Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "David, St" to "Demidov"
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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "David, St" to "Demidov"
Author: Various
Release date: February 15, 2012 [eBook #38892]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's notes:
(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
underscore, like C_n.
(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
paragraphs.
(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
inserted.
(5) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek
letters.
(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
ARTICLE DAVIS, HENRY WINTER: "The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the
Nineteenth Century (1853), in which he combated the Southern
contention that slavery was a divine institution." 'Nineteenth'
amended from 'Ninteenth'.
ARTICLE DEAD SEA: "Among these may be mentioned 880 (1) the
explanation of a remarkable line of white foam that extends along
the axis of the lake almost every morning--supposed by Blanckenhorn
..." 'almost' amended from 'amost'.
ARTICLE DECEMVIRI: "... the name applied by the Romans to any
official commission of ten." 'commission' amended from 'commision'.
ARTICLE DEJAZET, PAULINE VIRGINIE: "French actress, born in Paris
on the 30th of August 1798, made her first appearance on the stage
at the age of five." 'August' amended from 'Ausust'.
ARTICLE DEKKER, EDWARD DOUWES: "He was ardent, provocative, perhaps
a little hysterical, but he made himself heard all over Europe."
'himself' amended from 'himelf'.
ARTICLE DEKKER, JEREMIAS DE: "(Klaagliederen van Jeremias), which
was followed by translations and imitations of Horace, Juvenal and
other Latin poets." 'Klaagliederen' amended from 'Klaagliedern'.
ARTICLE DELABORDE, HENRI FRANCOIS: "Against Sir Arthur Wellesley's
English army he fought the skillful brilliant rear-guard action of
Rolica." 'skillful' amended from 'skilful'.
ARTICLE DEMETRIUS DONSKOI: "In 1371 he won over the khan by a
personal visit to the Horde, and in 1372 he defeated the
Lithuanians at Lyubutsk." 'and' amended from 'add'.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME VII, SLICE X
David, St to Demidov
ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
DAVID, ST DEERFIELD
DAVID I. DEER PARK
DAVID II. DEFAMATION
DAVID (Welsh princes) DEFAULT
DAVID, FELICIEN DEFEASANCE
DAVID, GERARD DEFENCE
DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS DEFENDANT
DAVID, PIERRE JEAN DEFENDER OF THE FAITH
DAVIDISTS DEFERENT
DAVIDSON, ANDREW BRUCE DEFFAND, MARIE ANNE DE VICHY-CHAMROND
DAVIDSON, JOHN DEFIANCE
DAVIDSON, RANDALL THOMAS DEFILE
DAVIDSON, SAMUEL DEFINITION
DAVIDSON, THOMAS DEFOE, DANIEL
DAVIES, DAVID CHARLES DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD
DAVIES, SIR JOHN DE GEER, LOUIS GERHARD
DAVIES, JOHN DEGGENDORF
DAVIES, SIR LOUIS HENRY DE HAAS, MAURITZ FREDERICK HENDRICK
DAVIES, RICHARD DEHRA
DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO DEHRA DUN
DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON DEIOCES
DAVIS, CHARLES HOWARD DEIOTARUS
DAVIS, CUSHMAN KELLOGG DEIR
DAVIS, HENRY WILLIAM BANKS DEIRA
DAVIS, HENRY WINTER DEISM
DAVIS, JEFFERSON DEISTER
DAVIS, JOHN DEJAZET, PAULINE VIRGINIE
DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE DE KALB
DAVISON, WILLIAM DE KEYSER, THOMAS
DAVIS STRAIT DEKKER, EDWARD DOUWES
DAVITT, MICHAEL DEKKER, JEREMIAS DE
DAVOS DEKKER, THOMAS
DAVOUT, LOUIS NICOLAS DE LA BECHE, SIR HENRY THOMAS
DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY DELABORDE, HENRI FRANCOIS
DAWARI DELACROIX, FERDINAND VICTOR EUGENE
DAWES, HENRY LAURENS DE LA GARDIE, MAGNUS GABRIEL
DAWES, RICHARD DELAGOA BAY
DAWISON, BOGUMIL DELAMBRE, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH
DAWKINS, WILLIAM BOYD DELAMERE, GEORGE BOOTH
DAWLISH DE LAND
DAWN DELANE, JOHN THADEUS
DAWSON, GEORGE DELANY, MARY GRANVILLE
DAWSON, SIR JOHN WILLIAM DE LA REY, JACOBUS HERCULES
DAWSON CITY DE LA RIVE, AUGUSTE ARTHUR
DAX DELAROCHE, HIPPOLYTE
DAY, JOHN DELARUE, GERVAIS
DAY, THOMAS DE LA RUE, WARREN
DAY DELATOR
DAYLESFORD DELAUNAY, ELIE
DAYTON (Kentucky, U.S.A.) DELAUNAY, LOUIS ARSENE
DAYTON (Ohio, U.S.A.) DELAVIGNE, JEAN FRANCOIS CASIMIR
DEACON DELAWARE (state of the U.S.)
DEACONESS DELAWARE (city)
DEAD SEA DELAWARE INDIANS
DEADWOOD DELAWARE RIVER
DEAF AND DUMB DELAWARE WATER-GAP
DEAK, FRANCIS DE LA WARR
DEAL (municipal borough) DELBRUCK, HANS
DEAL (part or portion) DELBRUCK, MARTIN FRIEDRICH RUDOLF VON
DEAN DELCASSE, THEOPHILE
DEAN, FOREST OF DEL CREDERE
DEANE, RICHARD DELESCLUZE, LOUIS CHARLES
DEANE, SILAS DELESSE, ACHILLE ERNEST OSCAR JOSEPH
DEATH DELESSERT, JULES PAUL BENJAMIN
DEATH-WARNING DELFICO, MELCHIORRE
DEATH-WATCH DELFT
DE BARY, HEINRICH ANTON DELHI
DEBENTURES and DEBENTURE STOCK DELIA
DEBORAH DELIAN LEAGUE
DEBRECZEN DELIBES, CLEMENT PHILIBERT LEO
DEBT DELILAH
DEBUSSY, CLAUDE ACHILLE DELILLE, JACQUES
DECADE DELIRIUM
DECAEN, CHARLES MATHIEU ISIDORE DELISLE, JOSEPH NICOLAS
DECALOGUE DELISLE, LEOPOLD VICTOR
DE CAMP, JOSEPH DELITZSCH, FRANZ
DECAMPS, ALEXANDRE GABRIEL DELITZSCH
DECAPOLIS DELIUS, NIKOLAUS
DECASTYLE DELLA BELLA, STEFANO
DECATUR, STEPHEN DELLA CASA, GIOVANNI
DECATUR DELLA COLLE, RAFFAELLINO
DECAZES, ELIE DELLA GHERARDESCA, UGOLINO
DECAZEVILLE DELLA PORTA, GIOVANNI BATTISTA
DECCAN DELLA QUERCIA, JACOPO
DECELEA DELLA ROBBIA
DECEMBER DELMEDIGO
DECEMVIRI DELMENHORST
DECHEN, ERNST HEINRICH KARL VON DELOLME, JEAN LOUIS
DECIDUOUS DELONEY, THOMAS
DECIMAL COINAGE DE LONG, GEORGE WASHINGTON
DECIUS, GAIUS MESSIUS TRAJANUS DELORME, MARION
DECIZE DE L'ORME, PHILIBERT
DECKER, SIR MATTHEW DELOS
DECKER, PIERRE DE DE LOUTHERBOURG, PHILIP JAMES
DECLARATION DELPHI
DECLARATION OF PARIS DELPHINIA
DECLARATOR DELPHINUS
DECLINATION DELTA
DECOLOURIZING DELUC, JEAN ANDRE
DECORATED PERIOD DELUGE, THE
DE COSTA, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN DELYANNI, THEODOROS
DE COSTER, CHARLES HENRI DEMADES
DECOY DEMAGOGUE
DECREE DEMANTOID
DECRETALS DEMARATUS
DECURIO DEMERARA
DEDEAGATCH DEMESNE
DEDHAM DEMETER
DEDICATION DEMETRIA
DE DONIS CONDITIONALIBUS DEMETRIUS (king of Bactria)
DEDUCTION DEMETRIUS (kings of Macedonia)
DEE, JOHN DEMETRIUS (kings of Syria)
DEE (river of Wales) DEMETRIUS (Greek sculptor)
DEE (river of Scotland) DEMETRIUS (Cynic philosopher)
DEED DEMETRIUS DONSKOI
DEEMS, CHARLES (ALEXANDER) FORCE DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS
DEER DEMETRIUS, PSEUDO-
DEMIDOV
DAVID, ST (_Dewi, Sant_), the national and tutelar saint of Wales, whose
annual festival, known as "St David's Day," falls on the 1st of March.
Few historical facts are known regarding the saint's life and actions,
and the dates both of his birth and death are purely conjectural,
although there is reason to suppose he was born about the year 500 and
died at a great age towards the close of the 6th century. According to
his various biographers he was the son of Sandde, a prince of the line
of Cunedda, his mother being Non, who ranks as a Cymric saint. He seems
to have taken a prominent part in the celebrated synod of
Llanddewi-Brefi (see CARDIGANSHIRE), and to have presided at the
so-called "Synod of Victory," held some years later at Caerleon-on-Usk.
At some date unknown, St David, as _penescoli_ or primate of South
Wales, moved the seat of ecclesiastical government from Caerleon to the
remote headland of Mynyw, or Menevia, which has ever since, under the
name of St David's (_Ty-Dewi_), remained the cathedral city of the
western see. St David founded numerous churches throughout all parts of
South Wales, of which fifty-three still recall his name, but apparently
he never penetrated farther north than the region of Powys, although he
seems to have visited Cornwall. With the passing of time the saint's
fame increased, and his shrine at St David's became a notable place of
pilgrimage, so that by the time of the Norman conquest his importance
and sanctity were fully recognized, and at Henry I.'s request he was
formally canonized by Pope Calixtus II. about 1120.
Of the many biographies of St David, the earliest known is that of
Rhyddmarch, or Ricemarchus (c. 1090), one of the last British bishops
of St David's, from whose work Giraldus Cambrensis (q.v.) chiefly
compiled his extravagant life of the saint.
DAVID I. (1084-1153), king of Scotland, the youngest son of Malcolm
Canmore and (Saint) Margaret, sister of Edgar Aetheling, was born in
1084. He married in 1113 Matilda, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, earl
of Northumbria, and thus became possessed of the earldom of Huntingdon.
On the death of Edgar, king of Scotland, in 1107, the territories of the
Scottish crown were divided in accordance with the terms of his will
between his two brothers, Alexander and David. Alexander, together with
the crown, received Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde, David the
southern district with the title of earl of Cumbria. The death of
Alexander I. in 1124 gave David possession of the whole. In 1127, in the
character of an English baron, he swore fealty to Matilda as heiress to
her father Henry I., and when the usurper Stephen ousted her in 1135
David vindicated her cause in arms and invaded England. But Stephen
marched north with a great army, whereupon David made peace. The peace,
however, was not kept. After threatening an invasion in 1137, David
marched into England in 1138, but sustained a crushing defeat on Cutton
Moor in the engagement known as the battle of the Standard. He returned
to Carlisle, and soon afterwards concluded peace. In 1141 he joined
Matilda in London and accompanied her to Winchester, but after a narrow
escape from capture he returned to Scotland. Henceforth he remained in
his own kingdom and devoted himself to its political and ecclesiastical
reorganization. A devoted son of the church, he founded five bishoprics
and many monasteries. In secular politics he energetically forwarded the
process of feudalization which had been initiated by his immediate
predecessors. He died at Carlisle on the 24th of May 1153.
DAVID II. (1324-1371), king of Scotland, son of King Robert the Bruce by
his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh (d. 1327), was born at Dunfermline
on the 5th of March 1324. In accordance with the terms of the treaty of
Northampton he was married in July 1328 to Joanna (d. 1362), daughter of
the English king, Edward II., and became king of Scotland on his
father's death in June 1329, being crowned at Scone in November 1331.
Owing to the victory of Edward III. of England and his protege, Edward
Baliol, at Halidon Hill in July 1333, David and his queen were sent for
safety into France, reaching Boulogne in May 1334, and being received
very graciously by the French king, Philip VI. Little is known about the
life of the Scottish king in France, except that Chateau Gaillard was
given to him for a residence, and that he was present at the bloodless
meeting of the English and French armies at Vironfosse in October 1339.
Meanwhile his representatives had obtained the upper hand in Scotland,
and David was thus enabled to return to his kingdom in June 1341, when
he took the reins of government into his own hands. In 1346 he invaded
England in the interests of France, but was defeated and taken prisoner
at the battle of Neville's Cross in October of this year, and remained
in England for eleven years, living principally in London and at Odiham
in Hampshire. His imprisonment was not a rigorous one, and negotiations
for his release were soon begun. Eventually, in October 1357, after
several interruptions, a treaty was signed at Berwick by which the
Scottish estates undertook to pay 100,000 marks as a ransom for their
king. David, who had probably recognized Edward III. as his feudal
superior, returned at once to Scotland; but owing to the poverty of the
kingdom it was found impossible to raise the ransom. A few instalments
were paid, but the king sought to get rid of the liability by offering
to make Edward III., or one of his sons, his successor in Scotland. In
1364 the Scottish parliament indignantly rejected a proposal to make
Lionel, duke of Clarence, the next king; but David treated secretly with
Edward III. over this matter, after he had suppressed a rising of some
of his unruly nobles. The king died in Edinburgh Castle on the 22nd of
February 1371. His second wife was Margaret, widow of Sir John Logie,
whom he divorced in 1369; but he left no children, and was succeeded by
his nephew, Robert II. David was a weak and incapable ruler, without a
spark of his father's patriotic spirit.
See Andrew of Wyntoun, _The orygynale cronykil of Scotland_, edited by
D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1872-1879); John of Fordun, _Chronica gentis
Scotorum_, edited by W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1871-1872); J. H. Burton,
_History of Scotland_, vol. ii. (Edinburgh, 1905); and A. Lang,
_History of Scotland_, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1900).
DAVID, the name of three Welsh princes.
DAVID I. (d. 1203), a son of Prince Owen Gwynedd (d. 1169), came into
prominence as a leader of the Welsh during the expedition of Henry II.
in 1157. In 1170 he became lord of Gwynedd (i.e. the district around
Snowdon), but some regarded him as a bastard, and Gwynedd was also
claimed by other members of his family. After fighting with varying
fortunes he sought an ally in the English king, whom he supported during
the baronial rising in 1173; then after this event he married Henry's
half-sister Emma. But his enemies increased in power, and about 1194 he
was driven from Wales by the partisans of his half-brother Llewelyn ab
Iorwerth. The chronicler Benedictus Abbas calls David _rex_, and
Rhuddlan castle was probably the centre of his vague authority.
DAVID II. (c. 1208-1246) was a son of the great Welsh prince, Llewelyn
ab Iorwerth, and through his mother Joanna was a grandson of King John.
