fertile, and is in great part under cultivation, yielding corn, vines, and fruits, agriculture being the chief industry of the population; there are only four towns whose inhabitants exceed 20,000, of which Stuttgart is one, and Ulm, the capital, is the other; the towns are the centres of varied manufactures; education is of a high standard; and associated with the country is a number of famous names-enough to mention the names of Kepler, Schiller, Hegel, Schelling, and Strauss; the government is constitutional, under a hereditary sovereign.
WURTZ, CHARLES ADOLPHE, celebrated French chemist, born at Strasburg (1817-1884).
WUeRZBURG (51), a Bavarian town in a valley of the Main, 70 m. SB. of Frankfort; its principal buildings are the Royal or Episcopal Palace, the cathedral, and the university, with the Julius Hospital, called after its founder, Bishop Julius, who was also founder of the university, which is attended by 1500 students, mostly medical, and has a library of 100,000 volumes; the fortress of Marienberg, overlooking the town, was till 1720 the episcopal palace.
WUTTKE, KARL, theologian, born at Breslau, professor at Halle; wrote on Christian ethics, stoutly maintained the incompatibility of Christianity with democracy, that a Christian could not be a democrat or a democrat a Christian (1819-1870).
WYANDOTS, a tribe of North American Indians of the Iroquois stock; were nearly exterminated in 1636, but a feeble remnant of them now occupy a small district in the Indian Territory.
WYATT, RICHARD, sculptor, born in London; studied in Home under Canova, and had Gibson for fellow-student; a man of classical tastes, and produced a number of exquisitely-modelled, especially female, figures (1795-1850).
WYATT, SIR THOMAS, English poet, courtier, and statesman, born at Allington Castle, in Kent, and educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge; was a welcome presence at court, a friend of Anne Boleyn, in high favour with the king, and knighted in 1537; did a good deal of diplomatic work in Spain and the Netherlands, and died on his way to meet the Spanish ambassador and convoy him to London; he had travelled in Italy, had studied the lyric poets of Italy, especially Petrarch, and, along with Surrey, imported their sentiment into English verse, “amourist poetry,” as it has been called, “a poetry extremely personal, and personal as English poetry had scarcely ever been before” (1503-1542).
WYATT, SIR THOMAS, the younger, only son of the preceding; was leader of the rebellion that broke out in 1554 in consequence of the settlement of the marriage between Queen Mary and Philip of Spain, in which, being repulsed at Temple Bar, he surrendered, was committed to the Tower, and for which he was executed, Lady Jane Grey and her husband following to the same doom shortly after (1520-1554).
WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM, dramatist, born in Shropshire, of good birth, and resided for a time in Paris, being admitted to the circle of the Precieuses, but returned to England at the Restoration, and became a figure at the court; his plays were marked with the coarseness of the time, and his best were “The Country Wife” (1675) and the “Plain Dealer” (1677); married the Countess of Drogheda for her fortune, a legacy which cost him only lawsuits and imprisonment for debt; succeeded to his paternal estate when he was an old man; married again, and died immediately after (1640-1715).
WYCLIFFE, JOHN. See Wicliffe.
WYCOMBE, HIGH (13), a market-town in Buckinghamshire, on the Wye, 25 m. SE. of Oxford; has a parish church built in the Norman style in 1273 and restored in 1887, and several public buildings; the manufacture of chairs, lace, and straw-plait among the leading industries.
WYE, a lovely winding river in South Wales, which rises near the source of the Severn on Plinlimmon, and falls into its estuary at Chepstow, 125 m. from its head; rapid in its course at first, it becomes gentler as it gathers volume; barges ascend it as far as Hereford, but a high tidal wave makes navigation dangerous at its mouth.
WYKEHAM, WILLIAM OF, bishop of Winchester, born in Hampshire of humble parentage; was patronised by the governor of Winchester Castle and introduced by him to Edward III., who employed him to superintend the rebuilding of Windsor Castle, and by-and-by made him Privy Seal and Lord Chancellor, though he fell into disgrace towards the close of Edward’s reign; was restored to favour in Richard II.’s reign and once more made Chancellor; in his later years he founded the New College, Oxford, built and endowed St. Mary’s College, Winchester, and rebuilt the cathedral there. He was less of a theologian than an architect; was disparagingly spoken of by John Wickliffe as a “builder of castles,” and his favourite motto was, “Manners make the man”; (1324-1404).
WYNNAD, a highland district in the Western Ghats, Madras Presidency, with extensive coffee plantations, and a wide distribution of auriferous quartz rock, the working of which has been on an extravagant scale, and has involved the loss of much capital.
WYNTOUN, ANDREW OF, Scottish chronicler; lived at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries; was canon regular of St. Andrews and prior of St. Serf, Lochleven; the subject of his “Original Chronicle,” as he calls it, was Scottish history, introduced by foreign from the creation downwards, and it was written in verse that can hardly be called poetry; it is of value historically and interesting philologically, and consists of nine books or cantos; it is to him we owe “When Alexander our King was dead.”
WYOMING (60), a North-West State of the American Union, chiefly on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, an elevated region about three times the area of Ireland and a comparatively sparse population, settled principally along the line of the Union Pacific Railway; it has a very rugged surface, and abounds in deep canons and frowning precipices, the lakes also are deep, and there are immense geysers, one, the Great Geyser, throwing up a volume of water 300 ft. high; it is rich in minerals, yields good crops of various grains, rears large herds of horses and cattle, as well as game on its moors, and trout and salmon in its rivers. See YELLOWSTONE PARK.
WYOMING VALLEY, a fertile valley in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River, 20 m. long by 5 broad; it was the scene of a series of contests between rival settlers, when the last of them were set upon by an invading force, forced to surrender, and either massacred or driven forth from the valley; Campbell’s “Gertrude of Wyoming” relates to this last disaster.
WYSS, JOHANN RUDOLF, Swiss litterateur, born at Bern, professor of Philosophy there; the author of the “Swiss Family Robinson,” on which alone his title to fame rests (1781-1830).
WYVERN, a heraldic device in shape of a dragon with expanded wings, with only two legs and the pointed tail of a scorpion.
X
XANTHUS, principal city in ancient Lycia, on a river of the same name, celebrated for its temples and works of art; sustained two sieges, the last of which terminated in the self-destruction of its inhabitants; ruins of it exist, and are Cyclopean; also the name of a river in the Troad, called also the Scamander.
XANTIPPE, the name of the wife of Socrates, a woman of a peevish and shrewish disposition, the subject of exaggerated gossip in Athens, to the exaltation of the temper of her husband, which it never ruffled. She is quaintly described by an old English writer as “a passing shrewde, curste, and wayward woman, wife to the pacient and wise philosopher Socrates.”
XAVIER, ST. FRANCIS, a Jesuit missionary, styled usually the “Apostle of the Indies,” born, of a noble family, in the north of Spain; a student of Sainte Barbe in Paris, he took to philosophy, became acquainted with Ignatius Loyola, and was associated with him in the formation of the Jesuit Society; was sent in 1541, under sanction of the Pope, by John III. of Portugal to Christianise India, and arrived at Goa in 1542, from whence he extended his missionary labours to the Eastern Archipelago, Ceylon, and Japan, in which enterprises they were attended with signal success; on his return to Goa in 1552 he proceeded to organise a mission to China, in which he experienced such opposition and so many difficulties that on his way to carry on his work there he sickened and died; he was buried at Goa; beatified by Paul V. in 1619, and canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622 (1506-1552).
