of the lease in 1867.

TATTOOING, a practice of imprinting various designs, often pictorial, upon the skin by means of colouring matter, e. g. Chinese ink, cinnabar, introduced into punctures made by needles; widely in vogue in past and present times amongst uncivilised peoples, and even to some extent amongst civilised races; like the use of rouge, was mainly for the purpose of ornamentation and for improving the appearance, but also in some cases for religious purposes; reached its highest perfection in Japan, where it seems to have been largely resorted to as a substitute for clothing, and was never employed on the face, feet, or hands; among the South Sea islanders the custom is universal, and is still practised by considerable numbers of the lower-class criminals of Europe.

TAU, CROSS OF, or ST. ANTHONY’S CROSS, a cross resembling the letter T.

TAUCHNITZ, KARL CRISTOPH TRAUGOTT, a noted German printer and bookseller, born at Grosspardau, near Leipzig; trained as a printer, he started on his own account in Leipzig in 1796, flourished, and became celebrated for his neat and cheap editions of the Roman and Greek classics; introduced stereotyping into Germany (1761-1836). The well-known “British Authors” collection was started in 1841 by CHRISTIAN BERNARD, BARON VON TAUCHNITZ, a nephew of the preceding, who established himself as a printer and publisher in Leipzig in 1837; was ennobled in 1860, and made a Saxon life-peer in 1877; _b_. 1816.

TAULER, JOHANN, a German mystic, born in Strasburg, bred a monk of the Dominican order, had, along with the rest of his order, to flee the city, and settled in Basel, became a centre of religious life there, and acquired repute as one of the most eloquent preachers of the day; his sphere was not speculative thought but practical piety, and his “Sermons” take rank among the aboriginal monuments of German prose literature (1300-1361).

TAUNTON, 1, (18), a trim, pleasantly-situated town of Somersetshire (18), on the Tone, 45 m. SW. of Bristol; has a fine old castle founded in the 8th century, rebuilt in the 12th century, and having interesting associations with Perkin Warbeck, Judge Jeffreys, and Sydney Smith; has various schools, a college, barracks, &c.; noted for its hosiery, glove, and silk manufactures, and is also a busy agricultural centre. 2, Capital (31) of Bristol County, Massachusetts, on the Taunton River, 34 m. S. of Boston, a well equipped and busy manufacturing town.

TAURIDA (1,060), a government of South Russia, of extensive area, jutting down in peninsular shape into the Black Sea, and including the Crimea and isthmus of Perekop; forms the western boundary of the Sea of Azov; cattle-breeding and agriculture the staple industries.

TAURUS, or THE BULL, a constellation, the second in size of the zodiac, which the sun enters towards the 20th of April.

TAURUS, MOUNT, a mountain range of Turkey in Asia, stretching W. for about 500 m. in an unbroken chain from the head-waters of the Euphrates to the AEgean Sea, and forming the S. buttress of the tableland of Asia Minor; in the E. is known as the Ala Dagh, in the W. as the Bulghar Dagh. The Anti-Taurus is an offshoot of the main range, which, continuing to the NE., unites with the systems of the Caucasus.

TAVERNIER, JEAN BAPTIST, BARON D’AUBONNE, a celebrated French traveller, born in Paris, the son of an Antwerp engraver; was a wanderer from his boyhood, starting on his travels at the age of 15, and by the end of 1630 had made his way as valet, page, &c., over most of Europe; during the years 1630-1669 he in six separate expeditions traversed most of the lands of Asia in the capacity of a dealer in jewels; reaped large profits; was honoured by various potentates, and returned with stores of valuable information respecting the commerce of those countries, which with much else interesting matter lie embodied in his great work, “Six Voyages,” a classic now in travel-literature; was ennobled in 1669 by Louis XIV. (1605-1689).

TAVIRA (11), a seaport in the S. of Portugal; has a Moorish castle, and good sardine and tunny fisheries.

TAVISTOCK (6), a market-town of Devon, situated at the western edge of Dartmoor, on the Tavy, 11 m. N. of Plymouth; has remains of a 10th-century Benedictine abbey, a guild-hall, grammar school, &c.; is one of the old stannary towns, and still largely depends for its prosperity on the neighbouring tin, copper, and arsenic mines.

TAXIDERMY, the art of preparing and preserving the skins of animals for exhibition in cabinets.

TAY, a river of Scotland whose drainage area lies almost wholly within Perthshire; rises on the northern slope of Ben Lui, on the Argyll and Perthshire border, and flowing 25 m. NE. under the names of Fillan and Dochart, enters Loch Tay, whence it sweeps N., SE., and E., passing Aberfeldy, Dunkeld, Perth, and Dundee, and enters the North Sea by a noble estuary 25 m. long and from 1/2 m. to 31/2 m. broad; chief affluents are the Tummel, Isla, Almond, and Earn; discharges a greater body of water than any British stream; is renowned for the beauty of its scenery, and possesses valuable salmon fisheries; has a total length of 120 m., and is navigable to Perth; immediately W. of Dundee it is spanned by the TAY BRIDGE, the longest structure of its kind in the world, consisting of 95 spans, with a total width of 3440 yards; Loch Tay, one of the finest of Highland lochs, lies at the base of Ben Lawers, stretches 141/2 m. NE. from Killin to Kenmore, and varies from 1/2 m. to 11/2 m. in breadth.

TAYGETUS, a range of mountains in the Peloponnese, separating Laconia from Messina.

TAYLOR, BAYARD, a noted American writer and traveller, born at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; was bred to the printing trade, and by 21 had published a volume of poems, “Ximena,” and “Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff,” the fruit of a walking tour through Europe; next for a number of years contributed, as travel correspondent, to the _Tribune_, visiting in this capacity Egypt, the greater part of Asia, Central Africa, Russia. Iceland, etc.; during 1862-1863 acted as Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg, and in 1878 was appointed ambassador at Berlin; his literary reputation rests mainly on his poetic works, “Poems of the Orient,” “Rhymes of Travel,” etc., and an admirable translation of Goethe’s “Faust”; also wrote several novels (1825-1878).

TAYLOR, SIR HENRY, poet, born at Bishop. Middleham, in Durham; after a nine months’ unhappy experience as a midshipman obtained his discharge, and having acted for some years as clerk in the Storekeeper-General’s Department, entered the Colonial Office in 1823, where he continued till his retirement in 1872; literature engaged his leisure hours, and his four tragedies–the best of which is “Philip van Artevelde”–are an important contribution to the drama of the century, and characterised as the noblest effort in the true taste of the English historical drama produced within the last century; published also a volume of lyric poems, besides other works in prose and verse, including “The Statesman,” and a charming “Autobiography,” supplemented later by his no less charming “Correspondence”; received the distinctions of K.C.M.G. (1869) and D.C.L. (1800-1886).

TAYLOR, ISAAC, a voluminous writer on quasi-philosophic subjects, born in Lavenham, Suffolk; passed his life chiefly at Ongar engaged in literary pursuits; contributed to the _Eclectic Review_, _Good Words_, and wrote amongst other works “Natural History of Enthusiasm,” “Natural History of Fanaticism,” “Spiritual Despotism” and “Ultimate Civilisation” (1787-1865). His eldest son, Isaac, entered the Church, and rose to be rector of Settrington, in Yorkshire, and was collated to a canonry of York in 1885; has a wide reputation as a philologist, and author of “Words and Places,” and “The Alphabet, an Account of the Origin and Development of Letters,” besides “Etruscan Researches,” “The Origin of the Aryans,” etc.; _b_. 1829.

TAYLOR, JEREMY, great English divine and preacher, born at Cambridge, son of a barber; educated at Caius College; became a Fellow of All Souls’, Oxford; took orders; attracted the attention of Laud; was made chaplain to the king, and appointed to the living of Uppingham; on the sequestration of his living in 1642 joined the king at Oxford, and adhered to the royal cause through the Civil War; suffered much privation, and imprisonment at times; returning to Wales, he procured the friendship and enjoyed the patronage of the Earl of Carberry, in whose mansion at Grove he wrote a number of his works; before the Restoration he received preferment in Ireland, and after that event was made bishop, first of Down and then of Dromore; his life here was far from a happy one, partly through insubordination in his diocese and partly through domestic sorrow; his works are numerous, but the principal are his “Liberty of Prophesying,” “Holy Living and Holy Dying,” “Life of Christ,” “Ductor Dubitantium,” a work on casuistry; he was a good man and a faithful, more a religious writer than a theological; his books are read more for their devotion than their divinity, and they all give evidence of luxuriance of imagination, to which the epithet “florid” has not inappropriately been applied; in Church matters he was a follower of Laud (1613-1667).

TAYLOR, JOHN, known as the “Water-Poet,” born at Gloucester; was successively a waterman on the Thames, a sailor in the navy, public-house keeper in Oxford, etc.; walked from London to Edinburgh, “not carrying any money to or fro, neither begging, borrowing, or asking meat, drink, or lodging,” and described the journey in his “Penniless Pilgrimage”; wrote also “Travels in Germanie,” and enjoyed considerable repute in his time as a humorous rhymester (1580-1654).