He married an English lady, Isabella de Braose, and, having been
recognized as his father's heir both by Henry III. and by the Welsh
lords, he had to face the hostility of his half-brother Gruffydd, whom
he seized and imprisoned in 1239. When Llewelyn died in April 1240,
David, who had already taken some part in the duties of government, was
acknowledged as a prince of North Wales, doing homage to Henry III. at
Gloucester. However, he was soon at variance with the English king, who
appears to have espoused the cause of the captive Gruffydd. Henry's
Welsh campaign in 1241 was bloodless but decisive. Gruffydd was
surrendered to him; David went to London and made a full submission, but
two or three years later he was warring against some English barons on
the borders. To check the English king he opened negotiations with
Innocent IV., doubtless hoping that the pope would recognize Wales as an
independent state, but here, as on the field of battle, Henry III. was
too strong for him. Just after Henry's second campaign in Wales the
prince died in March 1246.
DAVID III. (d. 1283) was a son of Gruffydd and thus a nephew of David
II. His life was mainly spent in fighting against his brother, the
reigning prince, Llewelyn ab Gruffydd. His first revolt took place in
1254 or 1255, and after a second about eight years later he took refuge
in England, returning to Wales when Henry III. made peace with Llewelyn
in 1267. Then about 1274 the same process was repeated. David attended
Edward I. during the Welsh expedition of 1277, receiving from the
English king lands in North Wales; but in 1282 he made peace with
Llewelyn and suddenly attacked the English garrisons, a proceeding which
led to Edward's final conquest of Wales. After Llewelyn's death in
December 1282 David maintained the last struggle of the Welsh for
independence. All his efforts, however, were vain; in June 1283 he was
betrayed to Edward, was tried by a special court and sentenced to death,
and was executed with great barbarity at Shrewsbury in October 1283. As
the last native prince of Wales, David's praises have been sung by the
Welsh bards, but his character was not attractive, and a Welsh historian
says "his life was the bane of Wales."
DAVID, FELICIEN (1810-1876), French composer, was born on the 13th of
April 1810 at Cadenet, in the department of Vaucluse. As a child he
showed unusual musical precocity, and being early left an orphan he was
admitted into the choir of Saint Sauveur at Aix. He was for a time
employed in an attorney's office, but quitted his service to become
_chef d'orchestre_ in the theatre at Aix, and chapel-master at Saint
Sauveur. Then he went to Paris, being provided with L100 a year by a
rich uncle. After having studied for a while at the Paris Conservatoire,
he joined the sect of Saint Simonians, and in 1833 travelled in the East
in order to preach the new doctrine. After three years' absence, during
which Constantinople and Smyrna were visited and some time was spent in
Egypt, he returned to France and published a collection of _Oriental
Melodies_. For several years he worked in retirement, and wrote two
symphonies, some chamber music and songs. On the 8th of December 1844 he
suddenly leapt into fame through the extraordinary success obtained by
his symphonic ode _Le Desert_, which was produced at the Conservatoire.
In this work David had struck out a new line. He had attempted in simple
strains to evoke the majestic stillness of the desert. Notwithstanding
its title of "symphonic ode," _Le Desert_ has little in common with the
symphonic style. What distinguishes it is a certain naivete of
expression and an effective oriental colouring. In this last respect
David may be looked upon as the precursor of a whole army of composers.
His succeeding works, _Moise au Sinai_ (1846), _Christophe Colomb_
(1847), _L'Eden_ (1848), scarcely bore out the promise shown in _Le
Desert_, although the second of these compositions was successful at the
time of its production. David now turned his attention to the theatre,
and produced the following operas in succession: _La Perle du Bresil_
(1851), _Herculanum_ (1859), _Lalla-Roukh_ (1862), _Le Saphir_ (1865).
Of these, _Lalla-Roukh_ is the one which has obtained the greatest
success. In 1868 he gained the award of the French Institute for the
biennial prize given by the emperor; and in 1869 he was made librarian
at the Conservatoire instead of Berlioz, whom subsequently he succeeded
as a member of the Institute. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the
29th of August 1876. If David can scarcely be placed in the first rank
of French composers, he nevertheless deserves the consideration due to a
sincere artist, who was undoubtedly inspired by lofty ideals. At a time
when the works of Berlioz were still unappreciated by the majority of
people, David succeeded in making the public take interest in music of a
picturesque and descriptive kind. Thus he may be considered as one of
the pioneers of modern French musical art.
DAVID, GERARD [GHEERAERT DAVIT], (?-1523), Netherlands painter, born at
Oudewater in Holland between 1450 and 1460, was the last great master of
the Bruges school. He was only rescued from complete oblivion in
1860-1863 by Mr W. J. H. Weale, whose researches in the archives of
Bruges brought to the light the main facts of the master's life. We have
now documentary evidence that David came to Bruges in 1483, presumably
from Haarlem, where he had formed his early style under the tuition of
Ouwater; that he joined the gild of St Luke at Bruges in 1484 and became
dean of the gild in 1501; that he married in 1496 Cornelia Cnoop,
daughter of the dean of the Goldsmiths' gild; became one of the leading
citizens of the town; died on the 13th of August 1523; and was buried in
the Church of Our Lady at Bruges. In his early work he had followed the
Haarlem tradition as represented by Dirck Bouts, Ouwater and Geertgen of
Haarlem, but already gave evidence of his superior power as colourist.
To this early period belong the "St John" of the Kaufmann collection in
Berlin, and Mr Salting's "St Jerome." In Bruges he applied himself to
the study and the copying of the masterpieces by the Van Eycks, Van der
Weyden, and Van der Goes, and came under the direct influence of the
master whom he followed most closely, Hans Memlinc. From him he acquired
the soulful intensity of expression, the increased realism in the
rendering of the human form and the orderly architectonic arrangement of
the figures. Yet another master was to influence him later in life when,
in 1515, he visited Antwerp and became impressed with the life and
movement of Quentin Matsys, who had introduced a more intimate and more
human conception of sacred themes. David's "Pieta" in the National
Gallery, and the "Descent from the Cross," in the Cavallo collection,
Paris (Guildhall, 1906), were painted under this influence and are
remarkable for their dramatic movement. But the works on which David's
fame will ever rest most securely are the great altar-pieces executed by
him before his visit to Antwerp--the "Marriage of St Catherine," at the
National Gallery; the triptych of the "Madonna Enthroned and Saints" of
the Brignole-Sale collection in Genoa; the "Annunciation" of the
Sigmaringen collection; and, above all, the "Madonna with Angels and
Saints" which he painted gratuitously for the Carmelite Nuns of Sion at
Bruges, and which is now in the Rouen museum. Only a few of his works
have remained in Bruges--"The Judgment of Cambyses," "The Flaying of
Sisamnes" and the "Baptism of Christ" in the Town museum, and the
"Transfiguration" in the Church of Our Lady. The rest were scattered all
over the world, and to this may be due the oblivion into which his very
name had fallen--partly to this, and partly to the fact that with all
the beauty and soulfulness of his work he had no new page to add to the
history of the progressive development of art, and even in his best work
only gave new variations of the tunes sung by his great precursors and
contemporaries. That he is worthy to rank among the masters was only
revealed to the world when a considerable number of his paintings were
assembled at Bruges on the occasion of the exhibition of early Flemish
masters in 1902. At the time of his death the glory of Bruges, and also
of the Bruges school, was on the wane, and Antwerp had taken the
leadership in art as in political and commercial importance. Of David's
pupils in Bruges, only Isenbrandt, A. Cornelis and Ambrosius Benson
achieved importance. Among other Flemish painters Joachim Patinir and
Mabuse were to some degree influenced by him.
Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen published in 1905 a very
comprehensive monograph on _Gerard David and his School_ (Munich, F.
Bruckmann), together with a _catalogue raisonne_ of his works, which,
after careful sifting, are reduced to the number of forty-three.
(P. G. K.)
DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS (1748-1825), French painter, was born in Paris on
the 30th of April 1748. His father was killed in a duel, when the boy
was but nine years old. His education was begun at the College des
Quatre Nations, where he obtained a smattering of the classics; but, his
artistic talent being already obvious, he was soon placed by his
guardian in the studio of Francois Boucher. Boucher speedily realized
that his own erotic style did not suit the lad's genius, and recommended
him to J. M. Vien, the pioneer of the classical reaction in painting.
Under him David studied for some years, and, after several attempts to
win the _prix de Rome_, at last succeeded in 1775, with his "Loves of
Antiochus and Stratonice." Vien, who had just been appointed director of
the French Academy at Rome, carried the youth with him to that city. The
classical reaction was now in full tide; Winckelmann was writing,
Raphael Mengs painting; and the treasures of the Vatican galleries
helped to confirm David in a taste already moulded by so many kindred
influences. This severely classical spirit inspired his first important
painting, "_Date obolum Belisario_," exhibited at Paris in 1780. The
picture exactly suited the temper of the times, and was an immense
success. It was followed by others, painted on the same principles, but
with greater perfection of art: "The Grief of Andromache" (1783), "The
Oath of the Horatii" (Salon, 1785), "The Death of Socrates," "Love of
Paris and Helen" (1788), "Brutus" (1789). In the French drama an
unimaginative imitation of ancient models had long prevailed; even in
art Poussin and Le Sueur were successful by expressing a bias in the
same direction; and in the first years of the revolutionary movement the
fashion of imitating the ancients even in dress and manners went to the
most extravagant length. At this very time David returned to Paris; he
was now painter to the king, Louis XVI., who had been the purchaser of
his principal works, and his popularity was soon immense. At the
outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, David was carried away by the flood
of enthusiasm that made all the intellect of France believe in a new era
of equality and emancipation from all the ills of life.
The success of his sketch for the picture of the "Oath of the Tennis
Court," and his pronounced republicanism, secured David's election to
the Convention in September 1792, by the _Section du Museum_, and he
quickly distinguished himself by the defence of two French artists in
Rome who had fallen into the merciless hands of the Inquisition. As, in
this matter, the behaviour of the authorities of the French Academy in
Rome had been dictated by the tradition of subservience to authority, he
used his influence to get it suppressed. In the January following his
election into the Convention his vote was given for the king's death.
Thus the man who was so greatly indebted to the Roman academy and to
Louis XVI. assisted in the destruction of both, no doubt in obedience to
a principle, like the act of Brutus in condemning his sons--a subject he
painted with all his powers. Cato and stoicism were the order of the
day. Hitherto the actor had walked the stage in modern dress. Brutus had
been applauded in red-heeled shoes and _culottes jarretees_; but Talma,
advised by David, appeared in toga and sandals before an enthusiastic
audience. At this period of his life Mademoiselle de Noailles persuaded
him to paint a sacred subject, with Christ as the hero. When the picture
was done, the Saviour was found to be another Cato. "I told you so," he
replied to the expostulations of the lady, "there is no inspiration in
Christianity now!" David's revolutionary ideas, which led to his
election to the presidency of the Convention and to the committee of
general security, inspired his pictures "Last Moments of Lepelletier de
Saint-Fargeau" and "Marat Assassinated." He also arranged the programme
of the principal republican festivals. When Napoleon rose to power David
became his enthusiastic admirer. His picture of Napoleon on horseback
pointing the way to Italy is now in Berlin. During this period he also
painted the "Rape of the Sabines" and "Leonidas at Thermopylae."
Appointed painter to the emperor, David produced the two notable
pictures "The Coronation" (of Josephine) and the "Distribution of the
Eagles."
On the return of the Bourbons the painter was exiled with the other
remaining regicides, and retired to Brussels, where he again returned to
classical subjects: "Amor quitting Psyche," "Mars disarmed by Venus,"
&c. He rejected the offer, made through Baron Humboldt, of the office of
minister of fine arts at Berlin, and remained at Brussels till his death
on the 29th of December 1825. His end was true to his whole career and
to his nationality. While dying, a print of the Leonidas, one of his
favourite subjects, was submitted to him. After vaguely looking at it a
long time, "_Il n'y a que moi qui pouvais concevoir la tete de
Leonidas_," he whispered, and died. His friends and his party thought to
carry the body back to his beloved Paris for burial, but the government
of the day arrested the procession at the frontier, an act which caused
some scandal, and furnished the occasion of a terrible song of
Beranger's.
It is difficult for a generation which has witnessed another complete
revolution in the standards of artistic taste to realize the secret of
David's immense popularity in his own day. His style is severely
academic, his colour lacking in richness and warmth, his execution hard
and uninteresting in its very perfection. Subjects and treatment alike
are inspired by the passing fashion of an age which had deceived itself
into believing that it was living and moving in the spirit of classical
antiquity. The inevitable reaction of the romantic movement made the
masterpieces, which had filled the men of the Revolution with
enthusiasm, seem cold and lifeless to those who had been taught to
expect in art that atmosphere of mystery which in nature is everywhere
present. Yet David was a great artist, and exercised in his day and
generation a great influence. His pictures are magnificent in their
composition and their draughtsmanship; and his keen observation and
insight into character are evident, especially in his portraits, notably
of Madame Recamier, of the Conventional Gerard and of Boissy d'Anglas.
See E. J. Delecluze, _Louis David, son ecole et son temps_ (Paris,
1855), and _Le Peintre Louis David. Souvenirs et documents inedits_,
by J. L. Jules David, the painter's grandson (Paris, 1880).
DAVID, PIERRE JEAN (1789-1856), usually called David d'Angers, French
sculptor, was born at Angers on the 12th of March 1789. His father was a
sculptor, or rather a carver, but he had thrown aside the mallet and
taken the musket, fighting against the Chouans of La Vendee. He returned
to his trade at the end of the civil war, to find his customers gone, so
that young David was born into poverty. As the boy grew up his father
wished to force him into some more lucrative and certain way of life. At
last he succeeded in surmounting the opposition to his becoming a
sculptor, and in his eighteenth year left for Paris to study the art
upon a capital of eleven francs. After struggling against want for a
year and a half, he succeeded in taking the prize at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts. An annuity of 600 francs (L24) was granted by the
municipality of his native town in 1809, and in 1811 David's
"Epaminondas" gained the _prix de Rome_. He spent five years in Rome,
during which his enthusiasm for the works of Canova was often excessive.
Returning from Rome about the time of the restoration of the Bourbons,
he would not remain in the neighbourhood of the Tuileries, which swarmed
with foreign conquerors and returned royalists, and accordingly went to
London. Here Flaxman and others visited upon him the sins of David the
painter, to whom he was erroneously supposed to be related. With great
difficulty he made his way to Paris again, where a comparatively
prosperous career opened upon him. His medallions and busts were in much
request, and orders for monumental works also came to him. One of the
best of these was that of Gutenberg at Strassburg; but those he himself
valued most were the statue of Barra, a drummer boy who continued to
beat his drum till the moment of death in the war in La Vendee, and the
monument to the Greek liberator Bozzaris, consisting in a young female
figure called "Reviving Greece," of which Victor Hugo said: "It is
difficult to see anything more beautiful in the world; this statue joins
the grandeur of Pheidias to the expressive manner of Puget." David's
busts and medallions were very numerous, and among his sitters may be
found not only the illustrious men and women of France, but many others
both of England and Germany--countries which he visited professionally
in 1827 and 1829. His medallions, it is affirmed, number 500. He died on
the 4th of January 1856. David's fame rests firmly on his pediment of
the Pantheon, his monument to General Gobert in Pere Lachaise and his
marble "Philopoemen" in the Louvre. In the Musee David at Angers is an
almost complete collection of his works either in the form of copies or
in the original moulds. As an example of his benevolence of character
may be mentioned his rushing off to the sickbed of Rouget de Lisle, the
author of the "Marseillaise Hymn," modelling and carving him in marble
without delay, making a lottery of the work, and sending to the poet in
the extremity of need the seventy-two pounds which resulted from the
sale.