XEBEC, a small three-masted vessel with lateen and square sails, used formerly in the Mediterranean by the Algerine pirates, and mounted with guns.
XENIEN, the name, derived from Martial, of a series of stinging epigrams issued at one time by Goethe and Schiller, which created a great sensation and gave offence to many, causing “the solemn empire of dulness to quake from end to end.”
XENOCRATES, an ancient philosopher and a disciple of Plato, born in Chalcedon, and a successor of Plato’s in the Academy as head of it; _d_. 314 B.C.
XENOPHANES, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, born in Asia Minor; was the first to enunciate the doctrine “all is one,” but “without specifying,” says SCHWEGLER, “whether this unity was intellectual or moral…. Aristotle says he called God the one.” See ELEATICS.
XENOPHON, historian, philosopher, and military commander, born at Athens, son of an Athenian of good position; was a pupil and friend of Socrates; joined the expedition of Cyrus against his brother Artaxerxes, and on the failure of it conducted the ten thousand Greeks–“the Retreat of the Ten Thousand”–who went up with him back to the Bosphorus, served afterwards in several military adventures, brought himself under the ban of his fellow-citizens in Athens, and retired to Elis, where he spent 20 years of his life in the pursuits of country life and in the prosecution of literature; the principal of his literary works, which it appears have all come down to us, are the “Anabasis,” being an account in seven books of the expedition of Cyrus and his own conduct of the retreat; the “Memorabilia,” in four books, being an account of the life and teaching and in defence of his master Socrates; the “Helenica,” in seven books, being an account of 49 years of Grecian history in continuation of Thucydides to the battle of Mantinea; and “Cyropaedeia,” in eight books, being an ideal account of the education of Cyrus the Elder. Xenophon wrote pure Greek in a plain, perspicuous, and unaffected style, had an eye to the practical in his estimate of things, and professed a sincere belief in a divine government of the world (435-354 B.C.).
XERES (61), a town in Spain, 14 m. NE. of Cadiz, a well-built, busy town, and the centre of the trade in sherry wine, which takes its name from it, and of which there are large stores.
XERXES, a king of Persia, son of Darius I., whom he succeeded on the throne in 485 B.C.; in his ambition to subdue Greece, which, after suppressing a revolt in Egypt, he in 481 essayed to do with an immense horde of men both by sea and land, he with his army crossed the Hellespont by means of a bridge of boats, was checked for a time at Thermopylae by Leonidas and his five hundred, advanced to Athens to see his fleet destroyed at Salamis by Themistocles, fled at the sight by the way he came, and left Mardonius with 300,000 men to carry out his purpose, but, as it happened, to suffer defeat on the fatal field of Plataea in 479, and the utter annihilation of all his hopes; the rest of his life he spent in obscurity, and he was assassinated in 465 by Artabanus, the captain of his bodyguard, after a reign of 20 years.
XESIBELAND, a region in South Africa lying between Griqualand East and Pondoland; was annexed to Cape Colony in 1886.
XIMENES DE CISNEROS, FRANCISCO, cardinal and statesman, born in Castile, of a poor but noble family; studied at Salamanca and went to Rome, where he gained favour with the Pope, who appointed him to the first vacant ecclesiastical preferment in Spain, as the result of which he in 1495 became archbishop of Toledo, but not till he was 60 years of age; in 10 years after this he became regent of Spain, and conducted the affairs of the kingdom with consummate ability. He was a severe man, and he was careful to promote what he considered the best and highest interests of the nation; but he was narrow-minded, and did often more harm than good; he was intolerant of heresy such as the Church deemed it to be, and contrived by his policy to confer more than sovereign rights upon the crown. He was to Spain pretty much what Richelieu was to France.
XINGU, a river in Brazil, which rises in the heart of the country, and after a course of 1300 m. falls into the Amazon 210 m. W. of Para.
XUCAR or JUCAR, a river of Valencia, in Spain, which rises near the source of the Tagus, and after a course of 317 m. falls diminished into the Mediterranean, most of its water having been drained off for purposes of irrigation in connection with orange-gardens on its way, gardens which yield, it is said, 20 millions of oranges a year.
Y
YABLONOI MOUNTAINS, a range of mountains which extend NE. from the Altai chain, and run S. of Lake Baikal, near the frontier of China, dividing the basin of the Amur from that of the Lena.
YACU-MAMA, a fabulous marine monster, said to haunt the lagoons of the Amazon, and to suck into its mouth and swallow whatever comes within a hundred yards of it; before bathing in a lagoon, where he apprehends its presence, the Indian sounds a horn, the effect of which is to make it reveal itself if it is there.
YAHOO, name of a race of brutes, subject to the Houyhuhnms (q. v.), in “Gulliver’s Travels,” with the form and all the vices of men.
YAJUR-VEDA, one of the books of the VEDAS (q. v.), containing the prescribed formulae in connection with sacrifices.
YAKSHA, a species of gnome in the Hindoo mythology.
YAKUTSK (5), a capital town in East Siberia, on a branch of the Lena; occupied chiefly by traders in furs, hides, &c.; is said to be the coldest town in the world.
YALE UNIVERSITY, a well-equipped university at New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., founded in 1701, which derives its name from Elihu Yale, a Boston man, and which was given to it in recognition of his benefactions; it occupies a square in the heart of the city, has a staff of 70 professors, besides tutors and lecturers, also 1200 students, and a library of 200,000 volumes; the faculties include arts, medicine, law, theology, fine arts, and music, while the course of study extends over four years.
YAMA, in the Hindu mythology “a solar hero who rules over the dead; might have lived as an immortal, but chose to die; was the first to traverse the road from which there is no return, tracing it for future generations; in the remotest extremity of the heavens, the abode of light and the eternal waters, he reigns in peace and in union with VARUNA (q. v.); there by the sound of his flute, under the branches of the mythic tree, he assembles around him the dead who have lived nobly, they reach him in a crowd, convoyed by AGNI (q. v.), grimly scanned as they pass by two monstrous dogs that are the guardians of the road.”
YAMBO or YAMBU, the port of Medina, in Arabia, on the Red Sea.
YANAON (5), a small patch of territory belonging to France, on the Godavery, enclosed in the British province of Madras, India.
YANG-TSZE-KIANG, or the Blue, or Great, River, the largest river in China and in the East; rises in the plateau of Tibet, and after a course of 3200 m., draining and irrigating great part of China by the way, falls by a wide estuary into the Yellow Sea, terminating near Shanghai; it has numerous tributaries, some of great length, and is of great value to the country as a waterway; it is navigable 1000 m. from its mouth, and at Hankow, 700 m. up, is a mile in width.
YANKEE, slang name for a New Englander; applied in England to the citizens of the United States generally; it is of uncertain derivation.
YAPURA, an affluent of the Amazon, which rises in Columbia; has a course of 1750 m., and is navigable to steamers for 970 m.
YARKAND (60), the capital or chief city of Eastern Turkestan, 100 m. SE. of Kashgar; is in the centre of a very fertile district of the vast continental basin of Central Asia, abounding also in large stores of mineral wealth; it is a great emporium of trade, and the inhabitants are mostly Mohammedans.