TAYLOR, TOM, a noted playwright and journalist, born at Sunderland; was elected to a Fellowship at Cambridge, for two years filled the chair of English Literature at University College, London; in 1845 was called to the bar, but shortly afterwards took to journalism, writing leaders for the _Morning Chronicle_ and _Daily News_; during 1850-1872 held secretarial appointments to the Board of Health and in the Local Government Act Office; succeeded Shirley Brooks as editor of _Punch_ in 1874; was throughout his life a prolific writer and adapter of plays, staging upwards of 100 pieces, of which the best known are “To Parents and Guardians,” “Still Waters Run Deep,” “Our American Cousin,” “Ticket-of-Leave Man,” etc. (1817-1880).

TAYLOR, WILLIAM, literary historian and critic, born at Norwich; residence on the Continent enabled him to master French, Italian, and especially German, and confirmed him in his taste for literature, to pursue which he abandoned business; various essays and reviews formed the groundwork of his elaborate “Historic Survey of German Literature,” the first systematic survey of German literature presented to English readers; taught German to George Borrow, who in “Lavengro” sketched his interesting personality, which may be further studied in his correspondence with Southey, Scott, etc. (1765-1836).

TAYLOR, ZACHARY, twelfth President of the United States, born in Orange County, Virginia; obtained a lieutenancy in the navy in 1808; first saw service in Indian wars on the north-west frontier; in 1836 cleared the Indians from Florida and won the brevet of brigadier-general; great victories over the Mexicans on the Texan frontier during 1845-48 raised his popularity to such a pitch that on his return he was carried triumphantly into the Presidency; the burning questions of his brief term of office were the proposed admission of California as a free State and the extension of slavery into the newly-acquired territory; was a man of strong character, a daring and skilful general, of unassuming manners, and loved by the mass of the people, to whom he was known as “Old Rough and Ready” (1784-1850).

TAYLOR INSTITUTE, a building in Oxford erected from bequests by Sir Robert Taylor and Dr. Randolph as a gallery to contain works of art left to the university, and which contains a noble collection.

TE DEUM (Thee, O God), a grand hymn in Latin, so called from the first words, sung at matins and on occasions of joy and thanksgiving; of uncertain authorship; is called also the Ambrosian Hymn, as ascribed, though without foundation, to St. Ambrose; is with more reason seemingly ascribed to Hilary, bishop of Aries.

TEAZLE, LADY, the heroine in Sheridan’s “School for Scandal,” married to a man old enough to be her father, Sir Peter Teazle.

TECK, a German principality, named after a castle which crowns an eminence called “The Teck,” in the Swabian Alb, 20 m. SE. of Stuttgart, conferred in 1868 on Duke Albert of Wuertemberg’s son, who in 1866 married the Princess Mary of Cambridge; their daughter, Princess May, became in 1893 the Duchess of York.

TEES, English river, rises on Cross Fell, Cumberland, and flows E., forming the boundary between Durham and York; enters the North Sea 4 m. below Stockton.

TEGNER, ESAIAS, a popular Swedish poet, born at Kyrkerud, the son of a country parson; graduated with distinction at Lund University in 1802, and shortly afterwards became lecturer in Philosophy; in 1812, already a noted poet, he was called to the chair of Greek, and in later years was the devoted bishop of Vexioe; his poems, of which “Frithiof’s Saga” is reckoned the finest, have the clearness and finish of classic models, but are charged with the fire and vigour of modern romanticism (1782-1846).

TEGUCIGALPA (12), capital of Honduras, situated near the centre of the country at a height of 3400 ft., in the fertile valley of the Rio Grande, surrounded by mountains; has a cathedral and university.

TEHAMA, a low, narrow plain in Arabia, W. of the mountain range which overlooks the Red Sea.

TEHERAN (210), capital of Persia, stands on a plain near the Elburz Mountains, 70 m. S. of the Caspian Sea; is surrounded by a bastioned rampart and ditch, 10 m. in circumference, and entered by 12 gateways; much of it is of modern construction and handsomely laid out with parks, wide streets, and imposing buildings, notable among which are the shah’s palace and the British Legation, besides many of the bazaars and wealthy merchant’s houses; heat during the summer drives the court, foreign embassies, and others to the cooler heights in the N.; staple industries are the manufactures of carpets, silks, cottons, &c.

TEHUANTEPEC, an isthmus in Mexico, 140 m. across, between a gulf of the name and the Bay of Campeachy; it contains on the Pacific coast a town (24) of the same name, with manufactures and pearl fisheries.

TEIGNMOUTH (8), a watering-place and port of Devonshire, on the estuary of the Teign (here crossed by a wooden bridge 1671 ft. long), 12 m. S. of Exeter; has a Benedictine nunnery, baths, pier, &c.; does some shipbuilding.

TEINDS, in Scotland tithes derived from the produce of the land for the maintenance of the clergy.

TELAMONES, figures, generally colossal, of men supporting entablatures, as Caryatides of women.

TEL-EL-KEBIR (the “Great Mound”), on the edge of the Egyptian desert, midway between Ismaila and Cairo, the scene of a memorable victory by the British forces under Sir Garnet Wolseley over the Egyptian forces of Arabi Pasha (September 13, 1882), which brought the war to a close.

TELEMACHUS, the son of Ulysses and Penelope (q. v.), who an infant when his father left for Troy was a grown-up man on his return; having gone in quest of his father after his long absence found him on his return in the guise of a beggar, and whom he assisted in slaying his mother’s suitors.

TELEOLOGY, the doctrine of final causes, particularly the argument for the being and character of God from the being and character of His works, that the end reveals His purpose from the beginning, the end being regarded as the thought of God at the beginning, or the universe viewed as the realisation of Him and His eternal purpose.

TELEPATHY, name given to the supposed power of communication between mind and mind otherwise than by the ordinary sense vehicles.

TELFORD, THOMAS, a celebrated engineer, born, the son of a shepherd, in Westerkirk parish, Eskdale; served an apprenticeship to a stone-mason, and after a sojourn in Edinburgh found employment in London in 1782; as surveyor of public works for Shropshire in 1787 constructed bridges over the Severn, and planned and superintended the Ellesmere Canal connecting the Dee, Mersey, and Severn; his reputation now made, he was in constant demand by Government, and was entrusted with the construction of the Caledonian Canal, the great road between London and Holyhead (including the Menai Suspension Bridge), and St. Katherine Docks, London; but his bridges, canals, harbours, and roads are to be found in all parts of the kingdom, and bear the stamp of his thorough and enduring workmanship; “the Colossus of Roads,” Southey called him (1757-1834).

TELL, a fertile strip of land of 47 m. of average breadth in North-West Africa, between the mountains and the Mediterranean Sea; produces cereals, wine, &c.

TELL, WILLIAM, Swiss hero and patriot, a peasant, native of the canton of Uri, who flourished in the beginning of the 14th century; resisted the oppression of the Austrian governor Gessler, and was taken prisoner, but was promised his liberty if with his bow and arrow he could hit an apple on the head of his son, a feat he accomplished with one arrow, with the second arrow in his belt, which he told Gessler he had kept to shoot him with if he had failed. This so incensed the governor that he bound him to carry off to his castle; but as they crossed the lake a storm arose, and Tell had to be unbound to save them, when he leapt upon a rock and made off, to lie in ambush, whence he shot the oppressor through the heart as he passed him; a rising followed, which ended only with the emancipation of Switzerland from the yoke of Austria.

TELLEZ, GABRIEL, the assumed name of Tirso de Molina, Spanish dramatist, born in Madrid; became a monk; wrote 58 comedies, some of which keep their place on the Spanish stage; as a dramatist ranks next to Lope de Vega, whose pupil he was (1583-1648).

TELLICHERRI (27), a seaport on the Malabar coast, Madras Presidency, India; is fortified and garrisoned; surrounding country is pretty, as well as productive of coffee, cardamoms, and sandal-wood.

TELLURIUM, a rare metal usually found in combination with other metals.

TEMESVAR (40), a royal free city of Hungary, on the Bega Canal, 75 m. NE. of Belgrade; is a strongly-fortified, well-built city, equipped with theatre, schools, colleges, hospitals, &c., and possesses a handsome Gothic cathedral and ancient castle; manufactures flour, woollens, silks, paper, &c.

TEMPE, VALE OF, a valley in the NE. of Thessaly, lying between Olympus on the N. and Ossa on the S., traversed by the river Peneus, and for the beauty of its scenery celebrated by the Greek poets as a favourite haunt of Apollo and the Muses; it is rather less than 5 m. in length, and opens eastward into a spacious plain.

TEMPLARS, a famous order of knights which flourished during the Middle Ages, and originated in connection with the Crusades. Its founders were Hugues de Payen and Geoffroi de St. Omer, who, along with 17 other French knights, in 1119 formed themselves into a brotherhood, taking vows of chastity and poverty, for the purpose of convoying, in safety from attacks of Saracens and infidels, pilgrims to the Holy Land. King Baldwin II. of Jerusalem granted them a residence in a portion of his palace, built on the site of the Temple of Solomon, and close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which became the special object of their protection. Hence their assumption of the name “Templars.” The order rapidly increased in numbers, and drew members from all classes. “The Templar was the embodiment of the two strongest passions of the Middle Ages–the desire for military renown and for a monk’s life.” A constitution was drawn up by Bernard of Clairvaux (1128), and later three ranks were recognised–the knights, who alone wore the mantle of white linen and red cross, men-at-arms, and lower retainers, while a grand-master, seneschal, and other officers were created. During the first 150 years of their existence the Templars increased enormously in power; under papal authority they enjoyed many privileges, such as exemption from taxes, tithes, and interdict. After the capture of Jerusalem by the infidels Cyprus became in 1291 their head-quarters, and subsequently France. But their usefulness was at an end, and their arrogance, luxury, and quarrels with the Hospitallers had alienated the sympathies of Christendom. Measures of the cruellest and most barbarous kind were taken for their suppression by Philip the Fair of France, supported by Pope Clement IV. Between 1306 and 1314 hundreds were burned at the stake, the order scattered, and their possessions confiscated.