See H. Jouin, _David d'Angers et ses relations litteraires_ (1890);
_Lettres de P. J. David d'Angers a Louis Dupre_ (Paris, 1891);
_Collection de portraits des contemporains d'apres les medaillons de
P. J. David_ (Paris, 1838).
DAVIDISTS, a fancy name rather than a recognized designation for three
religious sects. It has been applied (1) to the followers (if he had
any) of David of Dinant, in Belgium, the teacher or pupil of Amalric
(Amaury) of Bena, both of whom taught apparently a species of pantheism.
David's _Quaterni_, or _Quaternuli_, condemned and burnt at Paris
(1209), is a lost book, known only by references in Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas. Its author would have been burnt had he not fled. The
name has been given (2) to the followers of David George or Joris
(q.v.), and (3) to the followers of Francis David (1510-1579), the
apostle of Transylvanian unitarianism. (See SOCINUS, UNITARIANISM.)
DAVIDSON, ANDREW BRUCE (1831-1902), Scottish divine, was born in 1831 at
Kirkhill in Aberdeenshire, where his father Andrew Davidson had a farm.
The Davidsons belonged to the congregation of James Robertson
(1803-1860) of Ellon, one of the ministers of Strathbogie Presbytery,
which in the controversy which led to the disruption, resisted the
"dangerous claims of the established church to self-government." When
the disruption came the principles at stake were keenly canvassed in
Ellon, and eventually Andrew Davidson, senior, went with the Free
Church. In 1845 the boy, who had been a "herd" on the farm, went for six
months to the grammar school at Aberdeen and was there prepared for a
university bursary, which was sufficient to pay his fees, but no more.
During his four years at the university his mother supplied him
fortnightly with provisions from the farm; sometimes she walked the
whole twenty miles from Kirkhill and handed the coach fee to her son. He
graduated in 1849. At the university he had acquired a distrust of
philosophy, and found it difficult to choose between mathematical and
linguistic studies. A Free Church school having been opened in Ellon, he
became master there for three years. Here he developed special aptitude
for linguistic and philological studies. Besides Hebrew he taught
himself French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. In November 1852 he
entered New College, Edinburgh. There he took the four years'
theological course, and was licensed in 1856. For two years he preached
occasionally and took vacancies. In 1858 the New College authorities
appointed him assistant to the professor of Hebrew. He taught during the
winter, and in the long vacation continued his preparation for his life
work. One year he worked in Germany under Ewald, another year he went to
Syria to study Arabic. In 1862 he published the first part of a
commentary on Job. It was never finished and deals only with one-third
of the book, but it is recognized as the first really scientific
commentary on the Old Testament in the English language. In 1863 he was
appointed by the general assembly professor of oriental languages at New
College. He was junior colleague of Dr John Duncan (Rabbi Duncan) till
1870, and then for thirty years sole professor. He was a member of the
Old Testament revision committee, and his work was recognized by several
honorary distinctions, LL.D. (Aberdeen), D.D. (Edinburgh), Litt.D.
(Cambridge). Among his students were Professors Elmslie, Skinner, Harper
of Melbourne, Walker of Belfast, George Adam Smith of Glasgow and W.
Robertson Smith. He understood it to be the first duty of an exegete to
ascertain the meaning of the writer, and he showed that this could be
done by the use of grammar and history and the historical imagination.
He supplied guidance when it was much needed as to the methods and
results of the higher criticism. Being a master of its methods, but very
cautious in accepting assertions about its results, he secured attention
early in the Free Church for scientific criticism, and yet threw the
whole weight of his learning and his caustic wit into the argument
against critical extravagance. He had thought himself into the ideas and
points of view of the Hebrews, and his work in Old Testament theology is
unrivalled. He excels as an expositor of the governing Hebrew ideas such
as holiness, righteousness, Spirit of God, Messianism. In 1897 he was
chosen moderator of the general assembly, but his health prevented his
accepting the post. He died, unmarried, on the 26th of January 1902.
Besides the commentary on Job he published a book on the _Hebrew
Accents_, the only Scottish performance of the kind since the days of
Thomas Boston. His _Introductory Hebrew Grammar_ has been widely
adopted as a class-book in theological colleges. His _Hebrew Syntax_
has the same admirable clearness, precision and teaching quality. His
_Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews_ is one of a series of
handbooks for Bible classes. These were followed by commentaries on
Job, Ezekiel, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah, in the Cambridge series;
and a Bible-class primer on _The Exile and Restoration_. His lectures
on _Old Testament Prophecy_ were published after his death by
Professor J. A. Paterson. The _Theology of the Old Testament_ in the
"International Theological Library" is a posthumous volume edited by
Professor Salmond. "Isaiah" in the _Temple Bible_ was finished, but
not revised, when he died; and he also had in hand the volume on
Isaiah for the _International Critical Commentary_; to which must be
added a mass of articles contributed to _The Imperial Bible
Dictionary_, _The Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and the chief religious
reviews. Various articles in Dr Hastings' _Bible Dictionary_ were by
Davidson, especially the article "God." Two volumes of sermons, _The
Called of God_, and _Waiting upon God_, were published from MS. after
Davidson's death.
DAVIDSON, JOHN (1857-1909), British poet, playwright and novelist, son
of the Rev. Alexander Davidson, a minister of the Evangelical Union, was
born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the 11th of April 1857.
After a schooling at the Highlanders' Academy, Greenock, at the age of
thirteen he was set to work in that town, by helping in a sugar factory
laboratory and then in the town analyst's office; and at fifteen he went
back to his old school as a pupil-teacher. In 1876 he studied for a
session at Edinburgh University, and then went as a master to various
Scotch schools till 1890, varying his experiences in 1884 by being a
clerk in a Glasgow thread firm. He had married in 1885, and meanwhile
his literary inclinations had shown themselves, without attracting any
public success, in the publication of his poetical and fantastic plays,
_Bruce_ (1886), _Smith; a tragic farce_ (1888) and _Scaramouch in Naxos_
(1889). Determining at all costs to follow his literary vocation, he
went to London in 1890, but at first had a hard struggle. There his
prose-romance _Perfervid_ (1890) was published, one of the most original
and fascinating stories of "young blood" and child adventure ever
written, but for some reason it did not catch the public; and a sort of
sequel in _The Great Men_ (1891) met no better fate. He contributed,
however, to newspapers and became known among literary journalists, and
his volume of verse _In a Music-Hall_ (1891) prepared the way for the
genuine success two years later of his _Fleet Street Eclogues_ (1893),
which sounded a new and vigorous note and at once established his
position among the younger generation of poets. He subsequently produced
several more books in prose, romantic stories like _Baptist Lake_ (1894)
and _Earl Lavender_ (1895), and an admirable piece of descriptive
landscape writing in _A Random Itinerary_ (1894); but his acceptance as
a poet gave a more emphatic impulse to his work in verse, and most
attention was given to the increasing proof of his powers shown in his
_Ballads and Songs_ (1894), _Second Series of Fleet Street Eclogues_
(1895), _New Ballads_ (1896), _The Last Ballad, &c._ (1898), all full of
remarkably fresh and unconventional beauty. In spite of the strangely
neglected genius of this early _Perfervid_, it is accordingly as a
writer of verse rather than of prose-fiction that he occupies a leading
place, with a decided character of his own, in recent English
literature, his revival of a modernized ballad form being a considerable
achievement in itself, and his poems being packed with fine thought,
robust and masterful in expression and imagery. Meanwhile in 1896 he
produced an English verse adaptation, in _For the Crown_ (acted by
Forbes Robertson and Mrs Patrick Campbell), of Francois Coppee's drama
_Pour la couronne_, which had considerable success and was revived in
1905; and he wrote several other literary plays, remarkable none the
less for dramatic qualities,--_Godfrida_ (1898), _Self's the Man_
(1901), _The Knight of the Maypole_ (1902) and _The Theatrocrat_ (1905),
in the last of which a tendency to be extraordinary is rather too
manifest. This tendency was not absent from his volume of _Holiday and
Other Poems_ (1906), containing many fine things, together with an
"essay on blank verse" illustrated from his own compositions, the
outspoken criticisms of a writer of admitted originality and insight,
but not devoid of eccentric volubility. But if the identification of
"eccentricity" and "greatness" by Cosmo Mortimer in Mr Davidson's own
_Perfervid_ sometimes obtrudes itself on the memory in considering his
more peculiarly "robust" and somewhat volcanic deliverances, no such
objection can detract from the genuine inspiration of his best work, in
which the true poetic afflatus is unmistakable. This is to be found in
his poems published from 1893 to 1898, five years during which his
reputation steadily and deservedly grew,--the _Fleet Street Eclogues_,
with their passionate modern criticism of life combined with their
breath of rural beauty, and such intense ballads as those "Of a Nun,"
and "Of Heaven and Hell." In his ethical and didactic utterances, _The
Testament of a Vivisector_ and _The Testament of a Man Forbid_ (1901),
_The Testament of an Empire Builder_ (1902), _Mammon and his Message_
(1908), &c., the fine quality of the verse is wedded with a certain
fervid satirical journalism of subject, less admirable than the
detachment of thought in the earlier volumes. In later years he lived at
Penzance, provided with a small Civil List pension, but otherwise badly
off, for his writings brought in very little money. On March 23rd, 1909,
he disappeared, in circumstances pointing to suicide, and six months
later his body was found in the sea.
See an article by Filson Young on "The New Poetry," in the
_Fortnightly Review_, January 1909.
DAVIDSON, RANDALL THOMAS (1848- ), archbishop of Canterbury, son of
Henry Davidson, of Muirhouse, Edinburgh, was born in Edinburgh and
educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford. He took orders in 1874
and held a curacy at Dartford, in Kent, till 1877, when he became
resident chaplain and private secretary to Dr Tait, archbishop of
Canterbury, a position which he occupied till Dr Tait's death, and
retained for a short time (1882-1883) under his successor Dr Benson. He
married in 1878 Edith, the second daughter of Archbishop Tait, whose
_Life_ he eventually wrote (1891). In 1882 he became honorary chaplain
and sub-almoner to Queen Victoria, and in the following year was
appointed dean of Windsor, and domestic chaplain to the queen. His
advice upon state matters was constantly sought by the queen and greatly
valued. From 1891 to 1903 he was clerk of the closet, first to Queen
Victoria and afterwards to King Edward VII. He was made bishop of
Rochester in 1891, and was translated to Winchester in 1895. In 1903 he
succeeded Temple as archbishop of Canterbury. The new archbishop,
without being one of the English divines who have made notable
contributions to theological learning, already had a great reputation
for ecclesiastical statesmanship; and in subsequent years his diplomatic
abilities found ample scope in dealing not only with the difficulties
caused in the church by doctrinal questions, but pre-eminently with the
education crisis, and with the new problems arising in the enlarged
Anglican Communion. As the chief representative of the Church of England
in the House of Lords, his firmness, combined with broadmindedness, in
regard to the attitude of the nonconformists towards denominational
education, made his influence widely felt. In 1904 he visited Canada and
the United States, and was present at the triennial general convention
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States and Canada. In
1908 he presided at the Pan-Anglican congress held in London, and at the
Lambeth conference which followed. He had edited in 1889 _The Lambeth
Conferences_, an historical account of the conferences of 1867, 1878 and
1888, giving the official reports and resolutions, and the sermons
preached on these occasions.
DAVIDSON, SAMUEL (1807-1898), Irish biblical scholar, was born near
Ballymena in Ireland. He was educated at the Royal College of Belfast,
entered the Presbyterian ministry in 1835, and was appointed professor
of biblical criticism at his own college. Becoming a Congregationalist,
he accepted in 1842 the chair of biblical criticism, literature and
oriental languages at the Lancashire Independent College at Manchester;
but he was obliged to resign in 1857, being brought into collision with
the college authorities by the publication of an introduction to the Old
Testament entitled _The Text of the Old Testament, and the
Interpretation of the Bible_, written for a new edition of Horne's
_Introduction to the Sacred Scripture_. Its liberal tendencies caused
him to be accused of unsound views, and a most exhaustive report
prepared by the Lancashire College committee was followed by numerous
pamphlets for and against. After his resignation a fund of L3000 was
subscribed as a testimonial by his friends. In 1862 he removed to London
to become scripture examiner in London University, and he spent the rest
of his life in literary work. He died on the 1st of April 1898. Davidson
was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee. Among his
principal works are:--_Sacred Hermeneutics Developed and Applied_
(1843), rewritten and republished as _A Treatise on Biblical Criticism_
(1852), _Lectures on Ecclesiastical Polity_ (1848), _An Introduction to
the New Testament_ (1848-1851), _The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament
Revised_ (1855), _Introduction to the Old Testament_ (1862), _On a Fresh
Revision of the Old Testament_ (1873), _The Canon of the Bible_ (1877),
_The Doctrine of Last Things in the New Testament_ (1883), besides
translations of the New Testament from Von Tischendorf's text,
Gieseler's _Ecclesiastical History_ (1846) and Furst's _Hebrew and
Chaldee Lexicon_.
DAVIDSON, THOMAS (1817-1885), British palaeontologist, was born in
Edinburgh on the 17th of May 1817. His parents possessed considerable
landed property in Midlothian. Educated partly in the university at
Edinburgh and partly in France, Italy and Switzerland, and early
acquiring an interest in natural history, he benefited greatly by
acquaintance with foreign languages and literature, and with men of
science in different countries. He was induced in 1837, through the
influence of Leopold von Buch, to devote his special attention to the
brachiopoda, and in course of time he became the highest authority on
this group. The great task of his life was the _Monograph of British
Fossil Brachiopoda_, published by the Palaeontographical Society
(1850-1886). This work, with supplements, comprises six quarto volumes
with more than 200 plates drawn on stone by the author. He also prepared
an exhaustive memoir on "Recent Brachiopoda," published by the Linnean
Society. He was elected F.R.S. in 1857. He was awarded in 1865 the
Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, and in 1870 a Royal
medal by the Royal Society; and in 1882 the degree of LL.D. was
conferred upon him by the university of St Andrews. He died at Brighton
on the 14th of October 1885, bequeathing his fine collection of recent
and fossil brachiopoda to the British Museum.
See biography with portrait and list of papers in _Geol. Mag._ for
1871, p. 145.
DAVIES, DAVID CHARLES (1826-1891), Welsh nonconformist divine, was born
at Aberystwyth on the 11th of May 1826, his father being a merchant and
a pioneer of Welsh Methodism, his mother a niece of Thomas Charles
(q.v.) of Bala. He was educated in his native town by a noted
schoolmaster, John Evans, at Bala College, and at University College,
London, where he graduated B.A. in 1847 and M.A. (in mathematics) in
1849. He had already begun to preach, and after an evangelistic tour in
South Wales supplied the pulpit of the English presbyterian church at
Newtown for six months, and settled as pastor of the bilingual church at
Builth in 1851. He returned to this charge after a pastorate at
Liverpool (1853-1856), left it again in 1858 for Newtown, and went in
May 1859 to the Welsh church at Jewin Crescent, London. Here he remained
until 1876, and from that date till 1882, although living at Bangor for
reasons of health, had the chief oversight of the church. In 1888 he
accepted the principalship of the Calvinistic Methodist College at
Trevecca in Brecknockshire. His work here was successful, but short; he
died at Bangor on the 26th of September 1891, and was buried at
Aberystwyth.