YARMOUTH (49), a seaport, fishing town, and watering-place of Norfolk, 201/2 m. E. of Norwich and some 2 m. above the mouth of the Yare; is the principal seat of the English herring fishery, and is famous for its herrings, known as bloaters; it has a fine roadstead called Yarmouth Roads, a safe anchorage for ships, being protected by sandbanks; has a number of public buildings, in particular a parish church, one of the largest in England, and a fine marine parade.
YARRELL, WILLIAM, naturalist, born at Westminster; wrote “History of British Fishes” and “History of British Birds” (1784-1856).
YARROW, a famous Scottish stream which rises on the confines of the shires of Peebles, Dumfries, and Selkirk, passes NE. through the Loch of the Lowes and St. Mary’s Loch, and joins the Ettrick 2 m. above Selkirk after a course of 25 m.
YATES, EDMUND, journalist, founded _The World_ newspaper; wrote a supremely interesting “Autobiography” (1831-1894).
YEDDO. See TOKYO.
YELLOW SEA, or WHANG-HAI, an inlet of the Pacific, on the NE. coast of China, bounded on the E. by the Corea, including in the NW. the Gulf of Pechili, some 600 m. long, and its average breadth 300 m.; is very shallow, and gradually silting up owing to the quantity of alluvium brought down by the rivers which fall into it.
YELLOWSTONE, THE, a river which rises in the NW. of WYOMING (q. v.), and falls into the Missouri as one of its chief tributaries after a course of 1300 m.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, a high-lying tract of land in the State of WYOMING (q. v.) traversed by the Yellowstone, about the size of Kent, being a square about 75 m. in diameter; is set apart by Congress as a great pleasure ground in perpetuity for the enjoyment of the people; it abounds in springs and geysers, and care is taken that it be preserved for the public benefit, to the exclusion of all private right or liberty.
YEMEN (3,000), a province in the SW. of Arabia, bounded on the N. by Hedjaz, bordering on the Red Sea, and forming the Arabia Felix of the ancients; about 400 m. in length and 150 m. in breadth; it is a highly fertile region, and yields tropical and sub-tropical fruits, in particular coffee, dates, gums, spices, and wheat.
YENIKALE or KERTCH, a strait 20 m. long, connecting the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea.
YENISEI, a river which rises in the mountainous region that borders the plateau of Gobi, its head-waters collecting in Lake Baikal, and after a course of 3200 m. through the centre of Siberia, falls by a long estuary or gulf into the Arctic Ocean; it is the highway of a region rich in both mineral and vegetable products, the traffic on which is encouraged by privileges and bounties to the trader at the hands of the Russian government.
YENISEISK (8), a town of East Siberia, on the Yenisei, in a province of the name, and a centre of trade in it.
YEOMANRY, name given to a cavalry volunteer force the members of which provide their own horses and uniforms, with a small allowance from the Government, which is increased when called out.
YEOMEN, a name given in England to a class of freeholders next in rank to the gentry, and to certain functionaries in royal households.
YEOMEN OF THE GUARD, a body of old soldiers of soldierly presence, employed on ceremonial occasions in conjunction with the gentlemen-at-arms, as the bodyguard of the British sovereign; they were constituted in 1485, and number besides officers 100 men; the Beef-eaters, as they are called, are the wardens of the Tower, and are a different corps.
YEOVIL (9), a town in Somerset, 4 m. S. of Bristol, is in the centre of an agricultural district, and the staple industry is glove-making.
YETHOLM, a village of Roxburghshire, 7 m. SE. of Kelso; consists of two parts, Town Yetholm and Kirk Yetholm, the latter of which has for two centuries been the head-quarters of the gypsies in Scotland.
YEZD (40), a town in an oasis, surrounded by a desert, in the centre of Persia, 230 m. SE. of Ispahan; a place of commercial importance; carries on miscellaneous manufactures.
YEZIDEES, a small nation bordering on the Euphrates, whose religion is a mixture of devil worship and Ideas derived from the Magi, the Mohammedans, and the Christians.
YEZO or YESSO, the northernmost of the four large islands of Japan, is about as large as Ireland; is traversed from N. to S. by rugged mountains, several of them active volcanoes; is rich in minerals, and particularly coal; its rivers swarm with salmon, but the climate is severe, and it is only partially settled.
YGGDRASIL. See IGGDRASIL.
YIDDISH, a kind of mongrel language spoken by foreign Jews in England.
YMIR, a giant in the Norse mythology, slain by the gods, and out of whose carcass they constructed the world, his blood making the sea, his flesh the land, his bones the rocks, his eyebrows Asgard, the dwelling-place of the gods, his skull the vault of the firmament, and his brains the clouds.
YNIOL, an earl of Arthurian legend, the father of Enid, who was ousted from his earldom by his nephew the “Sparrow-Hawk,” but who, when overthrown, was compelled to restore it to him.
YOGA, in the Hindu philosophy a state of soul, emancipation from this life and of union with the divine, achieved by a life of asceticism and devout meditation; or the system of instruction or discipline by which it is achieved.
YOGIN, among the Hindus one who has achieved his _yoga_, over whom nothing perishable has any longer power, for whom the laws of nature no longer exist, who is emancipated from this life, so that death even will add nothing to his bliss, it being his final deliverance or _Nirvana_, as the Buddhists would say.
YOKOHAMA (130), principal port of entry of Japan, 18 m. SW. of Tokyo (q. v.), situated in a spacious bay, the centre of trade with the West and the head-quarters of foreign trade generally; foreigners are numerous, and the exports include silk, tea, cotton, flax, tobacco, &c.
YOKUBA (150), the largest town in Sokoto, in the Lower Soudan, with a large trade in cotton, tobacco, and indigo.
YONGE, CHARLOTTE MARY, popular novelist, born at Otterbourne, Hants; has written “Cameos of History of England,” “Landmarks of History,” &c.; has edited the _Monthly Packet_ for 30 years; _b_. 1823.
YONI, a Hindu symbol of the female principle in nature, and as such an object of worship. See LINGA.
YONKERS (48), a city of New York, U.S., on the Hudson River. 15 m. N. of New York; has factories of various kinds, and some beautiful villas occupied by New York merchants.
YONNE (344), a department of the NE. of France, watered by the Yonne, a tributary of the Seine, with forests and vineyards which yield large quantities of wine.
YORICK, a jester at the court of Denmark, whose skull Hamlet apostrophises in the churchyard; also a sinister jester in “Tristram Shandy.”
YORK (67), the county town of Yorkshire, situated at the confluence of the Foss with the Ouse, 188 m. N. of London and 22 m. NE. of Leeds; is an interesting historic town, the seat of an archbishop, and a great railway centre; known among the Romans as Eboracum, it was the centre of the Roman power in the North, relics of which as such still remain; its cathedral, known as the Minster, is one of the grandest in England; it is built on the site of a church erected as early as the 7th century, and was finished as it now exists in 1470; it is 524 ft. in length, and the transepts 250 ft., the breadth of the nave 140 ft., the height of the central tower 216 ft., and of the western one 201 ft. There are other buildings of great antiquity, and the Guildhall dates from the 15th century. It is the military head-quarters of the northern district of England.
YORK, CARDINAL, the last of the line of the Stuart royal family, who died in 1807, 19 years after his brother Charles Edward.