TEMPLE, FREDERICK, archbishop of Canterbury, born at Santa Maura, in Leukas, one of the Ionian Islands; was highly distinguished at Balliol College, Oxford, as graduate, fellow, and tutor; in 1846 became Principal of Kneller Hall Training College, was one of H.M. Inspectors of Schools, and during 1858 and 1869 was head-master of Rugby; a Liberal in politics, he supported the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and as a Broad-Churchman was elected to the bishopric of Exeter (1869), of London (1885), and in 1896 was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury; contributed to the celebrated “Essays and Reviews”; published “Sermons Preached in Rugby Chapel,” and in 1884 was Bampton Lecturer; _b_. 1821.

TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, diplomatist and essayist, born in London, and educated at Cambridge; travel on the Continent, courtship, and marriage, and some years of quiet and studious retirement in Ireland, occupied him during the Protectorate; in 1660 was returned to the Convention Parliament at Dublin, and five years later, having resettled in England, began his diplomatic career, the most notable success in which was his arrangement in 1668 of the Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden to hold in check the growing power of France; as ambassador at The Hague became friendly with the Prince of Orange, whose marriage with the Princess Mary (daughter of James II.) he negotiated; was recalled in 1671, but after the Dutch War returned to his labours at The Hague, and in 1679 carried through the Peace of Nimeguen; although offered a State Secretaryship more than once, shrank from the responsibilities of office under Charles II., a diffidence he again showed in the reign of William III.; the later years of his life were spent in Epicurean ease, in the enjoyment of his garden, and in the pursuit of letters at his villa at Sheen, and, after 1686, at Moor Park, in Surrey, where he had Swift for secretary; is remembered in constitutional history for his scheme (a failure ultimately) to put the king more completely under the check of the Privy Council by remodelling its constitution; was a writer of considerable distinction, his miscellaneous essays and memoirs being notable for grace and perspicuity of style (1628-1699).

TEMPLE, THE, of Jerusalem, a building constructed on the same plan and for the same purpose as the TABERNACLE (q. v.), only of larger dimensions, more substantial and costly materials, and a more ornate style; it was a magnificent structure, contained treasures of wealth, and was the pride of the Hebrew people. There were three successive structures that bore the name–Solomon’s, built by Solomon in 1004 B.C., and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 588 B.C.; Zerubbabel’s, built in 515, and pillaged and desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 B.C.; and Herod’s, on the ruins of the former, begun in 16 B.C., finished in 29 A.D., and destroyed by Titus in 70 A.D. All three were built on Mount Moriah, on the spot where Abraham offered up Isaac, and where David afterwards raised an altar to the Lord; and of the number the palm must be given to the Temple of Solomon, it was the Temple _par excellence_.

TEMPLE BAR, a famous London gateway, which formerly divided Fleet Street from the Strand; pressure of traffic caused its removal in 1879; now stands in Theobald’s Park, Cheshunt.

TENASSERIM (972), the southernmost division of Burma, forms a long coastal strip facing the Bay of Bengal and backed by the mountain barrier of Siam; acquired by the British in 1825.

TENBY (5), a popular little watering-place of Pembrokeshire, has a rocky site on Carmarthen Bay coast; ruins of its old wall and of a castle still remain; has a fine 13th-century Gothic church, marble statue of the Prince Consort, &c., while its extensive sands and splendid bathing facilities attract crowds of summer visitors.

TENCIN, MADAME DE, a French writer of romances, a woman of clever wit and of personal charms, who abandoned a religious life and, coming to Paris in 1714, immersed herself in the political and fashionable life of the city; was not too careful of her morals, and ranked among her lovers the Regent, Fontenelle, and Cardinal Dubois; used her influence against the Jansenists; more circumspect in later life she presided over a fashionable salon; was the mother of D’Alembert (1681-1749).

TENDON ACHILLES, name given to the tendon of the leg above the heel, so called as being the tendon by which Thetis held Achilles when she dipped him in the Styx, and where alone he was in consequence vulnerable.

TENEDOS, a rocky but fertile little island belonging to Turkey, in the AEgean, 3 m. off the mainland of Turkey in Asia, and 12 m. S. of the entrance to the Dardanelles; it was the place the Greeks made a feint they had returned to during the Trojan War.

TENERIFE (108), the largest of the Canary Islands (q. v.), of volcanic formation, with cliff-bound coast; richly fruit-bearing; chief exports, cochineal, tobacco, and wine; capital, SANTA CRUZ (q. v.); most notable natural feature is the famous Peak of Tenerife, a conical-shaped dormant volcano, 12,000 ft. in height, at the summit of which there is a crater 300 ft. in circuit; last eruption took place in 1798.

TENIERS, DAVID, the elder (1582-1649), and DAVID TENIERS, the younger (1610-1690), father and son, both famous masters of the Flemish school of painting, and natives of Antwerp; the greater genius belonged to the younger, who carried his father’s gift of depicting rural and homely life to a higher pitch of perfection.

TENNANT, WILLIAM, a minor Scottish poet, born at Anstruther, Fife; was educated at St. Andrews, and after a short experience of business life betook himself to teaching in 1813, filling posts at Dunino, Lasswade, and Dollar; his most notable poem, “Anster Fair” (1812), was warmly received, and in 1835 his knowledge of Eastern languages won him the chair of Oriental Languages in St. Andrews (1784-1848).

TENNEMANN, W. GOTTLIEB, German historian of philosophy; was professor at Marburg; wrote both a history and a manual of philosophy (1761-1819).

TENNESSEE (1,768, of which 434 are coloured), one of the central States of the American Union, lies S. of Kentucky, and stretches from the Mississippi (W.) to North Carolina (E.); is one-third larger than Ireland; politically it is divided into three districts with characteristic natural features; East Tennessee, mountainous, with ridges of the Appalachians, possessing inexhaustible stores of coal, iron, and copper; Middle Tennessee, an undulating, wheat, corn, and tobacco-growing country; and West Tennessee, with lower-lying plains growing cotton, and traversed by the Tennessee River, the largest affluent of the Ohio; Nashville is the capital and largest city; became a State in 1796.

TENNIEL, JOHN, a celebrated cartoonist who, since 1864, has week by week drawn the chief political cartoon in _Punch_, the merits of which are too well known to need comment; illustrations to “AEsop’s Fables,” “Ingoldsby Legends,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and other works, reveal the grace and delicacy of his workmanship; born in London, and practically a self-taught artist; joined the staff of _Punch_ in 1851; was knighted in 1893; _b_. 1820.

TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD, poet-laureate, born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, son of a clergyman, and of aristocratic descent; was educated at the grammar school of Louth and at Trinity College, Cambridge, which latter he left without taking a degree; having already devoted himself to the “Ars Poetica,” an art which he cultivated more and more all his life long; entered the university in 1828, and issued his first volume of poems in 1830, though he had four years previously contributed to a small volume conjointly with a brother; to the poems of 1830 he added others, and published them in 1833 and 1842, after which, endowed by a pension from the Civil List of L200, he produced the “Princess” in 1847, and “In Memoriam” in 1850; was in 1851 appointed to the laureateship, and next in that capacity wrote his “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”; in 1855 appeared his “Maud,” in 1859 the first four of his “Idylls of the King,” which were followed by “Enoch Arden” and the “Northern Farmer” in 1864, and by a succession of other pieces too numerous to mention here; he was raised to the peerage in 1884 on the recommendation of Mr. Gladstone; he was a poet of the ideal, and was distinguished for the exquisite purity of his style and the harmony of his rhythm; had a loving veneration for the past, and an adoring regard for everything pure and noble, and if he indulged in a vein of sadness at all, as he sometimes did, it was when he saw, as he could not help seeing, the feebler hold regard for such things had on the men and women of his generation than the worship of Mammon; Carlyle thought affectionately but plaintively of him, “One of the finest-looking men in the world,” he writes to Emerson; “never had such company over a pipe!… a truly interesting son of earth and son of heaven … wanted a _task_, with which that of spinning rhymes, and naming it ‘art’ and ‘high art’ in a time like ours, would never furnish him” (1809-1892).

TENTERDEN, a market-town in Kent, once a Cinque Port; the steeple of the church of which is reported to have been the cause of the Goodwin Sands, the stones intended for the dyke which kept the sea off having been used instead to repair the church.

TENTERDEN, LORD, English judge, born at Canterbury; wrote a “Treatise on the Law relative to Merchant Ships and Seamen”; was raised to the peerage; an obstinate enemy of Reform (1762-1832).

TEOCALLI, among the ancient Mexicans a spirally-terraced pyramidal structure surmounted by a temple containing images of the gods.

TEPLITZ (15), a popular health resort in N. Bohemia, finely situated in a valley between the Erzgebirge and Mittelgebirge, 20 m. NW. of Leitmeritz; its thermal springs are celebrated for the cure of gout, rheumatism, &c.

TERAPHIM, small images, a sort of household gods among the Hebrews, consulted as oracles, and endowed with some magic virtue.

TERATOLOGY, the branch of biology which treats of malformations or departures from the normal type.