Though Davies stood somewhat apart from the main currents of thought
both without and within his church, and was largely unknown to English
audiences or readers, he exercised a strong influence on Welsh life and
thought in the 19th century. He was a serious student, especially of
anti-theistic positions, a good speaker, and a frequent contributor to
Welsh theological journals. Several of his articles have been collected
and published, the most noteworthy being expositions on _The First
Epistle of John_ (1889), _Ephesians_ (2 vols., 1896, 1901), _Psalms_
(1897), _Romans_ (1902); and _The Atonement and Intercession of Christ_
(1899, English trans. by D. E. Jenkins, 1901).
DAVIES, SIR JOHN (1569-1626), English philosophical poet, was baptized
on the 16th of April 1569, at Tisbury, Wiltshire, where his parents
lived at the manor-house of Chicksgrove. He was educated at Winchester
College, and became a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1585. In
1588 he entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1595. In
his general onslaught on literature in 1599 the archbishop of Canterbury
ordered to be burnt the notorious and now excessively rare volume, _All
Ovid's Elegies, 3 Bookes, by C. M. Epigrams by J. D._ (Middleburgh,
1598?), which contained posthumous work by Marlowe. The epigrams by
Davies, although not devoid of wit, were coarse enough to deserve their
fate. It is probable that they were earlier in date of composition than
the charming fragment entitled _Orchestra_ (1596), written in praise of
dancing. The poet, in the person of Antinous, tries to induce Penelope
to dance by arguing that all harmonious natural processes partake of the
nature of a conscious and well-ordered dance. He closes his argument by
foreshadowing in a magic mirror the revels of the court of Cynthia
(Elizabeth). _Orchestra_ was dedicated to the author's "very friend,
Master Richard Martin," but in the next year the friends quarrelled, and
Davies was expelled from the society for having struck Martin with a
cudgel in the hall of the Middle Temple. He spent the year after his
expulsion at Oxford in the composition of his philosophical poem on the
nature of the soul and its immortality--_Nosce teipsum_ (1599). The
style of the work was entirely novel; and the stanza in which it was
written--the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes--had never been
so effectively handled. Its force, eloquence and ingenuity, the orderly
and lucid arrangement of its matter, place it among the finest of
English didactic poems. In 1599 he also published a volume of twenty-six
graceful acrostics on the words _Elisabetha Regina_, entitled _Hymns to
Astraea_. He produced no more poetry except his contributions to Francis
Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_ (1608). These were two dialogues which had
been written as entertainments for the queen, and "Yet other Twelve
Wonders of the World," satirical epigrams on the courtier, the divine,
the maid, &c., and "A Hymn in praise of Music." Ten sonnets to Philomel
are signed J. D., and are assigned to Davies (_Poetical Rhapsody_, ed.
A. H. Bullen, 1890). In 1601 Davies was restored to his position at the
bar, after making his apologies to Martin, and in the same year he sat
for Corfe Castle in parliament. James I. received the author of _Nosce
teipsum_ with great favour, and sent him (1603) to Ireland as
solicitor-general, conferring the honour of knighthood upon him in the
same year. In 1606 he was promoted to be attorney-general for Ireland,
and created serjeant-at-arms. Of the difficulties in the way of the
prosecution of his work, and his untiring industry in overcoming them,
there is abundant evidence in his letters to Cecil preserved in the
_State Papers on Ireland_. One of his chief aims was to establish the
Protestant religion firmly in Ireland, and he took strict measures to
enforce the law for attendance at church. With the same end in view he
took an active part in the "plantation" of Ulster. In 1612 he published
his prose _Discoverie of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely
subdued untill the beginning of his Majestie's happie raigne_.[1] In the
same year he entered the Irish parliament as member for Fermanagh, and
was elected speaker after a scene of disorder in which the Catholic
nominee, Sir John Everard, who had been installed, was forcibly ejected.
In the capacity of speaker he delivered an excellent address reviewing
previous Irish parliaments. He resigned his Irish offices in 1619, and
sat in the English parliament of 1621 for Newcastle-under-Lyme. With Sir
Robert Cotton he was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries.
He was appointed lord chief justice in 1626, but died suddenly (December
8th) before he could enter on the office. He had married (1609) Eleanor
Touchet, daughter of George, Baron Audley. She developed eccentricity,
verging on madness, and wrote several fanatical books on prophecy.
In 1615 Davies published at Dublin _Le Primer Discours des Cases et
Matters in Ley resolues et adjudges en les Courts del Roy en cest
Realme_ (reprinted 1628). He issued an edition of his poems in 1622.
His prose publications were mainly posthumous. _The Question
concerning Impositions, Tonnage, Poundage ..._ was printed in 1656,
and four of the tracts relating to Ireland, with an account of Davies
and his services to that country, were edited by G. Chalmers in 1786.
His works were edited by Dr A. B. Grosart (3 vols. 1869-1876), with a
full biography, for the Fuller Worthies Library.
He is not to be confounded with another poet, JOHN DAVIES of Hereford
(1565?-1618), among whose numerous volumes of verse may be mentioned
_Mirum in modum_ (1602), _Microcosmus_ (1603), _The Holy Roode_
(1609), _Wittes Pilgrimage_ (c. 1610), _The Scourge of Folly_ (c.
1611), _The Muses Sacrifice_ (1612) and _Wittes Bedlam_ (1607); his
_Scourge of Folly_ contains verses addressed to many of his
contemporaries, to Shakespeare among others; he also wrote _A Select
Second Husband for Sir Thomas Overbury's Wife_ (1616), and _The
Writing Schoolmaster_ (earliest known edition, 1633); his works were
collected by Dr A. B. Grosart (2 vols., 1873) for the Chertsey
Worthies Library.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Edited by Henry Morley in his _Ireland under Elizabeth and James
I._ (1890).
DAVIES (DAVISIUS), JOHN (1679-1732), English classical scholar and
critic, was born in London on the 22nd of April 1679. He was educated at
Charterhouse and Queens' College, Cambridge, of which society he was
elected fellow (July 7th, 1701). He subsequently became rector of Fen
Ditton, prebendary of Ely, and president of his college. He died on the
7th of March 1731-1732, and was buried in the college chapel. Davies was
considered one of the best commentators on Cicero, his attention being
chiefly devoted to the philosophical works of that author. Amongst these
he edited the _Tusculanae disputationes_ (1709), _De natura deorum_
(1718), _De divinatione_ and _De fato_ (1725), _Academica_ (1725), _De
legibus_ (1727), _De finibus_ (1728). His nearly finished notes on the
_De officiis_ he bequeathed to Dr Richard Mead, with a view to their
publication. Mead, finding himself unable to carry out the undertaking,
transferred the notes to Thomas Bentley (nephew of the famous Richard
Bentley), by whose carelessness they were burnt. Davies's editions,
which were intended to supplement those of Graevius, show great learning
and an extensive knowledge of the history and systems of philosophy, but
he allows himself too much licence in the matter of emendation. He also
edited Maximus of Tyre's _Dissertationes_ (1703); the works of Caesar
(1706); the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix (1707); the _Epitome divinarum
institutionum_ of Lactantius (1718). Although on intimate terms with
Richard Bentley, he found himself unable to agree with the great scholar
in regard to his dispute with Trinity College.
DAVIES, SIR LOUIS HENRY (1845- ), Canadian politician and jurist, was
born in Prince Edward Island in 1845, of Huguenot descent. From 1869 to
1879 he took part in local politics, and was premier from 1876-1879; in
1882 he entered the Canadian parliament as a Liberal, and from 1896 to
1901 was minister of marine and fisheries. In the latter year he became
one of the judges of the supreme court of Canada. In 1877 he was counsel
for Great Britain before the Anglo-American fisheries arbitration at
Halifax; in 1897 he was a joint delegate to Washington with Sir Wilfrid
Laurier on the Bering Sea seal question; and in 1898-1899 a member of
the Anglo-American joint high commission at Quebec.
DAVIES, RICHARD (c. 1505-1581), Welsh bishop and scholar, was born in
North Wales, and was educated at New Inn Hall, Oxford, becoming vicar of
Burnham, Buckinghamshire, in 1550. Being a reformer he took refuge at
Geneva during the reign of Mary, returning to England and to parochial
work after the accession of Elizabeth in 1558. His connexion with Wales
was renewed almost at once; for, after serving on a commission which
visited the Welsh dioceses, he was, in January 1560, consecrated bishop
of St Asaph, whence he was translated, early in 1561, to the bishopric
of St Davids. As a bishop Davies was an earnest reformer, very
industrious, active and liberal, but not very scrupulous with regard to
the property of the church. He was a member of the council of Wales, was
very friendly with Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, and was
regarded both by Parker and by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as a
trustworthy adviser on Welsh concerns. Another of the bishop's friends
was Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex. Assisting William Salisbury,
Davies took part in translating the New Testament into Welsh, and also
did some work on the Welsh translation of the Book of Common Prayer. He
helped to revise the "Bishops' Bible" of 1568, being himself responsible
for the book of Deuteronomy, and the second book of Samuel. He died on
the 7th of November 1581, and was buried in Abergwili church.
DAVILA, ENRICO CATERINO (1576-1631), Italian historian, was descended
from a Spanish noble family. His immediate ancestors had been constables
of the kingdom of Cyprus for the Venetian republic since 1464. But in
1570 the island was taken by the Turks; and Antonio Davila, the father
of the historian, had to leave it, despoiled of all he possessed. He
travelled into Spain and France, and finally returned to Padua, and at
Sacco on the 30th of October 1576 his youngest son, Enrico Caterino, was
born. About 1583 Antonio took this son to France, where he became a page
in the service of Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II. In due
time he entered the military service, and fought through the civil wars
until the peace in 1598. He then returned to Padua, where, and
subsequently at Parma, he led a studious life until, when war broke out,
he entered the service of the republic of Venice and served with
distinction in the field. But during the whole of this active life, many
details of which are very interesting as illustrative of the life and
manners of the time, he never lost sight of a design which he had formed
at a very early period, of writing the history of those civil wars in
France in which he had borne a part, and during which he had had so many
opportunities of closely observing the leading personages and events.
This work was completed about 1630, and was offered in vain by the
author to all the publishers in Venice. At last one Tommaso Baglioni,
who had no work for his presses, undertook to print the manuscript, on
condition that he should be free to leave off if more promising work
offered itself. The printing of the _Istoria delle guerre civili di
Francia_ was, however, completed, and the success and sale of the work
were immediate and enormous. Over two hundred editions followed, of
which perhaps the best is the one published in Paris in 1644. Davila was
murdered, while on his way to take possession of the government of
Cremona for Venice in July 1631, by a ruffian, with whom some dispute
seems to have arisen concerning the furnishing of the relays of horses
ordered for his use by the Venetian government.
The _Istoria_ was translated into French by G. Baudouin (Paris, 1642);
into Spanish by Varen de Soto (Madrid, 1651, and Antwerp, 1686); into
English by W. Aylesbury (London, 1647), and by Charles Cotterel
(London, 1666), and into Latin by Pietro Francesco Cornazzano (Rome,
1745). The best account of the life of Davila is that by Apostolo
Zeno, prefixed to an edition of the history printed at Venice in 2
vols. in 1733. Peter Bayle is severe on certain historical
inaccuracies of Davila, and it is true that Davila must be read with
due remembrance of the fact that he was not only a Catholic but the
especial protege of Catherine de' Medici, but it is not to be
forgotten that Bayle was as strongly Protestant.
DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON (1826-1910), American spiritualist, was born at
Blooming Grove, Orange county, New York, on the 11th of August 1826. He
had little education, though probably much more than he and his friends
pretended. In 1843 he heard lectures in Poughkeepsie on "animal
magnetism," as the phenomena of hypnotism was then termed, and found
that he had remarkable clairvoyant powers; and in the following year he
had, he said, spiritual messages telling him of his life work. For the
next three years (1844-1847) he practised magnetic healing with much
success; and in 1847 he published _The Principles of Nature_, _Her
Divine Revelations_, and a _Voice to Mankind_, which in 1845 he had
dictated while in a trance to his "scribe," William Fishbough. He
lectured with little success and returned to writing (or "dictating")
books, publishing about thirty in all, including _The Great Harmonia_
(1850-1861), an "encyclopaedia" in six volumes; _The Philosophy of
Special Providences_ (1850), which with its evident rehash of old
arguments against special providences and miracles would seem to show
that Davis's inspiration was literary; _The Magic Staff: an
Autobiography_ (1857), which was supplemented by _Arabula: or the Divine
Guest, Containing a New Collection of New Gospels_ (1867), the gospels
being those "according to" St Confucius, St John (G. Whittier), St
Gabriel (Derzhavin), St Octavius (Frothingham), St Gerrit (Smith), St
Emma (Hardinge), St Ralph (W. Emerson), St Seiden (J. Finney), St
Theodore (Parker), &c.; and _A Stellar Key to the Summer Land_ (1868)
and _Views of Our Heavenly Home_ (1878), each with illustrative
diagrams. Davis was much influenced by Swedenborg and by the Shakers,
who reprinted his panegyric of Ann Lee in an official _Sketch of Shakers
and Shakerism_ (1884).
DAVIS, CHARLES HOWARD (1857- ), American landscape painter, was born at
East Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 2nd of February 1857. A pupil of
the schools of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he was sent to Paris in
1880. Having studied at the Academy Julian under Lefebvre and Boulanger,
he went to Barbizon and painted much in the forest of Fontainebleau
under the traditions of the "men of thirty." He became a full member of
the National Academy of Design in 1906, and received many awards,
including a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. He is
represented by important works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington; the Pennsylvania Academy,
Philadelphia, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
DAVIS, CUSHMAN KELLOGG (1838-1900), American political leader and
lawyer, was born in Henderson, New York, on the 16th of June 1838. He
was taken by his parents to Wisconsin Territory in the year of his
birth, and was educated at Carroll College, Waukesha, Wisconsin, and at
the university of Michigan, from which he graduated in 1857. After
studying law in the office of Alexander W. Randall, he was admitted to
the bar in 1860. During the Civil War, as a first lieutenant of Federal
volunteers, he served in the western campaigns of 1862 and 1863, and in
1864 was an aide to General Willis A. Gorman (1814-1876). Resigning his
commission (1864) on account of ill-health, he soon settled in St Paul,
Minnesota, where he practised law in partnership with General Gorman,
and soon became prominent both at the bar and, as a Republican, in
politics. He served in the state House of Representatives in 1867,
1868-1873 was United States district attorney for Minnesota. In
1874-1876 he was governor of the state, and from 1887 until his death
was a member of the United States Senate. In the Senate he was one of
the acknowledged leaders of his party, an able and frequent speaker and
a committee worker of great industry. In March 1897 he became chairman
of the committee on foreign relations at a time when its work was
peculiarly influential in shaping American foreign policy. His extensive
knowledge of international law, and his tact and diplomacy, enabled him
to render services of the utmost importance in connexion with the
Spanish-American War, and he was one of the peace commissioners who
negotiated and signed the treaty of Paris by which the war was
terminated. He died at St Paul on the 27th of November 1900. Few public
men in the United States since the Civil War have combined skill in
diplomacy, constructive statesmanship, talent for political
organization, oratorical ability and broad culture to such a degree as
Senator Davis. In addition to various speeches and public addresses, he
published an essay entitled _The Law of Shakespeare_ (1899).