YORK, DUKE OF, title often given to the second son of the English sovereign, and conferred in 1892 upon Prince George, second son of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII.), and held by him till 1901. In that year the Duke and Duchess visited Australia, in order to inaugurate the new Commonwealth. Henry VIII. and Charles I. were Dukes of York, while their elder brothers were alive, and James II., till he became King.
YORKE, OLIVER, the name assumed by the editor of _Fraser’s Magazine_ when it first started.
YORKSHIRE (3,208), the largest county in England, is divided into three Ridings (i. e. thirdings or thirds) for administrative purposes, North, East, and West, with a fourth called the Ainsty, under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and aldermen of York; of these the West is the wealthiest and the most populous; contains a large coal-field, and is the centre of the woollen manufacture of the county; the East being mainly agricultural, with iron-works and shipbuilding-works; and the North mainly pastoral, with industries connected with mining and shipping. LEEDS (q. v.) is the largest town.
YORKTOWN, a small town in Virginia, U.S., on the York River, where Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in 1781.
YOSEMITE VALLEY, the most remarkable gorge in the world, in the centre of California, 140 m. E. of San Francisco, 6 m. long and from 1/2 to 24 m. broad, girt by perpendicular walls thousands of feet deep and traversed by the river Merced in a succession of falls of great height, the whole presenting a scene of mingled grandeur and beauty; it was discovered in 1851, and steps are being taken by Congress to preserve it as a place of public resort and recreation.
YOUGHAL, a seaport in co. Cork, on the estuary of Blackwater, 27 m. E. of Cork; has some structures of interest, and exports chiefly agricultural produce.
YOUNG, ARTHUR, writer on agriculture, born at Whitehall; was trained to mercantile life, which he abandoned in disgust, and took to farming, which he studied at home and abroad and practised on scientific lines, and became Secretary of the Board of Agriculture on its establishment in 1793; he elevated agriculture to the rank of a science and imparted dignity to the pursuit of it (1741-1820).
YOUNG, BRIGHAM, Mormon polygamist chief, born at Whittingham, Vermont, U.S., son of a small farmer; had no schooling, wrought as carpenter, fell in with Joe Smith’s brother, and embraced Mormonism in 1832; became one of the apostles of the Church and a preacher, and finally the head in 1851 after the settlement of the body at Utah; with all his fanaticism he was a worldly-wise man and a wise manager of secular affairs; died rich, leaving his fortune to 17 wives and 56 children (1810-1877).
YOUNG, CHARLES MAYNE, tragedian, born in London, made his _debut_ in 1798; married in 1805 a gifted young actress, Julia Anne Grimani, with whom he had often played in lover’s parts, and whom, after a brilliant partnership of 16 months on the stage together, he the year after lost in giving birth to a son; he survived her 50 years, but the love with which he loved her never faded from his heart; appeared in the Haymarket, London, in 1807 in the character of Hamlet; played afterwards other Shakespearian characters, such as Iago, Macbeth, and Falstaff in Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and took leave of the stage in 1832 in the same character in which he first appeared on it in London, and died at Brighton (1777-1856).
YOUNG, EDWARD, poet, born in Hampshire, educated at Westminster School; studied at Corpus Christi, Oxford, and obtained a Fellowship at All-Souls’ College; wrote plays and satires, but is best known to fame as the author of “Night Thoughts,” which has been pronounced “his best work and his last good work,” a poem which was once in high repute, and is less, if at all, in favour to-day, being written in a mood which is a strain upon the reader; it is “a little too declamatory,” says Professor Saintsbury, “a little too suggestive of soliloquies in an inky cloak, with footlights in front”; his “Revenge,” acted in 1721, is pronounced by the professor to be “perhaps the very last example of an acting tragedy of real literary merit”; his satires in the “Love of Fame; or, The Universal Passion,” almost equalled those of Pope, and brought him both fame and fortune; he took holy orders in 1727, and became in 1730 rector of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire; his flattery of his patrons was fulsome, and too suggestive of the toady (1681-1765).
YOUNG, JAMES, practical chemist, born in Glasgow; discovered cheap methods of producing certain substances of value in the chemical arts, and made experiments which led to the manufacture of paraffin (1811-1889).
YOUNG, ROBERT, a notorious impostor; forged certificates, and obtained deacons’ orders and curacies, and could by no penalty be persuaded to an honest life, and was hanged in the end for coining in 1700.
YOUNG, THOMAS, physicist, born in Somersetshire, of Quaker parents; studied medicine at home and abroad; renounced Quakerism, and began practice in London in 1800; was next year appointed professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution, 1802; made Secretary of the Royal Society, and was afterwards nominated for other important appointments; his principal work is a “Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts,” published in 1807, in which he propounded the undulatory theory of light, and the principle of the interference of rays; the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt occupied much of his attention, and he is credited with having anticipated Champollion in discovering the key to them (1773-1829).
YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, an association founded in London in 1844, for the benefit of young men connected with various dry-goods houses in the city, and which extended itself over the other particularly large cities throughout the country, so that now it is located in 1249 centres, and numbers in London alone some 14,000 members; its object is the welfare of young men at once spiritually, morally, socially, and physically.
YOUNG PEOPLE’S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR, a society established in 1881 by Dr. F. E. Clark, Portland, Maine, U.S., in 1898; has a membership of three and a quarter million; it is undenominational, but evangelical apparently, and its professed object is “to promote an earnest Christian life among its members, to increase their mutual acquaintanceship, and to make them more useful in the service of God.”
YOUNGSTOWN (45), a town in Ohio, U.S., with large iron factories; is in the heart of a district rich in iron and coal.
YPRES (16), an old Belgian town in West Flanders, 30 m. SW. of Bruges; was at one time a great weaving centre, and famous for its diaper linen; has much fallen off, though it retains a town-hall and a cathedral, both of Gothic architecture in evidence of what it once was; it was strongly fortified once, and has been subjected to many sieges; the manufacture of thread and lace is now the most important industry.
YRIARTE, CHARLES, French litterateur, born in Paris, of Spanish ancestry; has written works dealing with Spain, Paris, the Franco-German War, Venice, &c.; _b_. 1832.
YRIARTE, THOMAS DE, Spanish poet; studied at Madrid; was editor of the _Madrid Mercury_; his principal works “Musica,” a poem, and “Literary Fables” (1750-1790).
YSTAD, a seaport in the extreme S. of Sweden, with a commodious harbour, and a trade chiefly in corn.
YSTRADYFODWG (88), a township in Glamorgan, in a rich mining district.
YTTRIUM, a rare metal always found in combination with others, and is a blackish-gray powder; the oxide of it, yttria, is a soft whitish powder, and when ignited glows with a pure white light.
YUCATAN, a peninsula in Central America dividing the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, and one of the few peninsulas of the world that extend northwards; is a flat expanse; has a good climate and a fertile soil, yielding maize, rice, tobacco, indigo, &c.; abounds in forests of valuable wood; forms one of the States of the Mexican Republic; it bears traces of early civilisation in the ruins of temples and other edifices.
YUGA, a name given by the Hindus to the four ages of the world, and, according to M. Barth, of the gradual triumph of evil, as well as of the successive creations and destructions of the universe, following each other in the lapse of immense periods of time.
YUKON, a great river of Alaska, rises in British territory, and after a course of 2000 m. falls, by a number of mouths forming a delta, into the Behring Sea; it is navigable nearly throughout, and its waters swarm with salmon three months in the year, some of them from 80 to 120 lbs. weight, and from 5 to 6 ft. long.