TERBURG, GERHARD, a noted Dutch painter, whose portraits and _genre_ pictures are to be found in most of the great European galleries; born at Zwolle; after travelling in Germany, Italy, England, and Spain, settled at Deventer, where he became burgomaster; his most famous pictures are a portrait of William of Orange, “Father’s Advice,” and his “Congress of Muenster, 1648,” which last was bought for L7280 and presented to the National Gallery, London (16081681).

TERCEIRA (45), the second largest of the Azores; rears cattle, and yields grain, oranges, &c.; chief town Angra, capital of the group.

TERENCE, Roman comic poet, born at Carthage; brought thence as a slave; educated by his master, a Roman senator, and set free; composed plays, adaptations of others in Greek by Menander and Apollodorus; they depict Greek manners for Roman imitation in a pure and perfect Latin style, and with great dramatic skill (185-159 B.C.).

TEREUS. See PHILOMELA.

TERMINUS, in Roman mythology a deity who presided over boundaries, the worship of whom was instituted by _Numa_ (q. v.).

TERPSICHORE, the Muse of choral song and dancing.

TERRA-COTTA, a composition of fine clay and fine colourless sand moulded into shapes and baked to hardness.

TERRAY, ABBE, “dissolute financier” of Louis XV.; “paying eightpence in the shilling, so that wits exclaim in some press at the play-house, ‘Where is Abbe Terray that he might reduce it to two-thirds!'”; lived a scandalous life, and ingratiated himself with Madame Pompadour; he held his post till the accession of Louis XVI., and fell with his iniquitous colleagues (1715-1778).

TERRE-HAUTE (37), capital of Vigo County, Indiana, stands on a plateau overlooking the Wabash, 178 m. S. of Chicago; is situated in a rich coal district, and has numerous foundries and various factories; is well equipped with schools and other public institutions.

TERRY, ELLEN (Mrs. Charles Kelly), the most celebrated of living English actresses, born at Coventry; made her _debut_ at the early age of eight, appearing as Mamilius in “The Winter’s Tale,” at the Princess Theatre, then under the management of Charles Kean; during 1864–74 she lived in retirement, but returning to the stage in 1875 achieved her first great success in the character of Portia; played for some time with the Bancrofts and at the Court Theatre; in December 1878 made her first appearance at the Lyceum Theatre, then under the management of HENRY IRVING (q. v.), with whose subsequent successful career her own is inseparably associated, sharing with him the honours of a long list of memorable Shakespearian and other performances; _b_. 1848.

TERSANCTUS, the ascription of praise, Holy, Holy, Holy, preliminary to the consecrating prayer in Holy Communion.

TERTULLIAN, QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS, one of the Latin Fathers, born at Carthage, the son of a Roman centurion; was well educated; bred a rhetorician; was converted to Christianity, became presbyter of Carthage, and embraced MONTANIST VIEWS (q. v.); wrote numerous works, apologetical, polemical, doctrinal, and practical, the last of an ascetic tendency (150-230).

TEST ACT, act of date 1673, now repealed, requiring all officials under the crown to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy, &c.; directed equally against Dissenters, Roman Catholics, &c.

TESTUDO (tortoise-shell), in ancient Roman warfare a covering of the shields of the soldiers held over their heads as protection against missiles thrown from the walls when besieging a city.

TETANUS or LOCK-JAW, a nervous affection of a most painful and fatal character, which usually begins with intensely painful and persistent cramp of the muscles of the throat and jaws, spreading down to the larger muscles of the body. As the disease progresses the muscles become more and more rigid, while the paroxysms of pain increase in violence and frequency. Death as a rule results from either sheer exhaustion or failure of breath through the spasmodic closure of the glottis. The cause of the disease is now ascertained to be due to the action of a microbe, which may find an entrance through any wound or abrasion of the skin, not necessarily of the thumb as is the popular belief.

TETHYS, in the Greek mythology a daughter of Uranus and Gaia, wife of OCEANUS (q. v.), and mother of the river-gods.

TETRAGRAMMATON, the mystic number “four,” symbolical of deity, whose name in different languages is composed of four letters.

TETUAN (22), a port and walled town of Morocco, on the Martil, 4 m. above its entrance into the Mediterranean and 22 m. S. of Ceuta; has a fortified castle and wall-towers; exports provisions to Ceuta, and has a good trade in fruit, wool, silk, cotton, &c.

TETZEL, JOHN, a Dominican monk, born at Leipzig; was employed in the sale of indulgences to all who subscribed to the fund for building St. Peter’s at Rome, in opposition to whom and his doings Luther published his celebrated theses in 1517, and whose extravagances involved him in the censure of the Church (1455-1519).

TEUFELSDROeCK, the hero of “Sartor” and prototype of the author as a thinker and a man in relation to the spirit of the time, which is such that it rejects him as its servant, and he rejects it as his master; the word means “outcast of the devil,” and the devil is the spirit of the time, which the author and his prototype here has, God-compelled, risen up in defiance of and refused to serve under; for a time the one or the other tried to serve it, till they discovered the slavery the attempt more and more involved them in, when they with one bold effort tore asunder the bands that bound them, and with an “Everlasting No” achieved at one stroke their emancipation; a man this born to look through the show of things into things themselves.

TEUTONIC KNIGHTS, like the TEMPLARS (q. v.) and Hospitallers, a religious order of knighthood which arose during the period of the Crusades, originally for the purpose of tending wounded crusaders; subsequently became military in character, and besides the care of the sick and wounded included among its objects aggressive warfare upon the heathen; was organised much in the same way as the Templars, and like them acquired extensive territorial possessions; during the 14th and 15th centuries were constantly at war with the heathen Wends and Lithuanians, but the conversion of these to Christianity and several defeats destroyed both the prestige and usefulness of the knights, and the order thenceforth began to decline. As a secularised, land-owning order the knighthood lasted till 1809, when it was entirely suppressed in Germany by Napoleon; but branches still exist in the Netherlands and in Austria, where care for the wounded in war has been resumed.

TEUTONS, the most energetic and progressive section of the Aryan group of nations, embracing the following races speaking languages traceable to a common stock: (1) Germanic, including Germans, Dutch, Flemings, and English; (2) Scandinavian, embracing Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders. But naturally Celts and other race-elements have in the course of centuries entered into the composition of these peoples.

TEWFIK PASHA, MOHAMMED, khedive of Egypt from the time of his father’s abdication in 1879; a man of simple tastes and religious disposition, friendly and loyal to the English; Arabi Pasha’s insurrection, closed at TEL-EL-KEBIR (q. v.), the Mahdi’s rising and capture of Khartoum, occurred during his reign, which, however, also witnessed Egypt’s steadily increasing prosperity under English rule (1852-1892).

TEWKESBURY (5), a market-town of Gloucestershire, at the confluence of the Avon and Severn (here spanned by one of Telford’s bridges), 10 m. NE. of Gloucester; possesses one of the finest of old English churches in the Norman style; trades chiefly in agricultural produce; half a mile distant is the field of the battle of Tewkesbury (May 4, 1471), where the Yorkists under Edward IV. crushed the Lancastrians.

TEXAS (2,236, including 493 coloured), the largest of the United States of America, in the extreme SW., fronts the Gulf of Mexico for 400 m. between Mexico (W.) and Louisiana (E.); has an area more than twice that of the British Isles, exhibiting a great variety of soil from rich alluvial valleys and pastoral prairies to arid deserts of sand in the S. Climate in the S. is semi-tropical, in the N. colder and drier. The useful metals are found in abundance, but agriculture and stock-raising are the chief occupations, Texas being the leading cattle-raising and cotton State in the Union; seceded from the republic of Mexico in 1835, and was an independent State till 1845, when it was annexed to the American Union. Austin is the capital and Galveston the principal port.

TEXEL (7), an island of North Holland, situated at the entrance to the Zuider Zee and separated from the mainland by a narrow strait called the Marsdiep, the scene of several memorable naval engagements between the Dutch and English; staple industries are sheep and dairy farming.

TEZCUCO (15), a city of Mexico which, under the name Acolhuacan, was once a centre of Aztec culture, of which there are interesting remains still extant; is situated on a salt lake bearing the same name, 25 m. NE. of Mexico City.

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, novelist, born in Calcutta, educated at the Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge; after leaving college, which he did without taking a degree, travelled on the Continent, making long stays at Rome and Paris, and “the dear little Saxon town (Weimar) where Goethe lived”; his ambition was to be an artist, but failing in that and pecuniary resources, he turned to literature; in straitened circumstances at first wrote for the journals of the day and contributed to _Punch_, in which the well-known “Snob Papers” and “Jeames’s Diary” originally appeared; in 1840 he produced the “Paris Sketch-Book,” his first published work, but it was not till 1847 the first of his novels, “Vanity Fair,” was issued in parts, which was followed in 1848 by “Pendennis,” in 1852 by “Esmond,” in 1853 by “The Newcomes,” in 1857 by “The Virginians,” in 1862 by “Philip,” and in 1863 by “Denis Duval”; in 1852 he lectured in the United States on “The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,” and in 1855 on “The Four Georges,” while in 1860 he was appointed first editor of _Cornhill_. When “Vanity Fair” was issuing, Mrs. Carlyle wrote her husband: “Very good indeed; beats Dickens out of the world”; but his greatest effort was “Esmond,” which accordingly is accounted “the most perfect, artistically, of his fictions.” Of Thackeray, in comparison with Dickens, M. Taine says, he was “more self-contained, better instructed and stronger, a lover of moral dissertations, a counsellor of the public, a sort of lay preacher, less bent on defending the poor, more bent on censuring man; brought to the aid of satire a sustained common-sense, great knowledge of the heart, consummate cleverness, powerful reasoning, a store of meditated hatred, and persecuted vice with all the weapons of reflection… His novels are a war against the upper classes of his country” (1811-1863).