DAVIS, HENRY WILLIAM BANKS (1833- ), English painter, received his art
training in the Royal Academy schools, where he was awarded two silver
medals. He was elected an associate of the Academy in 1873, and
academician in 1877. He made a considerable reputation as an
accomplished painter of quiet pastoral subjects and carefully elaborated
landscapes with cattle. His pictures, "Returning to the Fold" (1880),
and "Approaching Night" (1899), bought for the Chantrey Fund Collection,
are now in the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery).
DAVIS, HENRY WINTER (1817-1865), American political leader, was born at
Annapolis, Maryland, on the 16th of August 1817. His father, Rev Henry
Lyon Davis (1775-1836), was a prominent Protestant Episcopal clergyman
of Maryland, and for some years president of St John's College at
Annapolis. The son graduated at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, in 1837,
and from the law department of the university of Virginia in 1841, and
began the practice of law in Alexandria, Virginia, but in 1850 removed
to Baltimore, Maryland, where he won a high position at the bar. Early
becoming imbued with strong anti-slavery views, though by inheritance he
was himself a slave holder, he began political life as a Whig, but when
the Whig party disintegrated, he became an "American" or "Know-Nothing,"
and as such served in the national House of Representatives from 1855 to
1861. By his independent course in Congress he won the respect and
esteem of all political groups. In the contest over the speakership at
the opening of the Thirty-Sixth Congress (1859) he voted with the
Republicans, thereby incurring a vote of censure from the Maryland
legislature, which called upon him to resign. In 1860, not being quite
ready to ally himself wholly with the Republican party, he declined to
be a candidate for the Republican nomination for the vice-presidency,
and supported the Bell and Everett ticket. He was himself defeated in
this year for re-election to Congress. In the winter of 1860-1861 he was
active on behalf of compromise measures. Finally, after President
Lincoln's election, he became a Republican, and as such was re-elected
in 1862 to the national House of Representatives, in which he at once
became one of the most radical and aggressive members, his views
commanding especial attention owing to his being one of the few
representatives from a slave state. From December 1863 to March 1865 he
was chairman of the committee on foreign affairs; as such, in 1864, he
was unwilling to leave the delicate questions concerning the French
occupation of Mexico entirely in the hands of the president and his
secretary of state, and brought in a report very hostile to France,
which was adopted in the House, but fortunately, as it proved later, was
not adopted by the Senate. With other radical Republicans Davis was a
bitter opponent of Lincoln's plan for the reconstruction of the Southern
States, and on the 15th of February 1864 he reported from committee a
bill placing the process of reconstruction under the control of
Congress, and stipulating that the Confederate States, before resuming
their former status in the Union, must disfranchise all important civil
and military officers of the Confederacy, abolish slavery, and repudiate
all debts incurred by or with the sanction of the Confederate
government. In his speech supporting this measure Davis declared that
until Congress should "recognize a government established under its
auspices, there is no government in the rebel states save the authority
of Congress." The bill--the first formal expression by Congress with
regard to Reconstruction--did not pass both Houses until the closing
hours of the session, and failed to receive the approval of the
president, who on the 8th of July issued a proclamation defining his
position. Soon afterwards, on the 5th of August 1864, Davis joined
Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, who had piloted the bill through the Senate,
in issuing the so-called "Wade-Davis Manifesto," which violently
denounced President Lincoln for encroaching on the domain of Congress
and insinuated that the presidential policy would leave slavery
unimpaired in the reconstructed states. In a debate in Congress some
months later he declared, "When I came into Congress ten years ago this
was a government of law. I have lived to see it a government of personal
will." He was one of the radical leaders who preferred Fremont to
Lincoln in 1864, but subsequently withdrew his opposition and supported
the President for re-election. He early favoured the enlistment of
negroes, and in July 1865 publicly advocated the extension of the
suffrage to them. He was not a candidate for re-election to Congress in
1864, and died in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 30th of December 1865.
Davis was a man of scholarly tastes, an orator of unusual ability and
great eloquence, tireless and fearless in fighting political battles,
but impulsive to the verge of rashness, impractical, tactless and
autocratic. He wrote an elaborate political work entitled _The War of
Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century_ (1853), in which he
combated the Southern contention that slavery was a divine institution.
See _The Speeches of Henry Winter Davis_ (New York, 1867), to which is
prefixed an oration on his life and character delivered in the House
of Representatives by Senator J. A. J. Creswell of Maryland.
DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808-1889), American soldier and statesman, president
of the Confederate states in the American Civil War, was born on the 3rd
of June 1808 at what is now the village of Fairview, in that part of
Christian county, Kentucky, which was later organized as Todd county.
His father, Samuel Davis (1756-1824), who served in the War of
Independence, was of Welsh, and his mother, Jane Cook, of Scotch-Irish
descent; during his infancy the family moved to Wilkinson county,
Mississippi. Jefferson Davis was educated at Transylvania University
(Lexington, Kentucky) and at the United States Military Academy at West
Point. From the latter he graduated in July 1828, and became by brevet a
second lieutenant of infantry. He was assigned for duty to Jefferson
Barracks at St Louis, and on reaching this post was ordered to Fort
Crawford, near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. In 1833 he took part in the
closing scenes of the Black Hawk War, was present at the capture of
Black Hawk, and was sent to Dixon, Illinois, to muster into service some
volunteers from that state. Their captain was Abraham Lincoln, and
Lieutenant Davis is said to have administered to him his first oath of
allegiance. In June 1835 he resigned from the army, married Miss Knox
Taylor, daughter of Colonel (later General) Zachary Taylor, and became a
cotton planter in Warren county, Miss. In September of the same year,
while visiting in Louisiana to escape the fever, his wife died of it and
Davis himself was dangerously ill. For the next few months he travelled
to regain his health; and in the spring of 1836 returned to his cotton
plantation, where for several years he devoted his time largely to
reading political philosophy, political economy, public law and the
English classics, and by careful management of his estate he acquired
considerable wealth. In 1843 Davis entered the field of politics as a
Democrat, and exhibited great power as a public speaker. In 1844 he was
chosen as a presidential elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket; in
February 1845 he married Miss Varina Howell (1826-1906) of Mississippi
(a granddaughter of Governor Richard Howell of New Jersey), and in the
same year became a Democratic representative in Congress. From the
beginning of his political career he advocated a strict construction of
the Federal constitution. He was an ardent admirer of John C. Calhoun,
and eventually became his successor as the leader of the South. In his
rare speeches in the House of Representatives he clearly defined his
position in regard to states rights, which he consistently held ever
afterwards. During his first session, war with Mexico was declared, and
he resigned his seat in June 1846 to take command of the first regiment
raised in his state--the Mississippi Rifles. He served in the Northern
Campaign under his father-in-law, General Taylor, and was greatly
distinguished for gallantry and soldierly conduct at Monterey and
particularly at Buena Vista, where he was severely wounded early in the
engagement, but continued in command of his regiment until victory
crowned the American arms. While still in the field he was appointed
(May 1847) by President Polk to be brigadier-general of volunteers; but
this appointment Davis declined, on the ground, as he afterwards said,
"that volunteers are militia and the Constitution reserves to the state
the appointment of all militia officers." Afterwards, Davis himself, as
president of the Confederate States, was to appoint many volunteer
officers.
Upon his return to his home late in 1847 he was appointed to fill a
vacancy in the United States Senate, and in 1850 he was elected for a
full term of six years. He resigned in 1851, but was again elected in
1857, and continued as a member from that year until the secession of
his State in 1861. As a senator he stood in the front rank in a body
distinguished for ability; his purity of character and courteous manner,
together with his intellectual gifts, won him the esteem of all parties;
and he became more and more the leader of the Southern Democrats. He
was, however, possessed of a logical rather than an intuitive mind. In
his famous speech in the Senate on the 12th of July 1848, on the
question of establishing a government for Oregon Territory, he held that
a slave should be treated by the Federal government on the same basis as
any other property, and therefore that it was the duty of Congress to
protect the owner's right to his slave in whatever state or territory of
the Union that slave might be. In the debates on the Compromise Measures
of 1850 he took an active part, strongly opposing these measures, while
Henry Stuart Foote (1800-1880), the other Mississippi senator, was one
of their leading advocates. But although still holding to the theory
expounded in his July speech of 1848, he was now ready with the proposal
that slavery might be prohibited north of latitude 36 deg. 30' N.
provided it should not be interfered with in any territory south of that
line. He resigned from the Senate in 1851 to become a candidate of the
Democratic States-Rights party for the governorship of his state against
Foote, the candidate of the Union Democrats. In the campaign he held, in
opposition to the wishes of the more radical members of his party, that
although secession might be resorted to as a last alternative the
circumstances were not yet such as to justify it. A temporary loss of
eyesight interfered with his canvass, and he was defeated by a small
majority (1009), the campaign having been watched with the greatest
interest throughout the country. In 1853 he accepted the position of
secretary of war in the cabinet of President Pierce, and for four years
performed the duties of the office with great distinction and with
lasting benefit to the nation. He organized the engineer companies which
explored and reported on the several proposed routes for a railway
connecting the Mississippi valley with the Pacific Ocean; he effected
the enlargement of the army, and made material changes in its equipment
of arms and ammunition, utilizing the latest improvements; he made his
appointments of subordinates on their merits, regardless of party
considerations; he revised the system of tactics, perfected the signal
corps service, and enlarged the coast and frontier defences of the
country. During all this time he was on terms of intimate friendship
with the president, over whom he undoubtedly exerted a powerful, but
probably not, as is often said, a dominating influence; for instance he
is generally supposed to have won the president's support for the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. After the passage of this bill, Davis, who
as secretary of war had control of the United States troops in Kansas,
sympathized strongly with the pro-slavery party there. At the end of his
service in the cabinet, he was returned to the Senate. To his insistence
in 1860 that the Democratic party should support his claim to the
protection of slavery in the territories by the Federal government, the
disruption of that party was in large measure due. At the same time he
practically told the Senate that the South would secede in the event of
the election of a radical Republican to the presidency; and on the 10th
of January 1861, not long after the election of Lincoln, he argued
before that body the constitutional right of secession and declared that
the treatment of the South had become such that it could no longer
remain in the Union without being degraded. When his state had passed
the ordinance of secession he resigned his seat, and his speech on the
21st of January was a clear and able statement of the position taken by
his state, and a most pathetic farewell to his associates.
On the 25th of January 1861 Davis was commissioned major-general of the
forces Mississippi was raising in view of the threatened conflict. On
the 9th of February he received the unanimous vote of the Provisional
Congress of the seceded states as president of the "Confederate States
of America." He was inaugurated on the 18th of February, was
subsequently, after the adoption of the permanent constitution,
regularly elected by popular vote, for a term of six years, and on the
22nd of February 1862 was again inaugurated. He had not sought the
office, preferring service in the field. His brilliant career, both as a
civilian and as a soldier, drew all eyes to him as best fitted to guide
the fortunes of the new Confederacy, and with a deep sense of the
responsibility he obeyed the call. He heartily approved of the peace
conference, which attempted to draw up a plan of reconciliation between
the two sections, but whose failure made war inevitable. Montgomery, in
Alabama, was the first Confederate capital, but after Virginia joined
her sister states, the seat of government was removed to Richmond, on
the 29th of May 1861. How Davis--of whom W. E. Gladstone, in the early
days of English sympathy with the South, said that he had "made a
nation"--bore himself in his most responsible position during the
gigantic conflict which ensued, cannot here be related in detail. (See
CONFEDERATE STATES; and AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.) In the shortest time he
organized and put into the field one of the finest bodies of soldiers of
which history has record. Factories sprang up in the South in a few
months, supplying the army with arms and munitions of war, and the
energy of the president was everywhere apparent. That he committed
serious errors, his warmest admirers will hardly deny. Unfortunately his
firmness developed into obstinacy, and exhibited itself in continued
confidence in officers who had proved to be failures, and in dislike of
some of his ablest generals. He committed the great mistake, too, of
directing the movements of distant armies from the seat of government,
though those armies were under able generals. This naturally caused
great dissatisfaction, and more than once resulted in irreparable
disaster. Moreover, he was not, like Lincoln, a great manager of men; he
often acted without tact; he was charged with being domineering and
autocratic, and at various times he was seriously hampered by the
meddling of the Confederate Congress and the opposition of such men as
the vice-president, A. H. Stephens, Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia,
and Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina.
During the winter of 1864-1865 the resources of the government showed
such exhaustion that it was apparent that the end would come with the
opening of the spring campaign. This was clearly stated in the reports
of the heads of departments and of General Lee. President Davis,
however, acted as if he was assured of ultimate success. He sent Duncan
F. Kenner as special commissioner to the courts of England and France to
obtain recognition of the Confederacy on condition of the abolition of
slavery. When a conference was held in Hampton Roads on the 3rd of
February 1865 between President Lincoln and Secretary Seward on the one
side, and A. H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, and Judge James A. Campbell,
representing President Davis, on the other, he instructed his
representatives to insist on the recognition of the Confederacy as a
condition to any arrangement for the termination of the war. This
defeated the object of the conference, and deprived the South of terms
which would have been more beneficial than those imposed by the
conqueror when the end came a few weeks later. The last days of the
Confederate Congress were spent in recriminations between that body and
President Davis, and the popularity with which he commenced his
administration had almost entirely vanished. In January 1865 the
Congress proposed to supersede the president and make General Lee
dictator,--a suggestion, however, to which the Confederate commander
refused to listen.
After the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston in April 1865,
President Davis attempted to make his way, through Georgia, across the
Mississippi, in the vain hope of continuing the war with the forces of
Generals Smith and Magruder. He was taken prisoner on the 10th of May by
Federal troops near Irwinville, Irwin county, Georgia, and was brought
back to Old Point, Virginia, in order to be confined in prison at
Fortress Monroe. In prison he was chained and treated with great
severity. He was indicted for treason by a Virginia grand jury,
persistent efforts were made to connect him with the assassination of
President Lincoln, he was unjustly charged with having deliberately and
wilfully caused the sufferings and deaths of Union prisoners at
Andersonville and for two years he was denied trial or bail. Such
treatment aroused the sympathy of the Southern people, who regarded him
as a martyr to their cause, and in a great measure restored him to that
place in their esteem which by the close of the war he had lost. It also
aroused a general feeling in the North, and when finally he was admitted
to bail (in May 1867), Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and others in that
section who had been his political opponents, became his sureties.
Charles O'Conor, a leader of the New York bar, volunteered to act as his
counsel. With him was associated Robert Ould of Richmond, a lawyer of
great ability. They moved to quash the indictment on which he was
brought to trial. Chief Justice Chase and Judge John C. Underwood
constituted the United States circuit court sitting for Virginia before
which the case was brought in December 1868; the court was divided, the
chief justice voting to sustain the motion and Underwood to overrule it.