YULE, the old name for the festival of Christmas, originally a heathen one, observed at the winter solstice in joyous recognition of the return northward of the sun at that period, being a relic in the N. of the old sun worship.
YULE, SIR HENRY, Orientalist, born at Inveresk, Mid-Lothian; was an officer in Bengal Engineers, and engaged in surveys in the East; was president of the Royal Asiatic Society; wrote numerous articles for Asiatic societies; his two great works, “The Book of Marco Polo the Venetian” and the “Anglo-Indian Glossary,” known by its other title as “Hobson Jobson” (1820-1889).
YUMBOES, fairies in African mythology, represented as about two feet in height, and of a white colour.
YUNG-LING, a mountain range running N. and S., which forms the eastern buttress of the tableland of Central Asia.
YUNNAN (4,000), the extreme south-western province of the Chinese Empire; is fertile particularly in the S.; yields large quantities of maize, rice, tobacco, sugar, and especially opium, and abounds in mineral wealth, including gold, silver, mercury, as well as iron, copper, and lead; the country was long a prey to revolt against the Chinese rule, but it is now, after a war of extermination against the rebels, the Panthays, the Burmese, reduced to order.
YUSTE, ST., called also St. Just, a village in Estremadura, Spain, the seat of a monastery where Charles V., Emperor of Germany, spent the last 18 years of his life, and where he died.
YVES, the patron-saint of lawyers; was a lawyer himself, and used his knowledge of the law to defend the oppressed; is called in Brittany “the poor man’s advocate.”
YVETOT (7), an old town in the dep. of Seine-Inferieure, 24 m. NW. of Rouen, with manufactures of textile fabrics, and a trade in agricultural produce, the seigneurs of which long bore the title of king, “Roi d’Yvetot,” a title satirically applied by Beranger to Napoleon, and often employed to denote an insignificant potentate with large pretensions.
Z
ZAANDAM or SAARDAM (15), a town in North Holland, 5 m. NW. of Amsterdam; intersected with a network of canals, with various manufactures, including shipbuilding, and a considerable trade; it was here Peter the Great wrought as a ship carpenter in 1699, and the house is still preserved in which he lived, with a stone tablet inscribed “Petro Magno Alexievitch.”
ZABISM. See SABIANISM.
ZACATE`CAS (40), a town of Mexico, capital of an inland province of the same name (452), 440 m. NW. of Mexico City; a great silver-mining centre, an industry which employs over 10,000 of the inhabitants; it is in a valley over 6000 ft. above the sea-level, and has several fine churches, a college, a mint, &c.
ZACHARIAS, Pope from 741 to 752; succeeded Gregory III.; set aside the Merovingian dynasty and sanctioned the elevation of Pepin the Short to the throne of France, in return for which Pepin twice over saved Rome from the Lombards.
ZACOCCIA, a king of Mozambique who, according to the LUSIAD (q. v.), received Vasco da Gama with welcome, believing him to be a Mohammedan, but conceived feelings of bitterest hatred to him when he discovered he was a Christian, and tried, but all in vain, to allure him to his ruin; the agent he employed to compass it failing, in his despair he took away his own life.
ZADIG, name of a famous novel by Voltaire, of a philosophical cast, bearing upon life as in the hands of a destiny beyond our control.
ZADKIEL, according to the Rabbins, the name of the angel of the planet Jupiter; also pseudonym assumed by Richard James Morrison, a naval officer, believer in astrology, and the compiler of an astrological almanac.
ZAGAZIG (35), a town in the Delta of Egypt, 50 m. NE. of Cairo; a railway centre, and entrepot for the cotton and grain grown in the section of the delta round it, and once a centre of worship, and the site of two temples; Tel-el-Kebir (q. v.) lies E. of it.
ZAHN, THEODOR, biblical scholar, born in Rhenish Prussia, professor of Theology at Erlangen; distinguished for his eminent scholarship in connection with the matter especially of the New Testament canon; _b_. 1838.
ZAeHRINGEN, a village 2 m. N. of Freiburg, in Baden, with a castle now in ruins which gives name to the reigning grand-ducal family of Baden, the founders of which were counts of Breisgau.
ZAIRE, name for the CONGO (q. v.) in part of its lower course.
ZAKKUM, a tree, according to Moslem belief, growing in hell, and of the bitter fruit of which the damned are compelled to eat so as to intensify their torment.
ZALEUCUS, law-giver of the ancient Locrians, a Greek people settled in Lower Italy, and who flourished in 700th century B.C.; had a supreme respect for law, and was severe in the enforcement of it; punished adultery with the forfeiture of sight; refused to exonerate his own son who had been guilty of the offence, but submitted to the loss of one of his own eyes instead of exacting the full penalty of the culprit; had established a law forbidding any one to enter the Senate-house armed; did so himself on one occasion in a sudden emergency, was reminded of the law, and straightway fell upon his sword as a sacrifice to the sovereignty of the claims of social order.
ZAMA, a fortified city of ancient Numidea, 100 m. SW. of Carthage, where HANNIBAL (q. v.) was defeated by Scipio Africanus, and the SECOND PUNIC WAR (q. v.) brought to an end, and the fate of Carthage virtually sealed.
ZAMBESI, one of the four great African rivers, and the fourth largest as regards both the volume of its waters and the area it drains, the other three being the Nile, the Congo, and the Niger; its head-streams being the Lungebungo, the Leeba, and Leeambye; it waters a rich pastoral region, and it falls into the Indian Ocean after a course of nearly 1600 m., in which it drains 600,000 sq. m. of territory, or an area three times larger than that of France; owing to cataracts and rapids it is only navigable in different stretches; at 900 m. from its mouth it plunges in a cataract known as the Victoria Falls, and which rivals in grandeur those even of Niagara.
ZAMBESIA, a territory on the Zambesi, under British protection, and in the hands of the British South Africa Company, embracing Mashonaland, Matabeleland, and the country of Khama.
ZAMORA (15), ancient town of Spain, on the right bank of the Douro, 150 m. NW. of Madrid; now in a decayed state; was a flourishing place in Moorish times; contains interesting ruins; manufactures linens and woollens, and trades in wine and fruits.
ZANGWILL, ISRAEL, litterateur, born in London, of Jewish parents in poor circumstances; practically self-taught; studied at London University, where he took his degree with triple honours; became a teacher, then a journalist; has written novels, essays, and poems; among his works the “Bachelor’s Club,” “Old Maid’s Club,” “Children of the Ghetto,” “Dreams of the Ghetto,” “The Master,” “Without Prejudice,” &c.; _b_. 1854.
ZANGWILL, LOUIS, man of letters, brother of preceding; self-taught; has written several works under the pseudonym of ZZ; distinguished himself at one time as a chess-player; _b_. 1869.
ZANTE (15), one of the Ionian Islands, 9 m. off the NW. coast of the Morea, is 24 m. long and 12 broad; raises currants, the produce of a dwarf vine, and exports large quantities annually. Zante (14), the capital, on a bay on the E. coast, is a clean and prosperous town, most so of any in the group of islands.