THAIS, an Athenian courtezan who accompanied Alexander the Great on his expedition into Asia; had children after his death to Ptolemy Lagi.

THALBERG, SIGISMUND, a celebrated pianist, born at Geneva; early displayed a talent for music and languages; was intended and trained for a diplomatic career, but, overcoming his father’s scruples, followed his bent for music, and soon took rank as one of the most brilliant pianists of the age; “Thalberg,” said Liszt, “is the only pianist who can play the violin on the key-board”; composed a large number of pianoforte pieces, chiefly fantasias and variations (1812-1871).

THALES, philosopher of Greece, and one of her seven sages; was a philosopher of the physical school, and the father of philosophy in general, as the first to seek and find within Nature an explanation of Nature; “the principle of all things is water,” he says; “all comes from water, and to water all returns”; flourished about the close of the 7th century B.C.

THALIA, one of the THREE GRACES (q. v.), as also of the NINE MUSES (q. v.).

THALLIUM, a rare metallic element similar to lead, but heavier, discovered in 1861 by the green in the spectrum in the flame as it was being volatilised.

THAMES, the most important river of Great Britain, formed by the junction at Lechdale of four head-streams–the Isis, Churn, Coln, and Leach–which spring from the SE. slope of the Cotswold Hills; winds across the southern midlands eastwards till in a wide estuary it enters the North Sea; forms the boundary-line between several counties, and passes Oxford, Windsor, Eton, Richmond, London, Woolwich, and Gravesend; navigable for barges to Lechdale, and for ocean steamers to Tilbury Docks; tide is felt as far as Teddington, 80 m.; length estimated at 250 m.

THANE or THEGN, a title of social distinction among the Anglo-Saxons, bestowed, in the first instance, upon men bound in military service to the king, and who came to form a nobility of service as distinguished from a nobility of blood; these obtained grants of land, and had thegns under them; in this way the class of thegns widened; subsequently the name was allowed to the ceorl who had acquired four hides of land and fulfilled certain requirements; after the Norman Conquest the thegnhood practically embraced the knighthood; the name dropped out of use after Henry II.’s reign, but lasted longer in Scotland.

THANET, ISLE OF (58), forms the NE. corner of Kent, from the mainland of which it is separated by the Stour and the rivulet Nethergong; on its shores, washed by the North Sea, stand the popular watering-places, Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs; the north-eastern extremity, the North Foreland, is crowned by a lighthouse.

THASOS (5), an island of Turkey, in the AEgean Sea, near the Macedonian coast; is mountainous and richly wooded; inhabited almost entirely by Greeks.

THAUMUZ. See TAUMUZ.

THEATRE FRANCAIS, theatre in the Palais Royal, Paris, where the French classic plays are produced and rendered by first-class artistes.

THEBAIDE, a desert in Upper Egypt; the retreat in early times of a number of Christian hermits.

THEBANS, name given to the inhabitants of Boeotia, from Thebes, the capital; were reckoned dull and stupid by the Athenians.

THEBES, an ancient city of Egypt of great renown, once capital of Upper Egypt; covered 10 sq. m. of the valley of the Nile on both sides of the river, 300 m. SE. of Cairo; now represented by imposing ruins of temples, palaces, tombs, and statues of colossal size, amid which the humble dwellings of four villages–Luxor, Karnack, Medinet Habu, and Kurna–have been raised. The period of its greatest flourishing extended from about 1600 to 1100 B.C., but some of its ruins have been dated as far back as 2500 B.C.

THEBES, capital of the ANCIENT GRECIAN STATE BOEOTIA (q. v.), whose site on the slopes of Mount Teumessus, 44 m. NW. of Athens, is now occupied by the village of Thiva; its legendary history, embracing the names of Cadmus, Dionysus, Hercules, Oedipus, &c., and authentic struggles with Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, its rise to supremacy under Epaminondas over all Greece, and its destruction by Alexander, have all combined to place it amongst the most famous cities of ancient Greece.

THEISM, belief in the existence of God associated in general with a belief in Providence and Revelation.

THEISS, the longest river of Hungary and largest of the affluents of the Danube; is formed in East Hungary by the confluence of the White Theiss and the Black Theiss, both springing from south-western slopes of the Carpathians; after a great sweep to the NW. bends round to the S., and flows steadily southward through the centre of Hungary until it joins the Danube 20 m. above Belgrade, after a course of 750 m.; with its greater tributaries, the Maros and the Bodrog, it forms a splendid means of internal commerce.

THEMIS, in the Greek mythology the goddess of the established order of things; was a daughter of Uranos and Gaia, and the spouse of Zeus, through whom she became the mother of the divinities concerned in maintaining order among, at once, gods and men.

THEMISTOCLES, celebrated Athenian general and statesman; rose to political power on the ostracism of Aristides, his rival; persuaded the citizens to form a fleet to secure the command of the sea against Persian invasion; commanded at Salamis, and routed the fleet of Xerxes, and afterwards accomplished the fortification of the city in spite of the opposition of Sparta, but falling in popular favour was ostracised, and took refuge at the court of Artaxerxes of Persia, where he died in high favour with the king (520-453 B.C.).

THEOBALD, LEWIS, Shakespearian critic, born at Sittingbourne, Kent; bred to the law by his father, an attorney, but took to literature; wrote a tragedy; contributed to _Mist’s Journal_, and in 1716 began his tri-weekly paper, the _Censor_; roused Pope’s ire by his celebrated pamphlet, “Shakespeare Restored,” an exposure of errors in Pope’s edition, and although ruthlessly impaled in his “Dunciad,” of which he was the original hero, made good his claim to genuine Shakespearian scholarship by his edition, in 1733, of the dramatist’s works, an edition which completely superseded Pope’s (1688-1744).

THEOCRACY, government of a State professedly in the name and under the direction as well as the sanction of Heaven.

THEOCRATES, great pastoral poet of Greece, born at Syracuse; was the creator of bucolic poetry; wrote “Idyls,” as they were called, descriptive of the common life of the common people of Sicily, in a thoroughly objective, though a truly poetical, spirit, in a style which never fails to charm, being as fresh as ever; wrote also on epic subjects (300-220 B.C.).

THEODICY, name given to an attempt to vindicate the order of the universe in consistency with the presence of evil, and specially to that of Leibnitz, in which he demonstrates that this is the best of all possible worlds.

THEODORA, the famous consort of the ROMAN EMPEROR JUSTINIAN I. (q. v.), who, captivated by her extraordinary charms of wit and person, raised her from a life of shame to share his throne (527), a high office she did not discredit; scandal, busy enough with her early years, has no word to say against her subsequent career as empress; the poor and unfortunate of her own sex were her special care; remained to the last the faithful helpmate of her husband (508-548).

THEODORE, “King of Corsica,” otherwise Baron Theodore de Neuhoff, born in Metz; a soldier of fortune under the French, Swedish, and Spanish flags successively, whose title to fame is his expedition to Corsica, aided by the Turks and the Bey of Tunis, in 1736, to aid the islanders to throw off the Genoese yoke; was crowned King Theodore I., but in a few months was driven out, and after unsuccessful efforts to regain his position came as an impoverished adventurer to London, where creditors imprisoned him, and where sympathisers, including Walpole, subscribed for his release (1686-1756).

THEODORE, bishop of Mopsuestra, in Cilicia, born at Antioch; was a biblical exegete, having written commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, eschewing the allegorical method of interpretation, and accepting the literal sense; he held Nestorian views, and his writings were anathematised; he was a friend of St. Chrysostom; _b_. 429.

THEODORET, Church historian, born at Antioch; as bishop of the Syrian city, Cyrus, gave himself to the conversion of the Marcionites; a leader of the Antioch school of theology, he took an active part in the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, and was deposed by the so-called robber-council of Ephesus, but was reinstated by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (about 390-457).

THEODORIC, surnamed the Great, founder of the monarchy of the Ostro- or East Goths, son of Theodemir, the Ostrogothic king of Pannonia; was for ten years during his youth a hostage at the Byzantine Court at Constantinople; succeeded his father in 475, and immediately began to push the fortunes of the Ostrogoths; various territories fell into his hands, and alarm arose at the Imperial Court; in 493 advanced upon Italy, overthrew Odoacer, and after his murder became sole ruler; was now the most powerful of the Gothic kings, with an empire embracing Italy, Sicily, and Dalmatia, besides German possessions; as a ruler proved himself as wise as he was strong; became in after years one of the great heroes of German legend, and figures in the “Nibelungenlied” (455-526).

THEODOSIUS I., THE GREAT, Roman emperor; was the son of Theodosius the Elder, a noted general, whose campaigns in Britain and elsewhere he participated in; marked out for distinction by his military prowess he, in 379, was invited by the Emperor Gratian to become emperor in the East, that he might stem the advancing Goths; in this Theodosius was successful; the Goths were defeated, conciliated, had territory conceded to them, and became in large numbers Roman citizens; rebellions in the Western Empire and usurpations of the throne compelled Theodosius to active interference, which led to his becoming sole head of the empire (394), after successfully combating the revolutionaries, Franks and others; was a zealous Churchman, and stern suppressor of the “Arian Heresy”; the close of his reign marks the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire, for his death opened the floodgates of barbarian invasion, and from this date begins the formation of the new kingdoms of Europe (346-395).