The matter was thereupon certified to the Supreme Court of the United
States, but as the general amnesty of the 25th of December 1868 included
Davis, an order of _nolle prosequi_ was entered in February 1869, and
Davis and his bondsmen were thereupon released. After his release he
visited Europe, and spent the last years of his life in retirement,
during which he wrote his _Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government_
(2 vols., 1881). In these volumes he attempted to vindicate his
administration, and in so doing he attacked the records of those
generals he disliked. He also wrote a _Short History of the Confederate
States of America_ (1890). He died on the 6th of December 1889, at New
Orleans, leaving a widow and two daughters--Margaret, who married J. A.
Hayes in 1877, and Varina Anne (1864-1898), better known as "Winnie"
Davis, the "daughter of the Confederacy," who was the author of several
books, including _A Sketch of the Life of Robert Emmet_ (1888), a novel,
_The Veiled Doctor_ (1895), and _A Romance of Summer Seas_ (1898). A
monument to her, designed by George J. Zolnay, and erected by the
Daughters of the Confederacy, was unveiled in Hollywood cemetery,
Richmond, Va., on the 9th of November 1899. Mrs Davis, who exerted a
marked influence over her husband, survived him many years, passed the
last years of her life in New York City, and died there on the 16th of
October 1906.
AUTHORITIES.--Several biographies and memoirs of Davis have been
published, of which the best are: _Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of
the Confederate States_ (2 vols., New York, 1890), by his widow; F. H.
Alfriend's _Life of Jefferson Davis_ (Cincinnati, 1868), which
defended him from the charges of incompetence and despotism brought
against him; E. A. Pollard's _Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret
History of the Southern Confederacy_ (Philadelphia, 1869), a somewhat
partisan arraignment by a prominent Southern journalist; and W. E.
Dodd's _Jefferson Davis_ (Philadelphia, 1907), which embodies the
results of recent historical research. _The Prison Life of Jefferson
Davis_ (New York, 1866) by John J. Craven (d. 1893), a Federal army
surgeon who was Davis's physician at Fortress Monroe, was long
popular; it gives a vivid and sympathetic picture of Mr Davis as a
prisoner, but its authenticity and accuracy have been questioned.
(W. W. H.*; N. D. M.)
DAVIS (or DAVYS), JOHN (1550?-1605), one of the chief English navigators
and explorers under Elizabeth, especially in Polar regions, was born at
Sandridge near Dartmouth about 1550. From a boy he was a sailor, and
early made several voyages with Adrian Gilbert; both the Gilbert and
Raleigh families were Devonians of his own neighbourhood, and through
life he seems to have profited by their friendship. In January 1583 he
appears to have broached his design of a north-west passage to
Walsingham and John Dee; various consultations followed; and in 1585 he
started on his first north-western expedition. On this he began by
striking the ice-bound east shore of Greenland, which he followed south
to Cape Farewell; thence he turned north once more and coasted the west
Greenland littoral some way, till, finding the sea free from ice, he
shaped a "course for China" by the north-west. In 66 deg. N., however,
he fell in with Baffin Land, and though he pushed some way up Cumberland
Sound, and professed to recognize in this the "hoped strait," he now
turned back (end of August). He tried again in 1586 and 1587; in the
last voyage he pushed through the straits still named after him into
Baffin's Bay, coasting west Greenland to 73 deg. N., almost to
Upernavik, and thence making a last effort to find a passage westward
along the north of America. Many points in Arctic latitudes (Cumberland
Sound, Cape Walsingham, Exeter Sound, &c.) retain names given them by
Davis, who ranks with Baffin and Hudson as the greatest of early Arctic
explorers and, like Frobisher, narrowly missed the discovery of Hudson's
Bay via Hudson's Straits (the "Furious Overfall" of Davis). In 1588 he
seems to have commanded the "Black Dog" against the Spanish Armada; in
1589 he joined the earl of Cumberland off the Azores; and in 1591 he
accompanied Thomas Cavendish on his last voyage, with the special
purpose, as he tells us, of searching "that north-west discovery upon
the back parts of America." After the rest of Cavendish's expedition
returned unsuccessful, he continued to attempt on his own account the
passage of the Strait of Magellan; though defeated here by foul weather,
he discovered the Falkland Islands. The passage home was extremely
disastrous, and he brought back only fourteen of his seventy-six men.
After his return in 1593 he published a valuable treatise on practical
navigation in _The Seaman's Secrets_ (1594), and a more theoretical work
in _The World's Hydrographical Description_ (1595). His invention of
back-staff and double quadrant (called a "Davis Quadrant" after him)
held the field among English seamen till long after Hadley's reflecting
quadrant had been introduced. In 1596-1597 Davis seems to have sailed
with Raleigh (as master of Sir Walter's own ship) to Cadiz and the
Azores; and in 1598-1600 he accompanied a Dutch expedition to the East
Indies as pilot, sailing from Flushing, returning to Middleburg, and
narrowly escaping destruction from treachery at Achin in Sumatra. In
1601-1603 he accompanied Sir James Lancaster as first pilot on his
voyage in the service of the East India Company; and in December 1604 he
sailed again for the same destination as pilot to Sir Edward Michelborne
(or Michelbourn). On this journey he was killed by Japanese pirates off
Bintang near Sumatra.
_A Traverse Book made by John Davis in 1587_, an _Account of his
Second Voyage in 1586_, and a _Report of Master John Davis of his
three voyages made for the Discovery of the North West Passage_ were
printed in Hakluyt's collection. Davis himself published _The Seaman's
Secrets, divided into two Parts_ (London, 1594), _The World's
Hydrographical Description ... whereby appears that there is a short
and speedy Passage into the South Seas, to China, Molucca, Philippina,
and India, by Northerly Navigation_ (London, 1595). Various references
to Davis are in the _Calendars of State Papers, Domestic_ (1591-1594),
and _East Indies_ (1513-1616). See also _Voyages and Works of John
Davis_, edited by A. H. Markham (London, Hakluyt Society, 1880), and
the article "John Davys" by Sir J. K. Laughton in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_. (C. R. B.)
DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE (1814-1845), Irish poet and journalist, was born
at Mallow, Co. Cork, on the 14th of October 1814. His father, James
Thomas Davis, a surgeon in the royal artillery, who died in the month of
his son's birth, belonged to an English family of Welsh extraction, and
his mother, Mary Atkins, belonged to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family.
Davis graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1836, and was called
to the bar two years later. Brought up in an English and Tory circle, he
was led to adopt nationalist views by the study of Irish history, a
complicated subject in which text-books and the ordinary guides to
knowledge were then lacking. In 1840 he made a speech appealing to Irish
sentiment before the college historical society, which had been
reorganized in 1839. With a view to indoctrinating the Irish people with
the idea of nationality he joined John Blake Dillon in editing the
_Dublin Morning Register_. The proprietor very soon dismissed him, and
Davis saw that his propaganda would be ineffective if he continued to
stand outside the national organization. He therefore announced himself
a follower of Daniel O'Connell, and became an energetic worker (1841) on
the committee of the repeal association. He helped Dillon and Charles
Gavan Duffy to found the weekly newspaper, _The Nation_, the first
number of which appeared on the 15th of October 1842. The paper was
chiefly written by these three promoters, and its concentrated purpose
and vigorous writing soon attracted attention. Davis, who had never
written verse, was induced to attempt it for the new undertaking. The
"Lament of Owen Roe O'Neill" was printed in the sixth number, and was
followed by a series of lyrics that take a high place in Irish national
poetry--"The Battle of Fontenoy," "The Geraldines," "Maire Bhan a Stoir"
and many others. Davis contemplated a history of Ireland, an edition of
the speeches of Irish orators, one volume of which appeared, and a life
of Wolfe Tone. These projects remained incomplete, but Davis's
determination and continuous zeal made their mark on his party.
Differences arose between O'Connell and the young writers of _The
Nation_, and as time went on became more pronounced. Davis was accused
of being anti-Catholic, and was systematically attacked by O'Connell's
followers. But he differed, said Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, from earlier
and later Irish tribunes, "by a perfectly genuine desire to remain
unknown, and reap neither recognition nor reward for his work." His
early death from scarlet fever (September 15th, 1845) deprived "Young
Ireland" of its most striking personality.
His _Poems_ and his _Literary and Historical Essays_ were collected in
1846. There is an edition of his prose writings (1889) in the _Camelot
Classics_. See the monograph on _Thomas Davis_ by Sir Charles Gavan
Duffy (1890, abridged ed. 1896), and the same writer's _Young Ireland_
(revised edition, 1896).
DAVISON, WILLIAM (c. 1541-1608), secretary to Queen Elizabeth, was of
Scottish descent, and in 1566 acted as secretary to Henry Killigrew (d.
1603), when he was sent into Scotland by Elizabeth on a mission to Mary,
queen of Scots. Remaining in that country for about ten years, Davison
then went twice to the Netherlands on diplomatic business, returning to
England in 1586 to defend the hasty conduct of his friend, Robert
Dudley, earl of Leicester. In the same year he became member of
parliament for Knaresborough, a privy councillor, and assistant to
Elizabeth's secretary, Thomas Walsingham; but he soon appears to have
acted rather as the colleague than the subordinate of Walsingham. He was
a member of the commission appointed to try Mary, queen of Scots,
although he took no part in its proceedings. When sentence was passed
upon Mary the warrant for her execution was entrusted to Davison, who,
after some delay, obtained the queen's signature. On this occasion, and
also in subsequent interviews with her secretary, Elizabeth suggested
that Mary should be executed in some more secret fashion, and her
conversation afforded ample proof that she disliked to take upon herself
any responsibility for the death of her rival. Meanwhile, the privy
council having been summoned by Lord Burghley, it was decided to carry
out the sentence at once, and Mary was beheaded on the 8th of February
1587. When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth she was extremely
indignant, and her wrath was chiefly directed against Davison, who, she
asserted, had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant.
The secretary was arrested and thrown into prison, but, although he
defended himself vigorously, he did not say anything about the queen's
wish to get rid of Mary by assassination. Charged before the Star
Chamber with misprision and contempt, he was acquitted of evil
intention, but was sentenced to pay a fine of 10,000 marks, and to
imprisonment during the queen's pleasure; but owing to the exertions of
several influential men he was released in 1589. The queen, however,
refused to employ him again in her service, and he retired to Stepney,
where he died in December 1608. Davison appears to have been an
industrious and outspoken man, and was undoubtedly made the scapegoat
for the queen's pusillanimous conduct. By his wife, Catherine Spelman,
he had a family of four sons and two daughters. Two of his sons, Francis
and Walter, obtained some celebrity as poets.
Many state papers written by him, and many of his letters, are extant
in various collections of manuscripts. See Sir N. H. Nicolas, _Life of
W. Davison_ (London, 1823); J. A. Froude, _History of England_
(London, 1881 fol.); _Calendar of State Papers 1580-1609_; and
_Correspondence of Leicester during his Government of the Low
Countries_, edited by J. Bruce (London, 1844).
DAVIS STRAIT, the broad strait which separates Greenland from North
America, and connects Baffin Bay with the open Atlantic. At its
narrowest point, which occurs just where the Arctic Circle crosses it,
it is nearly 200 m. wide. This part is also the shallowest, a sounding
of 112 fathoms being found in the centre, whereas the depth increases
rapidly both to north and to south. Along the western shore (Baffin
Land) a cold current passes southward; but along the east there is a
warm northward stream, and there are a few Danish settlements on the
Greenland coast. The strait takes its name from the explorer John Davis.
DAVITT, MICHAEL (1846-1906), Irish Nationalist politician, son of a
peasant farmer in Co. Mayo, was born on the 25th of March 1846. His
father was evicted for non-payment of rent in 1851, and migrated to
Lancashire, where at the age of ten the boy began work in a cotton mill
at Haslingden. In 1857 he lost his right arm by a machinery accident,
and he had to get employment as a newsboy and printer's "devil." He
drifted into the ranks of the Fenian brotherhood in 1865, and in 1870 he
was arrested for treason-felony in arranging for sending fire-arms into
Ireland, and was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. After
seven years he was released on ticket of leave. He at once rejoined the
"Irish Republican Brotherhood," and went to the United States, where his
mother, herself of American birth, had settled with the rest of the
family, in order to concert plans with the Fenian leaders there.
Returning to Ireland he helped C. S. Parnell to start the Land League in
1879, and his violent speeches resulted in his re-arrest and consignment
to Portland by Sir William Harcourt, then home secretary. He was
released in 1882, but was again prosecuted for seditious speeches in
1883, and suffered three months' imprisonment. He had been elected to
parliament for Meath as a Nationalist in 1882, but being a convict was
disqualified to sit. He was included as one of the respondents before
the Parnell Commission (1888-1890) and spoke for five days in his own
defence, but his prominent association with the revolutionary Irish
schemes was fully established. (See PARNELL.) He took the
anti-Parnellite side in 1890, and in 1892 was elected to parliament for
North Meath, but was unseated on petition. He was then returned for
North-East Cork, but had to vacate his seat through bankruptcy, caused
by the costs in the North Meath petition. In 1895 he was elected for
West Mayo, but retired before the dissolution in 1900. He died on the
31st of May 1906, in Dublin. A sincere but embittered Nationalist,
anti-English to the backbone, anti-clerical, and sceptical as to the
value of the purely parliamentary agitation for Home Rule, Davitt was a
notable representative of the survival of the Irish "physical force"
party, and a strong link with the extremists in America. In later years
his Socialistic Radicalism connected him closely with the Labour party.
He wrote constantly in American and colonial journals, and published
some books, always with the strongest bias against English methods; but
his force of character earned him at least the respect of those who
could make calm allowance for an open enemy of the established order,
and a higher meed of admiration from those who sympathized with his
objects or were not in a position to be threatened by them.
DAVOS (Romonsch _Tavau_, a name variously explained as meaning a sheep
pasture or simply "behind"), a mountain valley in the Swiss canton of
the Grisons, lying east of Coire (whence it is 40 m. distant by rail),
and north-west of the Lower Engadine (accessible at Sus in 18 m. by
road). It contains two main villages, 2 m. from each other, Dorfli and
Platz (the chief hamlet), which are 5015 ft. above the sea-level, and
had a population in 1900 of 8089, a figure exceeded in the Grisons only
by the capital Coire. Of the population 5391 were Protestants, 2564
Romanists, and 81 Jews; while 6048 were German-speaking and 486
Romonsch-speaking. In 1860 the population was only 1705, rising to 2002
in 1870, to 2865 in 1880, to 3891 in 1888, and to 8089 in 1890. This
steady increase is due to the fact that the valley is now much
frequented in winter by consumptive patients, as its position, sheltered
from cold winds and exposed to brilliant sunshine in the daytime, has a
most beneficial effect on invalids in the first stages of that terrible
disease. A local doctor, by name Spengler, first noticed this fact about
1865, and the valley soon became famous. It is now provided with
excellent hotels, sanatoria, &c., but as lately as 1860 there was only
one inn there, housed in the 16th-century _Rathhaus_ (town hall), which
is still adorned by the heads of wolves shot in the neighbourhood. At
the north end of the valley is the fine lake of Davos, used for skating
in the winter, while from Platz the splendidly engineered
_Landwasserstrasse_ leads (20 m.) down to the Alvaneubad station on the
Albula railway from Coire to the Engadine.