ZANZIBAR, a kingdom of East Africa, under British protection, consisting of the islands of Zanzibar (150), with a capital (30) of the same name, and the island of Pemba (50), and a strip of the coast extending 10 m. inland from Cape Delgado to Kipini; has a hot unhealthy climate, and a rich tropical vegetation; its products are cloves chiefly, coco-nuts, betel-nuts, and grain, and the exports ivory, india-rubber, gum, &c.; the natives are mostly Arab Mohammedans under a sultan.
ZAPOROGIANS, Cossacks of the Ukraine, who revolted under Mazeppa as chief, and were transported by Catherine II to the shores of the Sea of Azov.
ZARA (11), the capital of Dalmatia, and a seaport of Austria, on a promontory on the coast, 129 m. SE. of Trieste; it was founded by the Venetians, has a spacious harbour, was strongly fortified, and the chief manufactures are glass and a liqueur called maraschino.
ZARAGOZA. See SARAGOSSA.
ZEA, the ancient Ceos, an island of the Grecian Archipelago; of great fertility; produces wine, honey, silk, and maize.
ZEALAND, the largest island in the Danish Archipelago, situated between the Cattegat and the Baltic, being 81 m. long and 67 m. broad, with COPENHAGEN (q. v.) on the E. coast; the surface is nearly everywhere fiat, and agriculture and cattle-rearing the chief industries.
ZEALAND (213), a province of the Netherlands, formed chiefly of islands, of which WALCHEREN (q. v.) is one, constituting a delta as if formed by the Maas and Scheldt; great part of it is reclaimed from the sea.
ZEALAND, NEW. See NEW ZEALAND.
ZEALOTS, THE, a fanatical party among the Jews in Judea, who rose in revolt against the Roman domination on the appointment over them of a Roman governor instead of a native prince, which they regarded as an insult to their religion and religious belief.
ZEBU, one of the Visaya group of the Philippine Islands, E. of Negros.
ZECHARIAH, a Hebrew prophet who appears to have been born in Babylon during the captivity, and to have prophesied in Jerusalem at the time of the restoration, and to have contributed by his prophecies to encourage the people in rebuilding the temple and reorganising its worship; his prophecies are divided into two great sections, but the authenticity of the latter has been much debated; he is reckoned one of the Minor Prophets.
ZEDLITZ, JOSEPH CHRISTIAN VON, poet, born in Austrian Silesia; entered and served in the army, and did service as a diplomatist; wrote dramas and lyrics, and translated Byron’s “Childe Harold” into German (1790-1862).
ZEEHAN, a township of recent growth on the W. coast of Tasmania, with large silver-lead mines wrought by several companies, and a source of great wealth.
ZEIT-GEIST (i. e. Time-spirit), German name for the spirit of the time, or the dominant trend of life and thought at any particular period.
ZEITUN (20), a town in the province of Aleppo, with iron mines, inhabited chiefly by Armenian Christians; distinguished as having for centuries maintained their independence under Turkish oppression.
ZELLER, EDUARD, German professor of Philosophy, born in Wuertemberg; studied at Tuebingen; was first a disciple of Baur, and then of Hegel; became professor at Berlin, and devoted himself chiefly to the history of Greek philosophy, and distinguished himself most in that regard; _b_. 1814.
ZEMINDAR, in India a holder or farmer of land from the government, and responsible for the land-tax.
ZEM-ZEM, a sacred well in Mecca, and all built round along with the CAABA (q. v.); has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters; the Moslems think it the Well which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness when he was dying of thirst.
ZENANA, in India the part of a house reserved for the women among Hindu families of good caste, and to which only since 1860 Christian women missionaries have been admitted, and a freer intercourse established.
ZEND, name applied, mistakenly it would seem, by the Europeans to the ancient Iranian language of Persia, or the language in which the Zend-Avesta is written, closely related to the Sanskrit of the Vedas it appears.
ZEND-AVESTA, the name given to the sacred writings of the Guebres or Parsees, ascribed to Zoroaster, of which he was more the compiler than the author, and of which many are now lost; they represent several stages of religious development, and as a whole yield no consistent system.
ZENITH, name of Arab origin given to the point of the heaven directly overhead, being as it were the pole of the horizon, the opposite point directly under foot being called the Nadir, a word of similar origin; the imaginary line connecting the two passes through the centre of the earth.
ZENO, Greek philosopher of the ELEATIC SCHOOL (q. v.), and who flourished in 500 B.C.; was the founder of the dialectic so successfully adopted by Socrates, which argues for a particular truth by demonstration of the absurdity that would follow from its denial, a process of argument known as the _reductio ad absurdum_.
ZENO, Greek philosopher, the founder of Stoic philosophy, born at Citium, in Cyprus, son of a merchant and bred to merchandise, but losing all in a shipwreck gave himself up to the study of philosophy; went to Athens, and after posing as a cynic at length opened a school of his own in the Stoa, where he taught to extreme old age a gospel called Stoicism, which, at the decline of the heathen world, proved the stay of many a noble soul that but for it would have died without sign, although it is thus “Sartor,” in the way of apostrophe, underrates it: “Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee; thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent” (342-270 B.C.). See STOICS, THE.
ZENOBIA, queen of Palmyra and ultimately of the East, whose ambition provoked the jealousy of the Emperor Aurelian, who marched an army against her, and after a succession of defeats subdued her and brought her to Rome to adorn his triumph as conqueror, though afterwards he presented her with a domain at Tivoli, where she spent the rest of her days in queen-like dignity, with her two sons by her side; she was a woman of great courage and surpassing beauty. See LONGINUS.
ZEPHANIAH, a Hebrew prophet who prophesied in the interval between the decline and fall of Nineveh and the hostile advance of Babylon; forewarned the nation of the judgment of God impending over them for their ungodliness, and exhorted them to repentance as the only way of averting the inevitable doom, while he at the same time encouraged the faithful to persevere in their godly course with the assurance that the day of judgment would be succeeded by a day of glorious deliverance, that they would yet become “a name and a praise among the people of the earth.”
ZEPHON (searcher of secrets), name of a cherub sent, along with ITHURIEL (q. v.), by the archangel Gabriel to find out the whereabouts of Satan after his flight from hell.
ZEPHYRUS, a personification in the Greek mythology of the West Wind, and in love with Flora.
ZERMATT, a small village of the canton Valais, in Switzerland, 23 in. SW. of Brieg, a great centre of tourists and the starting-point in particular for the ascent of the Matterhorn.
ZERO, a word of Arab origin signifying a cipher, and employed to denote a neutral point in scale between an ascending and descending series, or between positive and negative.
ZEUS, the chief deity of the Greeks, the sovereign ruler of the world, the father of gods and men, the mightiest of the gods, and to whose will as central all must bow; he was the son of Kronos and Rhea; by the help of his brothers and sisters dethroned his father, seized the sovereign power, and appointed them certain provinces of the universe to administer in his name–Hera to rule with him as queen above, Poseidon over the sea, Pluto over the nether world, Demeter over the fruits of the earth, Hestia over social life of mankind; to his dynasty all the powers in heaven and earth were more or less related, descended from it and dependent on it; and he himself was to the Greeks the symbol of the intelligence which was henceforth to be the life and light of men, an idea which is reflected in the name Jupiter given him by the Romans, which means “father of the day”; he is represented as having his throne in heaven, and as wielding a thunderbolt in his right hand, in symbol of the jealousy with which he guards the order of the world established under him as chief.