THEOGNIS, an elegiac poet of Megara; flourished in the second half of the 6th century B.C.; lost his possessions during a revolution at Megara, in which the democrats overpowered the aristocrats, to which party he belonged; compelled to live in exile, he found solace in the writing of poetry full of a practical and prudential wisdom, bitterly biased against democracy, and tinged with pessimism.

THEOLOGY, the science which treats of God, particularly as He manifests Himself in His relation to man in nature, reason, or revelation.

THEOPHRASTUS, a peripatetic philosopher, born in Lesbos; pupil, heir, and successor of Aristotle, and the great interpreter and expounder of his philosophy; was widely famous in his day; his writings were numerous, but only a few are extant, on plants, stars, and fire; _d_. 286 B.C.

THEOSOPHY (lit. divine wisdom), a mystic philosophy of very difficult definition which hails from the East, and was introduced among us by Madame Blavatsky, a Russian lady, who was initiated into its mysteries in Thibet by a fraternity there who professed to be the sole custodiers of its secrets as the spiritual successors of those to whom it was at first revealed. The radical idea of the system appears to be reincarnation, and the return of the spirit to itself by a succession of incarnations, each one of which raises it to a higher level until, by seven stages it would seem, the process is complete, matter has become spirit, and spirit matter, God has become man, and man God, agreeably somewhat to the doctrine of Amiel, that “the complete spiritualisation of the animal element in us is the task of our race,” though with them it seems rather to mean its extinction. The adherents of this system, with their head-quarters at Madras, are numerous and wide-scattered, and form an organisation of 300 branches, having three definite aims: (1) To establish a brotherhood over the world irrespective of race, creed, caste, or sex; (2) to encourage the study of comparative philosophy, religion, and science; and (3) to investigate the occult secrets of nature and the latent possibilities of man. The principal books in exposition of it are, “The Secret Doctrine,” “Isis Unveiled,” “The Key to Theosophy,” by Mme. Blavatsky; “Esoteric Buddhism,” “The Occult World,” &c., by Sinnett; “The Ancient Wisdom,” “The Birth and Evolution of the Soul,” &c., by Annie Besant.

THERAPEUTAE, a Jewish ascetic sect in Egypt, who lived a life of celibacy and meditation in separate hermitages, and assembled for worship on Sabbath.

THERMO-DYNAMICS, name given to the modern science of the relation between heat and work, which has established two fundamental principles, that when heat is employed to do work, the work done is the exact equivalent of the heat expended, and when the work is employed to produce heat, the heat produced is exactly equivalent to the work done.

THERMOPYLAE (i. e. “the hot gates”), a famous pass in N. Greece, the only traversable one leading southward into Thessaly, lies 25 m. N. of Delphi, and is flanked on one side by Mount Oeta, and on the other by the Maliac Gulf (now the Gulf of Zeitouni); for ever memorable as the scene of Leonidas’ heroic attempt with his 300 Spartans to stem the advancing Persian hordes under Xerxes (480 B.C.); also of Greece’s futile struggles against Brennus and the Gauls (279 B.C.), and Philip the Macedonian (207 B.C.)

THERSITES, a deformed Greek present at the siege of Troy, distinguished for his insolent raillery at his betters, and who was slain by Achilles for deriding his lamentation over the death of PENTHESILEA (q. v.).

THESEUS, legendary hero of Attica, and son of AEgeus, king of Athens; ranks second to Hercules, captured the Marathonian bull, and slew the MINOTAUR (q. v.) by the help of ARIADNE (q. v.); waged war against the Amazons, and carried off the queen; assisted at the Argonautic expedition, and is famed for his friendship for Perithous, whom he aided against the Centaurs.

THESPIS, the father of Greek tragedy, hence Thespian art for the drama.

THESSALONIANS, EPISTLE TO THE, epistles of St. Paul to the Church at Thessalonica; of which there are two; the first written from Corinth about A.D. 53 to exhort them to beware of lapsing, and comforting them with the hope of the return of the Lord to judgment; the second, within a few months after the first, to correct a false impression produced by it in connection with the Lord’s coming; they must not, he argued, neglect their ordinary avocations, as though the day of the Lord was close at hand; that day would not come till the powers of evil had wrought their worst, and the cup of their iniquity was full; this is the first purely dogmatic epistle of St. Paul.

THESSALONICA. See SALONICA.

THESSALY, the largest division of ancient Greece, a wide, fertile plain stretching southward from the Macedonian border to the Maliac Gulf, and entirely surrounded by mountains save the Vale of Tempe in the NE. between Mounts Ossa and Olympus; was conquered by Philip of Macedon in the 4th century B.C., and subsequently incorporated in the Roman Empire, on the break up of which it fell into the hands of the Venetians, and eventually of the Turks (1335), and remained a portion of the Ottoman Empire till 1881, when the greater and most fertile part was ceded to Greece. Chief town, Larissa.

THETFORD (4), a historic old market-town on the Norfolk and Suffolk border, at the confluence of the Thet and Little Ouse, 31 m. SW. of Norwich; a place of importance in Saxon times, and in Edward III.’s reign an important centre of monasticism; has interesting ruins, a notable Castle Hill, and industries in brewing, tanning, &c.

THETIS, in the Greek mythology the daughter of NEREUS (q. v.) and Doris, who being married against her will to Peleus, became the mother of Achilles; she was therefore a NEREID (q. v.), and gifted with prophetic foresight.

THEURIET, ANDRE, modern French poet and novelist, born at Marly le Roi, near Paris; studied law, and in 1857 received a post in the office of the Minister of Finance; has published several volumes of poems, dealing chiefly with rustic life, but is more widely known by his novels, such as “Mademoiselle Guignon,” “Le Mariage de Gerard,” “Deux Soeurs,” &c., all of them more or less tinged with melancholy, but also inspired by true poetic feeling; _b_. 1833.

THIALFI, in the Norse mythology the god of manual labour, Thor’s henchman and attendant.

THIERRY, JACQUES NICOLAS AUGUSTIN, French historian, born at Blois; came early under the influence of Saint-Simon, and during 1814-17 lived with him as secretary, assimilating his socialistic ideas and ventilating them in various compositions; Comte became his master next, and history his chief study, an outlet for his views on which he found in the _Censeur Europeen_, and the COURRIER FRANCAIS, to which he contributed his “Letters on French History” (1820); five years later appeared his masterpiece, the “Conquest of England,” to be followed by “Letters on History” and “Dix Ans d’Etudes” (1835), in which same year he was appointed librarian at the Palais Royal; in 1853 appeared his “Tiers Etat,” the last of his works; has been called the “father of romantic history,” and was above all a historical artist, giving life and colour to his pictures of bygone ages, but not infrequently at the cost of historic accuracy (1795-1856).

THIERS, LOUIS ADOLPHE, French statesman and historian, born at Marseilles, of parents in poor circumstances; studied law at Aix, became acquainted with Mignet the historian; went with him to Paris, and took to journalism; published in 1827 his “History of the French Revolution,” which established his rank as a writer; contributed to the July revolution; supported Louis Philippe, and was in 1832 elected a deputy for Aix; obtained a post in the ministry, and eventually head; was swept out of office at the revolution of 1848; voted for the presidency of Louis Napoleon, but opposed the _coup d’etat_; withdrew from public life for a time; published in 1860 the “History of the Consulate and the Empire” a labour of years; entered public life again, but soon retired; at the close of the Franco-German War raised the war indemnity, and saw the Germans off the soil; became head of the Provisional Government, and President of the Republic from 1871 to 1873; his histories are very one-sided, and often inaccurate besides; Carlyle’s criticism of his “French Revolution” is well known, “Dig where you will, you come to water” (1795-1877).

THING, name for a legislative or judicial assembly among the Scandinavians.

THINKER, THE, defined to be “one who, with fresh and powerful glance, reads a new lesson in the universe, sees deeper into the secret of things, and carries up the interpretation of nature to higher levels; one who, unperturbed by passions and undistracted by petty detail, can see deeper than others behind the veil of circumstance, and catch glimpses into the permanent reality.”

THIRLMERE, one of the lakes in the English Lake District, in Cumberland, 5 m. SE. of Keswick; since 1885 its waters have been impounded for the use of Manchester, the surface raised 50 ft. by embankments, and the area more than doubled.

THIRLWALL, CONOP, historian, born at Shepney; was a precocious child, was educated at the Charterhouse, had Grote for a school-fellow, and was a student of Trinity College, Cambridge; called to the bar, but took orders in 1827, having two years previously translated Schleiermacher’s “Essay on St. Luke,” and was thus the first to introduce German theology into England; wrote a “History of Greece,” which, though superior in some important respects, was superseded by Grote’s as wanting in realistic power, a fatal blemish in a history; was a liberal man, and bishop of St. David’s for half a lifetime (1797-1875).