We first hear of Tavaus or Tavauns in 1160 and 1213, as a mountain
pasture or "alp." It was then in the hands of a Romonsch-speaking
population, as is shown by many surviving field names. But, some time
between 1260 and 1282, a colony of German-speaking persons from the
Upper Valais (first mentioned in 1289) was planted there by its lord,
Walter von Vaz, so that it has long been a Teutonic island in the midst
of a Romonsch-speaking population. Historically it is associated with
the Prattigau or Landquart valley to the north, as it was the most
important village of the region, and in 1436 became the capital of the
League of the Ten Jurisdictions. (See GRISONS.) It formerly contained
many iron mines, and belonged from 1477 to 1649 to the Austrian
Habsburgs. In 1779 Davos was visited and described by Archdeacon W.
Coxe. (W. A. B. C.)
DAVOUT, LOUIS NICOLAS, duke of Auerstadt and prince of Eckmuhl
(1770-1823), marshal of France, was born at Annoux (Yonne) on the 10th
of May 1770. His name is also, less correctly, spelt Davout and Davoust.
He entered the French army as a sub-lieutenant in 1788, and on the
outbreak of the Revolution he embraced its principles. He was _chef de
bataillon_ in a volunteer corps in the campaign of 1792, and
distinguished himself at Neerwinden in the following spring. He had just
been promoted general of brigade when he was removed from the active
list as being of noble birth. He served, however, in the campaigns of
1794-1797 on the Rhine, and accompanied Desaix in the Egyptian
expedition of Bonaparte. On his return he took part in the campaign of
Marengo under Napoleon, who placed the greatest confidence in his
abilities, made him a general of division soon after Marengo, and in
1801 gave him a command in the consular guard. At the accession of
Napoleon as emperor, Davout was one of the generals who were created
marshals of France. As commander of the III. corps of the _Grande Armee_
Davout rendered the greatest services. At Austerlitz, after a forced
march of forty-eight hours, the III. corps bore the brunt of the allies'
attack. In the Jena campaign Davout with a single corps fought and won
the brilliant victory of Auerstadt against the main Prussian army. (See
NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS.) He took part, and added to his renown, in the
campaign of Eylau and Friedland. Napoleon left him as governor-general
in the grand-duchy of Warsaw when the treaty of Tilsit put an end to the
war (1807), and in 1808 created him duke of Auerstadt. In the war of
1809 Davout took a brilliant part in the actions which culminated in the
victory of Eckmuhl, and had an important share in the battle of Wagram
(q.v.). He was created prince of Eckmuhl about this time. It was Davout
who was entrusted by Napoleon with the task of organizing the "corps of
observation of the Elbe," which was in reality the gigantic army with
which the emperor invaded Russia in 1812. In this Davout commanded the
I. corps, over 70,000 strong, and defeated the Russians at Mohilev
before he joined the main army, with which he continued throughout the
campaign and the retreat from Moscow. In 1813 he commanded the Hamburg
military district, and defended Hamburg, a city ill fortified and
provisioned, and full of disaffection, through a long siege, only
surrendering the place on the direct order of Louis XVIII. after the
fall of Napoleon in 1814.
Davout's military character was on this, as on many other occasions,
interpreted as cruel and rapacious, and he had to defend himself against
many attacks upon his conduct at Hamburg. He was a stern disciplinarian,
almost the only one of the marshals who exacted rigid and precise
obedience from his troops, and consequently his corps was more
trustworthy and exact in the performance of its duty than any other.
Thus, in the earlier days of the _Grande Armee_, it was always the III.
corps which was entrusted with the most difficult part of the work in
hand. The same criterion is to be applied to his conduct of civil
affairs. His rapacity was in reality Napoleon's, for he gave the same
undeviating obedience to superior orders which he enforced in his own
subordinates. As for his military talents, he was admitted by his
contemporaries and by later judgment to be one of the ablest, perhaps
the ablest, of all Napoleon's marshals. On the first restoration he
retired into private life, openly displaying his hostility to the
Bourbons, and when Napoleon returned from Elba; Davout at once joined
him. Appointed minister of war, he reorganized the French army as far as
the limited time available permitted, and he was so far indispensable to
the war department that Napoleon kept him at Paris during the Waterloo
campaign. To what degree his skill and bravery would have altered the
fortunes of the campaign of 1815 can only be surmised, but it has been
made a ground of criticism against Napoleon that he did not avail
himself in the field of the services of the best general he then
possessed. Davout directed the gallant, but hopeless, defence of Paris
after Waterloo, and was deprived of his marshalate and his titles at the
second restoration. When some of his subordinate generals were
proscribed, he demanded to be held responsible for their acts, as
executed under his orders, and he endeavoured to prevent the
condemnation of Ney. After a time the hostility of the Bourbons towards
Davout died away, and he was reconciled to the monarchy. In 1817 his
rank and titles were restored, and in 1819 he became a member of the
chamber of peers. He died at Paris on the 1st of June 1823.
See the marquise de Blocqueville, _Le Marechal Davout raconte par les
siens et lui-meme_ (Paris, 1870-1880, 1887); Chenier, _Davout, duc
d'Auerstadt_ (Paris, 1866).
DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY, Bart. (1778-1829), English chemist, was born on the
17th of December 1778 at or near Penzance in Cornwall. During his school
days at the grammar schools of Penzance and Truro he showed few signs of
a taste for scientific pursuits or indeed of any special zeal for
knowledge or of ability beyond a certain skill in making verse
translations from the classics and in story-telling. But when in 1794
his father, Robert Davy, died, leaving a widow and five children in
embarrassed circumstances, he awoke to his responsibilities as the
eldest son, and becoming apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary at Penzance
set to work on a systematic and remarkably wide course of
self-instruction which he mapped out for himself in preparation for a
career in medicine. Beginning with metaphysics and ethics and passing on
to mathematics, he turned to chemistry at the end of 1797, and within a
few months of reading Nicholson's and Lavoisier's treatises on that
science had produced a new theory of light and heat. About the same time
he made the acquaintance of two men of scientific attainments--Gregory
Watt (1777-1804), a son of James Watt, and Davies Giddy, afterwards
Gilbert (1767-1839), who was president of the Royal Society from 1827 to
1831. By the latter he was recommended to Dr Thomas Beddoes, who was in
1798 establishing his Medical Pneumatic Institution at Bristol for
investigating the medicinal properties of various gases. Here Davy,
released from his indentures, was installed as superintendent towards
the end of 1798. Early next year two papers from his pen were published
in Beddoes' _West Country Contributions_--one "On Heat, Light and the
Combinations of Light, with a new Theory of Respiration and Observations
on the Chemistry of Life," and the other "On the Generation of
Phosoxygen (Oxygen gas) and the Causes of the Colours of Organic
Beings." These contain an account of the well-known experiment in which
he sought to establish the immateriality of heat by showing its
generation through the friction of two pieces of ice in an exhausted
vessel, and further attempt to prove that light is "matter of a peculiar
kind," and that oxygen gas, being a compound of this matter with a
simple substance, would more properly be termed phosoxygen. Founded on
faulty experiments and reasoning, the views he expressed were either
ignored or ridiculed; and it was long before he bitterly regretted the
temerity with which he had published his hasty generalizations.
One of his first discoveries at the Pneumatic Institution on the 9th of
April 1799 was that pure nitrous oxide (laughing gas) is perfectly
respirable, and he narrates that on the next day he became "absolutely
intoxicated" through breathing sixteen quarts of it for "near seven
minutes." This discovery brought both him and the Pneumatic Institution
into prominence. The gas itself was inhaled by Southey and Coleridge
among other distinguished people, and promised to become fashionable,
while further research yielded Davy material for his _Researches,
Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide_, published
in 1800, which secured his reputation as a chemist. Soon afterwards,
Count Rumford, requiring a lecturer on chemistry for the recently
established Royal Institution in London, opened negotiations with him,
and on the 16th of February 1801 he was engaged as assistant lecturer in
chemistry and director of the laboratory. Ten weeks later, having "given
satisfactory proofs of his talents" in a course of lectures on
galvanism, he was appointed lecturer, and his promotion to be professor
followed on the 31st of May 1802. One of the first tasks imposed on him
by the managers was the delivery of a course of lectures on the chemical
principles of tanning, and he was given leave of absence for July,
August and September 1801 in order to acquaint himself practically with
the subject. The main facts he discovered from his experiments in this
connexion were described before the Royal Society in 1803. In 1802 the
board of agriculture requested him to direct his attention to
agricultural subjects; and in 1803, with the acquiescence of the Royal
Institution, he gave his first course of lectures on agricultural
chemistry and continued them for ten successive years, ultimately
publishing their substance as _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_ in
1813. But his chief interest at the Royal Institution was with
electro-chemistry. Galvanic phenomena had already engaged his attention
before he left Bristol, but in London he had at his disposal a large
battery which gave him much greater opportunities. His first
communication to the Royal Society, read in June 1801, related to
galvanic combinations formed with single metallic plates and fluids, and
showed that an electric cell might be constructed with a single metal
and two fluids, provided one of the fluids was capable of oxidizing one
surface of the metal; previous piles had consisted of two different
metals, or of one plate of metal and the other of charcoal, with an
interposed fluid. Five years later he delivered before the Royal Society
his first Bakerian lecture, "On some Chemical Agencies of Electricity,"
which J. J. Berzelius described as one of the most remarkable memoirs in
the history of chemical theory. He summed up his results in the general
statement that "hydrogen, the alkaline substances, the metals and
certain metallic oxides are attracted by negatively electrified metallic
surfaces, and repelled by positively electrified metallic surfaces; and
contrariwise, that oxygen and acid substances are attracted by
positively electrified metallic surfaces and repelled by negatively
electrified metallic surfaces; and these attractive and repulsive forces
are sufficiently energetic to destroy or suspend the usual operation of
elective affinity." He also sketched a theory of chemical affinity on
the facts he had discovered, and concluded by suggesting that the
electric decomposition of neutral salts might in some cases admit of
economical applications and lead to the isolation of the true elements
of bodies. A year after this paper, which gained him from the French
Institute the medal offered by Napoleon for the best experiment made
each year on galvanism, he described in his second Bakerian lecture the
electrolytic preparation of potassium and sodium, effected in October
1807 by the aid of his battery. According to his cousin, Edmund Davy,[1]
then his laboratory assistant, he was so delighted with this achievement
that he danced about the room in ecstasy. Four days after reading his
lecture his health broke down, and severe illness kept him from his
professional duties until March 1808. As soon as he was able to work
again he attempted to obtain the metals of the alkaline earths by the
same methods as he had used for those of the fixed alkalis, but they
eluded his efforts and he only succeeded in preparing them as amalgams
with mercury, by a process due to Berzelius. His attempts to decompose
"alumine, silica, zircone and glucine" were still less fortunate. At the
end of 1808 he read his third Bakerian lecture, one of the longest of
his papers but not one of the best. In it he disproved the idea advanced
by Gay Lussac that potassium was a compound of hydrogen, not an element;
but on the other hand he cast doubts on the elementary character of
phosphorus, sulphur and carbon, though on this point he afterwards
corrected himself. He also described the preparation of boron, for which
at first he proposed the name boracium, on the impression that it was a
metal. About this time a voluntary subscription among the members of the
Royal Institution put him in possession of a new galvanic battery of
2000 double plates, with a surface equal to 128,000 sq. in., to replace
the old one, which had become unserviceable. His fourth Bakerian
lecture, in November 1809, gave further proofs of the elementary nature
of potassium, and described the properties of telluretted hydrogen. Next
year, in a paper read in July and in his fifth Bakerian lecture in
November, he argued that oxymuriatic acid, contrary to his previous
belief, was a simple body, and proposed for it the name "chlorine."
Davy's reputation was now at its zenith. As a lecturer he could command
an audience of little less than 1000 in the theatre of the Royal
Institution, and his fame had spread far outside London. In 1810, at the
invitation of the Dublin Society, he gave a course of lectures on
electro-chemical science, and in the following year he again lectured in
Dublin, on chemistry and geology, receiving large fees at both visits.
During his second visit Trinity College conferred upon him the honorary
degree of LL.D., the only university distinction he ever received. On
the 8th of April 1812 he was knighted by the prince regent; on the 9th
he gave his farewell lecture as professor of chemistry at the Royal
Institution; and on the 11th he was married to Mrs Apreece, daughter and
heiress of Charles Kerr of Kelso, and a distant connexion of Sir Walter
Scott. A few months after his marriage he published the first and only
volume of his _Elements of Chemical Philosophy_, with a dedication to
his wife, and was also re-elected professor of chemistry at the Royal
Institution, though he would not pledge himself to deliver lectures,
explaining that he wished to be free from the routine of lecturing in
order to have more time for original work. Towards the end of the year
he began to investigate chloride of nitrogen, which had just been
discovered by P. L. Dulong, but was obliged to suspend his inquiries
during the winter on account of injury to his eye caused by an explosion
of that substance. In the spring of 1813 he was engaged on the chemistry
of fluorine, and though he failed to isolate the element, he reached
accurate conclusions regarding its nature and properties. In October he
started with his wife for a continental tour, and with them, as
"assistant in experiments and writing," went Michael Faraday, who in the
previous March had been engaged as assistant in the Royal Institution
laboratory. Having obtained permission from the French emperor to travel
in France, he went first to Paris, where during his two months' stay
every honour was accorded him, including election as a corresponding
member of the first class of the Institute. He does not, however, seem
to have reciprocated the courtesy of his French hosts, but gave offence
by the brusqueness of his manner, though his supercilious bearing,
according to his biographer, Dr Paris, was to be ascribed less to any
conscious superiority than to an "ungraceful timidity which he could
never conquer." Nor was his action in regard to iodine calculated to
conciliate. That substance, recently discovered in Paris, was attracting
the attention of French chemists when he stepped in and, after a short
examination with his portable chemical laboratory, detected its
resemblance to chlorine and pronounced it an "undecompounded body."
Towards the end of December he left for Italy. At Genoa he investigated
the electricity of the torpedo-fish, and at Florence, by the aid of the
great burning-glass in the Accademia del Cimento, he effected the
combustion of the diamond in oxygen and decided that, beyond containing
a little hydrogen, it consisted of pure carbon. Then he went to Rome and
Naples and visited Vesuvius and Pompeii, called on Volta at Milan, spent
the summer in Geneva, and returning to Rome occupied the winter with an
inquiry into the composition of ancient colours.
A few months after his return, through Germany, to London in 1815, he
was induced to take up the question of constructing a miner's safety
lamp. Experiments with samples of fire-damp sent from Newcastle soon
taught him that "explosive mixtures of mine-damp will not pass through
small apertures or tubes"; and in a paper read before the Royal Society
on the 9th of November he showed that metallic tubes, being better
conductors of heat, were superior to glass ones, and explained that the
heat lost by contact with a large cooling surface brought the
temperature of the first portions of gas exploded below that required
for the firing of the other portions. Two further papers read in January
1816 explained the employment of wire gauze instead of narrow tubes, and
later in the year the safety lamps were brought into use in the mines. A
large collection of the different models made by Davy in the course of
his inquiries is in the possession of the Royal Institution. He took out
no patent for his invention, and in recognition of his disinterestedness
the Newcastle coal-owners in September 1817 presented him with a
dinner-service of silver plate.[2]
In 1818, when he was created a baronet, he was commissioned by the
British government to examine the papyri of Herculaneum in the
Neapolitan museum, and he did not arrive back in England till June 1820.