ZEUSS, JOHANN KASPAR, great Celtic scholar, and the founder of Celtic philology, born at Voghtendorf, in Upper Franconia, professor at Bamberg; his great work, “Grammatica Celtica” (1806-1856).
ZEUXIS, famous Greek painter, born at Heraclea, and who flourished from 420 B.C. to the close of the century; was unrivalled in rendering types of sensuous, specially female, beauty, and his principal works are his pictures of “Helen,” “Zeus Enthroned,” “The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpent”; he is said to have given away several of his works rather than sell them, as no price could pay him for them.
ZIDON, an ancient town of Phoenicia, 20 m. N. of Tyre, and the original capital.
ZIETHEN, JOHANN JOACHIM VON, Prussian general, born in Russia; entered the army at the age of 15, served as a cavalry officer under Frederick the Great, was one of the greatest of his generals, became his personal friend, and contributed to a great many of his victories, all of which he lived through, spending his days thereafter in quiet retirement at Berlin in favour with the people and in honour to the last with the king; is described by Carlyle at 45 as “beautiful” to him, though with “face one of the coarsest,” but “face thrice-honest, intricately ploughed with thoughts which are well kept silent (the thoughts indeed being themselves mostly inarticulate, thoughts of a simple-hearted, much-enduring, hot-tempered son of iron and oatmeal); decidedly rather likeable” (1699-1786). See Carlyle’s “Frederick.”
ZIG, a giant cock in the Talmud (q. v.), which stands with its foot on the earth, touches heaven with its head, and when it spreads its wings causes a total eclipse of the sun.
ZILLERTHAL, a valley in the Tyrol, watered by the Ziller, an affluent of the Inn, some 400 of the inhabitants of which were in 1837 obliged to seek a home elsewhere because of their opposition to the practice of auricular confession, and which they found near Liegnitz, in Prussian Silesia.
ZIMBABYE, a remarkable ruin in Mashonaland, the remains apparently of some enterprising colony of nature-worshippers that settled there in ancient times, in the interest of trade presumably.
ZIMMERMANN, JOHAN GEORG VON, Swiss physician, born at Brugg, in the canton of Bern; studied at Goettingen, became the friend of HALLER (q. v.), and settled down to practice in his native town, where he continued 16 years, very successful both in medicine and literature, but “tormented with hypochondria,” and wrote his book on “Solitude,” which was translated into every European language; wrote also on “Medical Experiences,” a famed book in its day too, also on “National Pride,” and became “famed throughout the universe”; attended Frederick the Great on his deathbed, and wrote an unwise book about him, “a poor puddle of calumnies and credulities” (1728-1795). For insight into the man and his ways see CARLYLE’S “FREDERICK,” a curious record.
ZINDIKITES, a Mohammedan heretical sect, who disbelieve in Allah, and deny the resurrection and a future life.
ZINZENDORF, a German count, born in Dresden; studied at Wittenberg, came under the influence of the Pietist Spener, gave himself up to evangelical labours, and established a religious community on his estate at Herrnhut, in Saxony, consisting chiefly of a body of Moravian Brethren, who had been driven out of Bohemia and Moravia on account of their religious opinions, and were called Herrnhuters, of which he became one of the leaders and chief apostles, labouring far and wide in the propagation of their doctrines and suffering no small persecution by the way; he was an earnest man, the author of religious writings, controversial and devotional; wrote a number of hymns, and died at Herrnhut, from which he was driven forth, but to which he was allowed to return before the end (1700-1760).
ZION, that one of the four hills on which Jerusalem is built, on the SW. of the city, and the site of the palace of King David and his successors.
ZIONISM, the name given a movement on the part of the Jews to re-establish themselves in Palestine as a nation.
ZIRCONIA LIGHT, an intensely brilliant light, similar to the Drummond light, but differing from it chiefly in the employment of cones of zirconium instead of cylinders of lime; it has been superseded by the electric light.
ZIRCONIUM, a metallic element often found in connection with silica, commonly in the form of a black powder.
ZIRKNITZ, LAKE, a high-lying lake in Carniola, 20 m. SW. of Laybach, the waters of which in the dry season will sometimes disappear altogether through the fissures, and in rainy will sometimes expand into a lake 5 m. long and 3 m. broad.
ZISKA, JOHANN, Hussite leader, born in Bohemia of a noble family; began life as a page at the court of King Wenceslas, but threw up a courtier’s life in disgust for a career in arms; fought and distinguished himself by his valour against the Teutonic knights at Tannenberg in 1410, to their utter defeat; signalised himself afterwards against the Turks, and in 1413 fought on the English side at Agincourt; failing to rouse Wenceslas to avenge the death of HUSS (q. v.) and of JEROME OF PRAGUE (q. v.), he joined the Hussites, organised their forces, assumed the chief command, and in 1420 gained, with a force of 4000 men, a victory over the Emperor Sigismund with an army of 40,000 mustered to crush him; captured next year the castle of Prague, erected fortresses over the country, one in particular called Tabor, whence the name Taborites given to his party; blind of one eye from his childhood, lost the other at the siege of Ratz, fought on blind notwithstanding, gaining victory after victory, but was seized with the plague and carried off by it at Czaslav, where his remains were buried and his big mace or battle-club, mostly iron, hung honourably on the wall close by; that his skin was tanned and made into the cover of a drum is a fable; he was a tough soldier, and is called once and again in Carlyle’s “Frederick” “Rhinoceros Ziska” (1360-1424).
ZITTAU (25), a town of Saxony, 71 m. SE. of Dresden, with a magnificent Rathhaus; stands on a vast lignite deposit; manufactures cotton, linen, machinery, &c.
ZLATOUST (21), a Russian town near the Urals, 130 m. NE. of Ufa, with iron and gold mines near; manufactures sword-blades and other steel ware.
ZOAR, a small village of Ohio, U.S., 91 m. S. of Cleveland, and the seat of a German Socialistic community.
ZOeCKLER, OTTO, German theologian, professor at Greifswald; edited a “Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaft,” and other works; _b_. 1833.
ZODIAC, the name given to a belt of the heavens extending 8 deg. on each side of the ecliptic, composed of twelve constellations called signs of the zodiac, which the sun traverses in the course of a year. These signs, of which six are on the N. of the ecliptic and six on the S., are, commencing with the former, named successively: Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water-bearer; and Pisces, the Fishes. The sun enters Aries at the spring equinox and Libra at the autumnal equinox, while the first point of Cancer marks the summer solstice, and that of Capricorn the winter. The name Zodiac is derived from the Greek _zoon_, an animal, and has been given to the belt because the majority of the signs are named after animals.
ZODIACAL LIGHT, a track of light of triangular figure with its base on the horizon, which in low latitudes is seen within the sun’s equatorial plane before sunrise in the E. or after sunset in the W., and which is presumed to be due to a glow proceeding from some illuminated matter surrounding the sun.
ZOHAR, a Jewish book of cabalistic commentaries on the Old Testament.
ZOILUS, a Greek rhetorician who flourished in the 3rd century B.C.; was distinguished for the bitterness with which he criticised Homer, and whose name has in consequence become a synonym for a malignant critic, hence the saying, “Every great poet has his Zoilus.”