THIRTY YEARS’ WAR, the name given to a series of wars arising out of one another in Germany during 1618-48; was first a war of Catholics against Protestants, but in its later stages developed into a struggle for supremacy in Europe. On the Catholic side were Austria, various German Catholic princes, and Spain, to whom were opposed successively Bohemia, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, and France; originated in Bohemia, where the Protestants were goaded to revolt against the intolerance of the empire, Moravians and Hungarians came to their assistance, but the imperial forces were too powerful and the rising was suppressed, only to be renewed in 1624, when Denmark espoused the Protestant cause, but struggled vainly against Catholic armies under Wallenstein and Tilly. The tactless oppression of the Emperor Ferdinand again fanned into flame the fires of rebellion; Swedish armies now came to the assistance of the Protestants, and under Gustavus Adolphus waged successful war against the emperor, but the death of Gustavus at Luetzen (1632) turned the tide in favour of the imperial forces; the German Protestant prince made a disadvantageous peace in 1635, but Sweden, now joined by France, continued the struggle against the Austrian empire. Turenne and Conde became the heroes of the war, and a series of decisive victories rolled back the imperial armies, and by 1848 were converging upon Austria, when diplomacy brought the war to an end by the Peace of Westphalia, the chief gains of which were the securing of religious tolerance and the recognition of the independence of Switzerland and the United Provinces.

THISBE. See PYRAMUS.

THISTLE, ORDER OF THE, an order of Scottish knighthood, sometimes called the Order of St. Andrew, instituted in 1687 by James VII. of Scotland (James II. of England); fell into abeyance during the reign of William and Mary, but was revived by Queen Anne in 1703; includes the sovereign, 16 knights, and various officials. The principal article in the insignia is a gold collar composed of thistles intertwined with sprigs of rue.

THOLUCK, FRIEDRICH AUGUST, theologian, born at Breslau; came under the influence of Neander (q. v.) and became professor of Theology at Halle, where he exercised a considerable influence over the many students who were attracted from far and near by his learning and fervour (1799-1877).

THOM, WILLIAM, a minor Scottish vernacular poet, author of “The Mitherless Bairn,” &c.; was a native of and hand-loom weaver at Aberdeen; endured much hardship and poverty (1799-1848).

THOMAS, AMBROISE, French composer, born at Metz; proved himself a brilliant student at the Paris Conservatoire; became professor of Composition in 1852, and nine years later succeeded Auber as director of the Conservatoire; a prolific writer in all forms of musical composition, but has won celebrity mainly as a writer of, operas, the most popular of which are “La Double Echelle,” “Mignon,” “Hamlet,” &c.; was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour in 1880 (1811-1896).

THOMAS, ARTHUR GORING, composer, born near Eastbourne; studied at the Paris Conservatoire and Royal Academy for Music, London; became popular through the merit of his operas “Esmeralda,” “Nadeshda,” the cantata “Sun-worshippers,” and songs; committed suicide (1851-1892).

THOMAS, GEORGE HENRY, American general, born in Virginia; a man of fine character, lacking none of the sterner stuff of the soldier, but blended with modesty and gentleness; universally popular in the army, which he joined in 1840 and continued in till his death, rising to be general of a division through gallantry in the Indian frontier wars and in the Civil War, in which, at the battle of Nashville (1864), he completely routed the Confederate forces; had command of the military division of the Pacific at the time of his death (1816-1870).

THOMAS, ST., the Apostle, is represented in art as bearing a spear in his hand, and sometimes an arrow, a book, and a carpenter’s square.

THOMAS THE RHYMER. See RHYMER, THOMAS THE.

THOMASIUS, CHRISTIAN, a German jurist, born at Leipzig; was the first to prelect on jurisprudence in the German tongue, on which account, as on account of his advanced theological views, he encountered no small persecution; became at length professor of Jurisprudence at Halle, his influence on the study of which was considerable (1655-1728).

THOMISM, the doctrine of THOMAS AQUINAS (q. v.), particularly in reference to predestination and grace.

THOMS, WILLIAM JOHN, a noted antiquary and bibliographer, born in Westminster; a clerk for 20 years in the Chelsea Hospital and subsequently in the House of Lords, where during 1863-1882 he was deputy-librarian; his leisure was given to his favourite pursuits, and bore fruit in many volumes dealing with “folk-lore” (a word of his own invention) and the like; was secretary of the Camden Society, and in 1849 founded, and continued to edit till 1872, _Notes and Queries_ (1803-1885).

THOMSON, SIR CHARLES WYVILLE, zoologist, born at Bonsyde, Linlithgow; educated at Merchiston Castle, Edinburgh, and at the university there; a lecturer on botany at Aberdeen (1850), professor of Natural History in Queen’s College, Cork (1853), of Geology at Belfast (1854), and of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh (1870); accompanied the _Challenger_ expedition (1872-1876) as head of the scientific department; knighted 1876; wrote “The Depths of the Sea” and “The Voyage of the _Challenger_” (1830-1882).

THOMSON, GEORGE, a noted collector of songs, who set himself to gather in one work every existing Scotch melody; his untiring zeal resulted in the publication of 6 vols. of Scotch songs, the words of which had been adapted and supplied by a host of writers, including Scott, Campbell, Joanna Baillie, and above all, Robert Burns, who contributed upwards of 120; Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Weber, and others were engaged to supply instrumental preludes and codas; also published collections of Irish songs and Welsh melodies; was a native of Limekilns, Fife, and for 60 years principal clerk to the Board of Trustees, Edinburgh (1759-1851).

THOMSON, JAMES, the poet of the “Seasons,” born, the son of the parish minister, at Ednam, Roxburghshire; was educated and trained for the ministry at Edinburgh University, but already wooing the muse, he, shortly after his father’s death in 1725, went to London to push his fortune; his poem “Winter,” published in the following year, had immediate success, and raised up a host of friends and patrons, and what with tutoring and the proceeds of “Summer,” “Spring,” “Autumn,” various worthless tragedies, and other products of his pen, secured a fair living, till a pension of L100 from the Prince of Wales, to whom he had dedicated the poem of “Liberty,” and a subsequent L300 a year as non-resident Governor of the Leeward Islands, placed him in comparative affluence; the “Masque of Alfred,” with its popular song “Rule Britannia,” and his greatest work “The Castle of Indolence” (1748), were the outcome of his later years of leisure; often tediously verbose, not infrequently stiff and conventional in diction and trite in its moralisings, the poetry of Thomson was yet the first of the 18th century to shake itself free of the town, and to lead, as Stopford Brooke says, “the English people into that new world of nature which has enchanted us in the work of modern poetry” (1700-1748).

THOMSON, JAMES, the poet of pessimism, born, a sailor’s son, at Port-Glasgow, and brought up in an orphanage; was introduced to literature by MR. BRADLAUGH (q. v.), to whose _National Reformer_ he contributed much of his best poetry, including his gloomy yet sonorous and impressive “The City of Dreadful Night,” besides essays (1834-1882).

THOMSON, JOHN, the artist minister of Duddingston, born at Dailly, in Ayrshire; succeeded his father in the parish of Dailly (1800), and five years later was transferred to Duddingston parish, near Edinburgh; faithful in the discharge of his parochial duties, he yet found time to cultivate his favourite art of painting, and in the course of his 35 years’ pastorate produced a series of landscapes which won him wide celebrity in his own day, and have set him in the front rank of Scottish artists (1778-1840).

THOMSON, JOSEPH, African explorer, born at Thornhill, studied at Edinburgh University, and in 1878 was appointed zoologist to the Royal Geographical Society’s expedition to Lake Tanganyika, which, after the death of the leader, Keith Johnston, at the start, he, at the age of 20, carried through with notable success; in 1882 explored with important geographical results Massai-land, and subsequently headed expeditious up the Niger and to Sokoto, and explored the Atlas Mountains; published interesting accounts of his various travels (1858-1895).

THOMSON, SIR WILLIAM, LORD KELVIN, great physicist, born at Belfast; studied at St. Peter’s College, Cambridge; was senior wrangler in 1845, and elected professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow in 1846; it is in the departments of heat and electricity he has accomplished his greatest achievements, and his best-known work is the invention of the siphon-recorder for the Atlantic cable, on the completion of which, in 1866, he was knighted, to be afterwards raised to the peerage in 1892; he has invented a number of ingenious and delicate scientific instruments, as well as written extensively on mathematical and physical subjects; _b_. 1824.

THOR, in the Norse mythology “the god of thunder; the thunder was his wrath, the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of Thor’s angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of heaven is the all-rending hammer flung from the hand of Thor; he urges his loud chariot over the mountain tops–that is the peal; wrathful he ‘blows in his beard’–that is the rustling of the storm-blast before the thunder begin”; he is the strongest of the gods, the helper of both gods and men, and the mortal foe of the chaotic powers.

THOREAU, HENRY DAVID, an American author who, next to his friend and neighbour Emerson, gave the most considerable impulse to the “transcendental” movement in American literature, born in Concord, where his life was mostly spent, of remote French extraction; was with difficulty enabled to go to Harvard, where he graduated, but without distinction of any sort; took to desperate shifts for a living, but simplified the problem of “ways and means” by adopting Carlyle’s plan of “lessening your denominator”; the serious occupation of his life was to study nature in the woods around Concord, to make daily journal entries of his observings and reflections, and to preserve his soul in peace and purity; his handicrafts were unwelcome necessities thrust upon him; “What after all,” he exclaims, “does the practicalness of life amount to? The things immediate to be done are very trivial; I could postpone them all to hear this locust sing. The most glorious fact in my experience is not anything I have done or may hope to do, but a transient thought or vision or dream which I have had”; his chief works are “Walden,” the account of a two years’ sojourn in a hut built by his own hands in the Concord Woods near “Walden Pool,” “A Week on the Concord and Merrimac River,” essays, poems, etc. (1817-1862).

THORN (27), a town and fortress of the first rank in West Prussia, on the Vistula, 115 m. NW. of Warsaw; formerly a member of the HANSEATIC LEAGUE (q. v.); was annexed by Prussia in 1815; the birthplace of Copernicus; carries on a brisk trade in corn and timber.

THORNBURY, GEORGE WALTER, a miscellaneous writer, author of numerous novels, “Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads,” “Life of Turner,” “Old and New London,” etc.; born in London, where his life was spent in literary work (1828-1876).

THORNHILL, SIR JAMES, an English artist of the school of Le Brun, born at Woodland, Dorsetshire; treated historical subjects in allegorical fashion, and was much in request for decorative work, his most notable achievements being the decoration of the dome of St. Paul’s, of rooms in Hampton Court, Blenheim House, and Greenwich Hospital; was sergeant-painter to Queen Anne, and was knighted by George I.; member of Parliament from 1719 till his death (1676-1734).

THORNYCROFT, HAMO, sculptor, born in London; has done statues of General Gordon (1885), John Bright (1892), and Oliver Cromwell (1899); _b_. 1850.

THOROUGH, name given by the EARL OF STRAFFORD (q. v.) to a scheme of his to establish absolute monarchy in England.

THORWALDSEN, BERTEL, an eminent Danish sculptor, born near Copenhagen, the son of a poor Icelander; won a Government scholarship at the Academy of Copenhagen in 1793, which enabled him to study in Rome, where he was greatly inspired by the ancient Greek sculptures, and fired with the ambition of emulating the classical masters; Canova encouraged him, and a fine statue of Jason established his reputation; his life henceforth was one of ever-increasing fame and prosperity. Denmark received him with highest honour in 1819, but the milder Italian climate better suited his health, and he returned to Rome, where he executed all his great works; these deal chiefly with subjects chosen from the Greek mythology, in which he reproduces with marvellous success the classic spirit and conception; executed also a colossal group of “Christ and the Twelve Apostles,” “St. John Preaching in the Wilderness,” and other religious subjects, besides statues of Copernicus and Galileo, and the celebrated reliefs “Night” and “Morning”: bequeathed to his country his large fortune and nearly 300 of his works, now in the Thorwaldsen Museum, one of the great sights of Copenhagen (1770-1844).

THOTH, the Egyptian Mercury, inventor of arts and sciences; represented as having the body of a man and the head of a lamb or ibis.

THOU, JACQUES-AUGUSTE DE, a celebrated historian, born at Paris; enjoyed the favour of Henry III., and by Henry IV. was appointed keeper of the royal library; his history of his own times is a work of great value as a clear and remarkably impartial survey of an interesting period of European history (1553-1617).

THOUSAND ISLANDS, 2000 islands which stud the river St. Lawrence below Kingston, at the outlet of the river from Lake Ontario.

THRACE, in ancient Greece, was a region, ill defined, stretching N. of Macedonia to the Danube, and W. of the Euxine (Black Sea); appears never to have been consolidated into one kingdom, but was inhabited by various Thracian tribes akin to the Greeks, but regarded by them as barbarians; since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks the northern portion of Thrace has been annexed to Eastern Roumelia, while the remainder has continued a portion of the Turkish empire.

THRASYBULUS, famous Athenian general and democratic statesman; came to the front during the later part of the Peloponnesian War; took an active share in overturning the oligarchy of the Four Hundred, and in recalling Alcibiades (411 B.C.); was exiled by the Thirty Tyrants, and withdrew to Thebes, but subsequently was permitted to return, and later was engaged in commanding Athenian armies against Lesbos and in support of Rhodes; was murdered (389 B.C.) by natives of Pamphylia.

THREE HOURS’ AGONY, a service held on Good Friday from 12 noon till 3 o’clock to commemorate the Passion of Christ.

THREE RIVERS (9), capital of St. Maurice Co., Quebec, 95 m. NE. of Montreal; does a considerable trade in lumber, iron-ware, &c.; is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop.

THRING, EDWARD, a celebrated educationist, born at Alford Rectory, Somersetshire; educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he obtained a Fellowship; entered the Church, and served in various curacies till in 1853 he began his true lifework by an appointment to the head-mastership of Uppingham School, which he raised to a high state of efficiency, and stamped with the qualities of his own strong personality, as did Arnold at Rugby; published various educational works, “The Theory and Practice of Teaching,” “Addresses,” “Poems and Translations,” &c. (1821-1887).

THROGMORTON, SIR NICHOLAS, English diplomatist; was ambassador in Paris under Elizabeth, and afterwards to Scotland; fell into disgrace as involved in an intrigue for the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, with the Duke of Norfolk (1513-1571).

THUCYDIDES, historian of the Peloponnesian War, born in Athens nine years after the battle of Salamis, of a wealthy family; was in Athens during the plague of 430 B.C.; was seized, but recovered; served as naval commander in 424 in the Peloponnesian War, but from neglect of duty was banished; returned from exile 20 years after; his great achievement is his history, all derived from personal observation and oral communication, the materials of which were collected during the war, and the whole executed in a style to entitle it to rank among the noblest literary monuments of antiquity; it is not known how or when he died, but he died before his history was finished.

THUGS, a fraternity of professed worshippers of the goddess Kali, the wife of Siva, who, professedly to propitiate her, practised murder, and lived on the spoils of the victims. THUGGEE, a name for the practice, originally by strangling and at times by poisoning.

THULE, ULTIMA, name given by the ancients to the farthest N. part of Europe, which they conceived as an island.

THUN (6), a quaint old town of Switzerland, on the Aar, 17 m. SE. of Bern, and barely 1 m. distant from Lake of Thun (12 m. by 2 m.); has a 12th-century castle, &c.

THUNDERER, name given to the _Times_, from certain powerful articles in it ascribed to the editor, Captain Edward Stirling.

THURGAU (105), a canton of Switzerland, on the NE. frontier, where Lake Constance for a considerable distance forms its boundary; inhabitants are mainly Protestant; country is hilly but not mountainous, fertile, and traversed by the river Thur, a tributary of the Rhine; capital Frauenfeld.

THURIBLE, a censer suspended by chains and held in the hand by a priest during mass and other offices of the Romish Church.

THUeRINGIA, originally the territory of the Thuringians (an ancient German tribe), now an integral portion of the German empire, occupies a central position, with Saxony on its N. and E., and Bavaria on the S.; a considerable portion of it is covered by the Thuringian Forest.

THURLES (5), a town of Tipperary, on the Suir, 87 m. SW. of Dublin; is the seat of a Catholic archbishop, college, and cathedral; in the vicinity are the fine ruins of Holy Cross Abbey.

THURLOW, EDWARD, BARON, a noted lawyer and politician of George III.’s reign, born, a clergyman’s son, at Bracon-Ash, Norfolk; quitted Cambridge without a degree, and with a reputation for insubordination and braggadocio rather than for scholarship; called to the bar in 1754, he soon made his way, aided by an imposing presence, which led Fox to remark, “No man ever was so wise as Thurlow looked”; raised his reputation by his speeches in the great Douglas case, and through influence of the Douglas family was made a King’s counsel; entered Parliament in 1768; became a favourite of the king, and rose through the offices of Solicitor-General and Attorney-General to the Lord Chancellorship in 1778, being raised to the peerage as Baron; lost his position during the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North, but was restored by Pitt, who, however, got rid of him in 1792, after which his appearances in public life were few; not a man of fine character, but possessed a certain rough vigour of intellect which appears to have made considerable impression on his contemporaries (1732-1806).

THURSDAY, fifth day of the week, dedicated to THOR (q. v.).

THURSDAY ISLAND, a small island in Normanby Sound, Torres Strait, belonging to Queensland, and used as a Government station; has a fine harbour, Port Kennedy, largely used for the Australian transit trade; also the centre of valuable pearl fisheries.

THURSO (4), a seaport in Caithness, at the mouth of the Thurso River, 21 m. NW. of Wick; does a brisk trade in agricultural produce, cattle, and paving stones.

THYRSUS, an attribute of Dionysus, being a staff or spear entwined with ivy leaves and a cone at the top; carried by the devotees of the god on festive occasions; the cone was presumed to cover the spear point, a wound from which was said to cause madness.

TIAN-SHAN (“Celestial Mountains”), a great mountain range of Central Asia, separating Turkestan from Eastern and Chinese Turkestan; highest summit Kaufmann Peak, 22,500 ft.

TIBER, a river of Italy celebrated in ancient Roman history, rises in the Apennines, in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany; rapid and turbid in its upper course, but navigable 100 m. upwards from its mouth; flows generally in a S. direction, and after a course of about 260 m. enters the Mediterranean about 15 m. below Rome.

TIBERIUS, second Roman emperor, born at Rome; was of the Claudian family; became the step-son of Augustus, who, when he was five years old, had married his mother; was himself married to Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa, but was compelled to divorce her and marry Augustus’s daughter Julia, by whom he had two sons, on the death of whom he was adopted as the emperor’s successor, whom, after various military services in various parts of the empire, he succeeded A.D. 14; his reign was distinguished by acts of cruelty, specially at the instance of the minister Sejanus, whom out of jealousy he put to death; given up to debauchery, he was suffocated in a fainting fit by the captain of the Praetorian Guards in A.D. 37, and succeeded by Caligula; it was during his reign Christ was crucified.

TIBERT, SIR, the cat in “Reynard the Fox.”