ZOLA, EMILE, a noted French novelist of the realistic school, or of what he prefers to call the naturalist school, born in Paris, of Italian descent; began literature as a journalist, specially in the critical department, but soon gave himself up to novel-writing, ultimately on realistic lines, and an undue catering, as some think, to a morbid interest on the seamy side of life, to which he addressed himself with great vigour and not a little graphic power, but in an entire misconception of his proper functions as an artist and a man of letters, though, it may be pleaded, he has done so from a strong conviction on his part that his duty lay the other way, and that it was high time literature should, regardless of merely dilettante aestheticism, address itself to exposing, by depicting it, the extent to which the evil genius is gnawing at and corroding the vitals of society; and it is not for a moment to be supposed he has done so from any pleasure he takes in gloating over the doings of the ghoul, or that he is in sympathy with those who do; of his works suffice it to mention here some recent ones, as the story of “Lourdes,” published in 1894, “Rome” in 1896, and “Paris” in 1897; he has recently distinguished himself by his courage in connection with the Dreyfus affair and his bold condemnation of the sentence under which Dreyfus was condemned; _b_. 1840.
ZOLAISM, name given to an excessive realism in depicting the worst side of human life and society. See ZOLA.
ZOLLVEREIN (Customs Union), a union of the German States under Prussia in 1827, and extended in 1867, to establish among them a uniform system of customs rates.
ZONES, the name given to belts of climate on the surface of the earth marked off by the tropical and polar circles, of which the former are 231/2 deg. from the equator and the latter 231/2 deg. from the poles, the zone between the tropical circles, subject to extremes of heat, being called the Torrid Zone, the zones between the polar circles and the poles, subject to extremes of cold, being called respectively the North Frigid Zone and the South Frigid Zone, and the zones north and south of the Torrid, subject to moderate temperature, being called respectively the North Temperate, and the South Temperate Zone.
ZOROASTER, ZARATHUSTHRA, or ZERDUSHT, the founder or reformer of the Parsee religion, of whom, though certainly a historical personage, nothing whatever is for certain known except that his family name was Spitama, that he was born in Bactria, and that he could not have flourished later than 800 B.C.; he appears to have been a pure monotheist, and not to be responsible for the Manichean doctrine of dualism associated with his name, as Zoroastrianism, or the institution of fire-worship.
ZOSIMUS, Greek historian; wrote a history of the Roman emperors from the time of Augustus to the year 410, and ascribed the decline of the empire to the decay of paganism (408-450).
ZOUAVES, the name given to a body of light infantry in the French army wearing the Arab dress, a costume copied from that of Kabyles, in North Africa, and adopted since the French conquest of Algiers; some regiments of them consist of French soldiers, some of Algerines, though originally the two were incorporated into one body.
ZOUTSPANSBERG, a ridge of mountains on the NE. of the Transvaal, being a continuation of the Drakensberg.
ZSCHOKKE, JOHANN HEINRICH, a German writer, born in Magdeburg, lived chiefly at Aarau, in Aargau, Switzerland, where he spent forty years of his life, part of them in the service of his adopted country, and where he died; wrote histories, and a series of tales, but is best known by his “Stunden der Andacht” (i. e. hours of devotion), on ethico-rationalistic lines (1771-1845).
ZUG (23), the smallest canton of Switzerland, and sends only one representative to the National Council; is 12 m. long by 9 m. broad; is hilly and pastoral in the SE., and has cultivated fields and orchards in the NW.; all but includes Lake Zug, at the NE. of which is Zug (5), the capital, which carries on sundry industries on a small scale.
ZUIDER ZEE (i. e. south sea), a deep inlet of the North Sea, in the Netherlands, which includes the islands of Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, and Ameland, and was formed by irruptions of the North Sea into a lake called Flevo, in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, when thousands of people were drowned; is 85 m. long and 45 m. broad, and is embraced in a circuit of 210 m.; it was for some time in contemplation to reclaim this area, and after much weighing of the matter the Dutch Government in 1897 adopted a scheme to give effect to this project; according to the scheme adopted it is reckoned it will take 31 years to complete the reclamation at the rate of several thousand acres every year.
ZULEIKA, the bride of Abydos, celebrated by Byron, a pure-souled woman of great beauty, who, in love with Selim, promises to flee with him and become his bride, but her father shoots him, and she dies of a broken heart.
ZULULAND (181), a territory to the NE. of Natal, from which it is separated by the Tugela, and of which it was independent till 1898, but it is now an integral part; it is a little larger than Belgium, is well watered, is capable of cultivation, and has 140 m. of seaboard; it is understood to possess some mineral wealth, though it has not yet been wrought.
ZULUS, a section of the Bantu family which originally occupied the SE. seaboard of Africa from Delagoa Bay to the Great Fish River; they are a race of superior physique and intellectual endowment, as well as moral temperament, and incline to a quiet pastoral life; they were attacked under Cetywayo by the English in 1879, but after falling upon an English force at Isandula, and cutting it in pieces, were overpowered at Ulundi, and put to rout.
ZUMPT, KARL, philologist, born in Berlin, and professor at the University; edited a number of the Latin classics, and is best known by his Latin Grammar (1792-1849).
ZURBARAN, FRANCISCO, Spanish painter, born in Estremadura; did mostly religious subjects; his _chef-d’oeuvre_ an altar-piece in Seville, where he lived and worked (1598-1662).
ZURICH (392), a northern canton in Switzerland, and the second largest; is in the basin of the Rhine, with a well-cultivated fertile soil, and manufactures of cottons and silks, and with a capital (151) of the same name at the foot of the Lake of Zurich; a large manufacturing and trading centre; has a Romanesque cathedral and a university, with silk mills and cotton mills, as well as foundries and machine shops; here Lavater was born and Zwingli was pastor.
ZUTPHEN (17), manufacturing town in the Dutch province of Guelderland, in the neighbourhood of which Sir Philip Sidney fell wounded in a skirmish.
ZWICKAU (50), a town in Saxony, in a division (1,389) of the same name, 82 m. SW. of Dresden; it is in the midst of rich beds of coal, and has a number of manufactures.
ZWINGLI, ULRICH, the Swiss Reformer, born at Wildhaus, in the canton of St. Gall, and founder of the Reformed Church; studied at Bern and Vienna, afterwards theology at Basel, and was appointed pastor at Glarus; he got acquainted with Erasmus at Basel, and gave himself to the study of Greek, and in particular the epistles of St. Paul; attached to the monastery of Einsiedeln he, in 1516, attacked the sale of indulgences, and was in 1518 elected to be preacher in the cathedral of Zurich; his preaching was attended with an awakening, and the bishop of Constance tried to silence him, but he was silenced himself in a public debate with the Reformer, the result of which was the abolition of the Mass and the dispensation instead of the Lord’s Supper; the movement thus begun went on and spread, and Zwingli met in conference with Luther, but they failed to agree on the matter of the Eucharist, and on that point the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches separated; in 1531 the Catholic cantons declared war against the reformers of Zurich and Bern, but the latter were defeated at Cappel, and among the dead on the battlefield was the Reformer; his last words were, “They may kill the body, but not the soul” (1484-1531). See LUTHERANS.
ZWOLLE (25), a manufacturing town in the Dutch province of Oberyssel, 50 m. NE. of Amsterdam; close to it is Agnetenberg, famous as the seat of the monastery where Thomas a Kempis lived and died.
ZYME, name of a germ presumed to be the cause of zymotic diseases.
ZYMOTIC DISEASES, diseases of a contagious nature, presumed to be due to some virus or organism which acts in the system like a ferment.