In November of that year the Royal Society, of which he had become a
fellow in 1803, and acted as secretary from 1807 to 1812, chose him as
their president, but his personal qualities were not such as to make him
very successful in that office, especially in comparison with the tact
and firmness of his predecessor, Sir Joseph Banks. In 1821 he was busy
with electrical experiments and in 1822 with investigations of the
fluids contained in the cavities of crystals in rocks. In 1823, when
Faraday liquefied chlorine, he read a paper which suggested the
application of liquids formed by the condensation of gases as mechanical
agents. In the same year the admiralty consulted the Royal Society as to
a means of preserving the copper sheathing of ships from corrosion and
keeping it smooth, and he suggested that the copper would be preserved
if it were rendered negatively electrical, as would be done by fixing
"protectors" of zinc to the sheeting. This method was tried on several
ships, but it was found that the bottoms became extremely foul from
accumulations of seaweed and shellfish. For this reason the admiralty
decided against the plan, much to the inventor's annoyance, especially
as orders to remove the protectors already fitted were issued in June
1825, immediately after he had announced to the Royal Society the full
success of his remedy.
In 1826 Davy's health, which showed signs of failure in 1823, had so
declined that he could with difficulty indulge in his favourite sports
of fishing and shooting, and early in 1827, after a slight attack of
paralysis, he was ordered abroad. After a short stay at Ravenna he
removed to Salzburg, whence, his illness continuing, he sent in his
resignation as president of the Royal Society. In the autumn he returned
to England and spent his time in writing his _Salmonia or Days of
Flyfishing_, an imitation of _The Compleat Angler_. In the spring of
1828 he again left England for Illyria, and in the winter fixed his
residence at Rome, whence he sent to the Royal Society his "Remarks on
the Electricity of the Torpedo," written at Trieste in October. This,
with the exception of a posthumous work, _Consolations in Travel, or the
Last Days of a Philosopher_ (1830), was the final production of his pen.
On the 20th of February 1829 he suffered a second attack of paralysis
which rendered his right side quite powerless, but under the care of his
brother, Dr John Davy (1791-1868), he rallied sufficiently to be removed
to Geneva, where he died on the 29th of May.
Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed
characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by
his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative;
the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the first chemist,
he would have been the first poet of his age," and Southey said that "he
had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art." In spite of his
ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and
illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his
experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to
hear him "to increase his stock of metaphors." The dominating ambition
of his life was to achieve fame, but though that sometimes betrayed him
into petty jealousy, it did not leave him insensible to the claims on
his knowledge of the "cause of humanity," to use a phrase often employed
by him in connexion with his invention of the miners' lamp. Of the
smaller observances of etiquette he was careless, and his frankness of
disposition sometimes exposed him to annoyances which he might have
avoided by the exercise of ordinary tact.
See Dr J. A. Paris, _The Life of Sir Humphry Davy_ (1831), vol. ii. of
which on pp. 450-456 gives a list of his publications. Dr John Davy,
_Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy_ (1836); Collected Works (with shorter
memoir, 1839); _Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific_ (1858).
T. E. Thorpe, _Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher_ (1896).
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Edmund Davy (1785-1857) became professor of chemistry at Cork
Institution in 1813, and at the Royal Dublin Society in 1826. His
son, Edmund William Davy (born in 1826), was appointed professor of
medicine in the Royal College, Dublin, in 1870.
[2] Davy's will directed that this service, after Lady Davy's death,
should pass to his brother, Dr John Davy, on whose decease, if he had
no heirs who could make use of it, it was to be melted and sold, the
proceeds going to the Royal Society "to found a medal to be given
annually for the most important discovery in chemistry anywhere made
in Europe or Anglo-America." The silver produced L736, and the
interest on that sum is expended on the Davy medal, which was awarded
for the first time in 1877, to Bunsen and Kirchhoff for their
discovery of spectrum analysis.
DAWARI, or DAURI, a Pathan tribe on the Waziri border of the North-West
Frontier Province of India. The Dawaris inhabit the Tochi Valley (q.v.),
otherwise known as Dawar or Daur, and are a homogeneous tribe of
considerable size, numbering 5200 fighting men. Though surrounded on all
four sides by a Waziri population they bear little resemblance to
Waziris. They are an agricultural and the Waziris a pastoral race, and
they are much richer than their neighbours. They thrive on a rich
sedimentary soil copiously irrigated in the midst of a country where
cultivable land of any kind is scarce and water in general hardly to be
obtained. But they pay a heavy tax in health and well-being for the
possession of their fertile acres. Fevers and other ravaging diseases
are bred in the wet sodden lands of the Tochi Valley, lying at the
bottom of a deep depression exposed to the burning rays of the sun; and
the effects of these ailments may be clearly traced in the drawn or
bloated features and the shrunken or swollen limbs of nearly every
Dawari that has passed middle life. They have an evil name for
indolence, drug-eating and unnatural vices, and are morally the lowest
of the Afghan races; but in spite of these defects, and of the contempt
with which they are regarded by the other Afghan tribes, they have held
their own for centuries against the warlike and hardy Waziris. The
secret of this is that the Dawaris stand together, and the Waziris do
not, while the weaker race is gifted with infinite patience and tenacity
of purpose. With the advent of British government, however, the Dawaris
are now secured in the possession of their ancestral lands.
See J. G. Lorimer, _Grammar and Vocabulary of Waziri Pushtu_ (1902).
DAWES, HENRY LAURENS (1816-1903), American lawyer, was born at
Cummington, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October 1816. After graduating
at Yale in 1839, he taught for a time at Greenfield, Mass., and also
edited _The Greenfield Gazette_. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and
began the practice of law at North Adams, where for a time he conducted
_The Transcript_. He served in the Massachusetts House of
Representatives in 1848-1849 and in 1852, in the state Senate in 1850,
and in the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1853. From 1853 to
1857 he was United States district attorney for the western district of
Massachusetts; and from 1857-1875 he was a Republican member of the
national House of Representatives. In 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner
as senator from Massachusetts, serving until 1893. During this long
period of legislative activity he served in the House on the committees
on elections, ways and means, and appropriations, took a prominent part
in the anti-slavery and reconstruction measures during and after the
Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish
commission and the inauguration of daily weather reports. In the Senate
he was chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, and gave much
attention to the enactment of laws for the benefit of the Indians. On
leaving the Senate, in 1893, he became chairman of the Commission to the
Five Civilized Tribes (sometimes called the Dawes Indian Commission),
and served in this capacity for ten years, negotiating with the tribes
for the extinction of the communal title to their land and for the
dissolution of the tribal governments, with the object of making the
tribes a constituent part of the United States.[1] Dawes died at
Pittsfield, Mass., on the 5th of February 1903.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The commission completed its labours on the 1st of July 1905,
after having allotted 20,000,000 acres of land among 90,000 Indians
and absorbed the five Indian governments into the national system.
The "five tribes" were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and
Seminole Indians.
DAWES, RICHARD (1708-1766), English classical scholar, was born in or
near Market Bosworth. He was educated at the town grammar school under
Anthony Blackwall, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which society
he was elected fellow in 1731. His peculiar habits and outspoken
language made him unpopular. His health broke down in consequence of his
sedentary life, and it is said that he took to bell-ringing at Great St
Mary's as a restorative. He was a bitter enemy of Bentley, who he
declared knew nothing of Greek except from indexes. In 1738 Dawes was
appointed to the mastership of the grammar school, Newcastle-on-Tyne,
combined with that of St Mary's hospital. From all accounts his mind
appears to have become unhinged; his eccentricities of conduct and
continual disputes with his governing body ruined the school, and
finally, in 1749, he resigned his post and retired to Heworth, where he
chiefly amused himself with boating. He died on the 21st of March 1766.
Dawes was not a prolific writer. The book on which his fame rests is his
_Miscellanea critica_ (1745), which gained the commendation of such
distinguished continental scholars as L. C. Valckenaer and J. J. Reiske.
The _Miscellanea_, which was re-edited by T. Burgess (1781), G. C.
Harles (1800) and T. Kidd (1817), for many years enjoyed a high
reputation, and although some of the "canons" have been proved untenable
and few can be accepted universally, it will always remain an honourable
and enduring monument of English scholarship.
See J. Hodgson, _An Account of the Life and Writings of Richard Dawes_
(1828); H. R. Luard in _Dict. of Nat. Biog._; J. E. Sandys, _Hist. of
Classical Scholarship_, ii. 415.
DAWISON, BOGUMIL (1818-1872), German actor, was born at Warsaw, of
Jewish parents, and at the age of nineteen went on the stage. In 1839 he
received an appointment to the theatre at Lemberg in Galicia. In 1847 he
played at Hamburg with marked success, was from 1849 to 1854 a member of
the Burg theatre in Vienna, and then became connected with the Dresden
court theatre. In 1864 he was given a life engagement, but resigned his
appointment, and after starring through Germany visited the United
States in 1866. He died in Dresden on the 1st of February 1872. Dawison
was considered in Germany an actor of a new type; a leading critic wrote
that he and Marie Seebach "swept like fresh gales over dusty tradition,
and brushing aside the monotony of declamation gave to their roles more
character and vivacity than had hitherto been known on the German
stage." His chief parts were Mephistopheles, Franz Moor, Mark Antony,
Hamlet, Charles V., Richard III. and King Lear.
DAWKINS, WILLIAM BOYD (1838- ), English geologist and archaeologist,
was born at Buttington vicarage near Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, on the
26th of December 1838. Educated at Rossall School and Oxford, he joined
the Geological Survey in 1862, and in 1869 became curator of the
Manchester museum, a post which he retained till 1890. He was appointed
professor of geology and palaeontology in Owens College, Manchester, in
1874. He paid special attention to the question of the existence of coal
in Kent, and in 1882 was selected by the Channel tunnel committee to
make a special survey of the French and English coasts. He was also
employed in the scheme of a tunnel beneath the Humber. His chief
distinctions, however, were won in the realms of anthropology by his
researches into the lives of the cave-dwellers of prehistoric times,
labours which have borne fruit in his books _Cave-hunting_ (1874);
_Early Man in Britain_ (1880); _British Pleistocene Mammalia_
(1866-1887). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1867, and acted
as president of the anthropological section of the British Association
in 1882 and of the geological section in 1888.
DAWLISH, a watering-place in the Ashburton parliamentary division of
Devonshire, England, on the English Channel, near the outflow of the
Exe, 12 m. S. of Exeter by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban
district (1901) 4003. It lies on a cove sheltered by two projecting
headlands. A small stream which flows through the town is lined on both
sides by pleasure-grounds. Dawlish owes its prosperity to the visitors
attracted, in spring and early summer, by the warm climate and excellent
bathing. An annual pleasure fair is held on Easter Monday, and a regatta
in August or September. Until its sale in the 19th century, the site of
Dawlish belonged to Exeter cathedral, having been given to the chapter
by Leofric, bishop of Exeter, in 1050.
DAWN (the 16th-century form of the earlier "dawing" or "dawning," from
an old verb "daw," O. Eng. _dagian_, to become day; cf. Dutch _dagen_,
and Ger. _tagen_), the time when light appears (daws) in the sky in the
morning. The dawn colours appear in the reverse order of the sunset
colours and are due to the same cause. When the sun is lowest in both
cases the colour is deep red; this gradually changes through orange to
gold and brilliant yellow as the sun approaches the horizon. These
colours follow each other in order of refrangibility, reproducing all
the colours of the spectrum in order except the blue rays which are
scattered in the sky. The colours of the dawn are purer and colder than
the sunset colours since there is less dust and moisture in the
atmosphere and less consequent sifting of light rays.
DAWSON, GEORGE (1821-1876), English nonconformist divine, was born in
London on the 24th of February 1821, and was educated at Marischal
College, Aberdeen, and at the university of Glasgow. In 1843 he accepted
the pastorate of the Baptist church at Rickmansworth, and in 1844 a
similar charge at Mount Zion, Birmingham, where he attracted large
congregations by his eloquence and his unconventional views. Desiring
freedom from any definite creed, he left the Baptist church and became
minister of the "Church of the Saviour," a building erected for him by
his supporters. Here he exercised a stimulating and varied ministry for
nearly thirty years, gathering round him a congregation of all types and
especially of such as found the dogmas of the age distasteful. He had
much sympathy with the Unitarian position, but was not himself a
Unitarian. Indeed he had no fixed standpoint, and discussed truths and
principles from various aspects. His sermons, though not particularly
speculative, were unconventional and quickening. He was the friend of
Carlyle and Emerson, and did much to popularize their teachings, his
influence being conspicuous, especially in his demand for a high ethical
standard in everyday life and his insistence on the Christianization of
citizenship. He was warmly supported by Dr R. W. Dale, and by J. T.
Bunce, editor of _The Birmingham Daily Post_. Both Dawson and Dale were
disqualified as ministers from seats on the town council, but both
served on the Birmingham school board. Dawson also lectured on English
literature at the Midland Institute and helped to found the Shakespeare
Memorial library in Birmingham. He died suddenly at King's Norton on the
30th of November 1876. Four volumes of _Sermons_, two of _Prayers_ and
two of _Biographical Lectures_ were published after his death.
See _Life_ by H. W. Crosskey (1876) and an article by R. W. Dale in
_The Nineteenth Century_ (August 1877).
DAWSON, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1820-1899), Canadian geologist, was bom at
Pictou, Nova Scotia, on the 30th of October 1820. Of Scottish descent,
he went to Edinburgh to complete his education, and graduated at the
university in 1842, having gained a knowledge of geology and natural
history from Robert Jameson. On his return to Nova Scotia in 1842 he
accompanied Sir Charles Lyell on his first visit to that territory.
Subsequently he was appointed to the post of superintendent of education
(1850-1853); at the same time he entered zealously into the geology of
the country, making a special study of the fossil forests of the
coal-measures. From these strata, in company with Lyell (during his
second visit) in 1852, he obtained the first remains of an
"air-breathing reptile" named _Dendrerpeton_. He also described the
fossil plants of the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of
Canada for the Geological Survey of that country (1871-1873). From 1855
to 1893 he was professor of geology and principal of M'Gill University,
Montreal, an institution which under his influence attained a high
reputation. He was elected F.R.S. in 1862. When the Royal Society of
Canada was constituted he was the first to occupy the presidential
chair, and he also acted as president of the British Association at its
meeting at Birmingham in 1886, and of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. Sir William Dawson's name is especially
associated with the _Eozoon canadense_, which in 1864 he described as an
organism having the structure of a foraminifer. It was found in the
Laurentian rocks, regarded as the oldest known geological system. His
views on the subject were contested at the time, and have since been
disproved, the so-called organism being now regarded as a mineral
structure. He was created C.M.G. in 1881, and was knighted in 1884. In
his books on geological subjects he maintained a distinctly theological
attitude, declining to admit the descent or evolution of man from brute
ancestors, and holding that the human species only made its appearance
on this earth within quite recent times. Besides many memoirs in the
Transactions of learned societies, he published _Acadian Geology: The
geological structure, organic remains and mineral resources of Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island_ (1855; ed. 3, 1878);
_Air-breathers of the Coal Period_ (1863); _The Story of the Earth and
Man_ (1873; ed. 6, 1880); _The Dawn of Life_ (1875); _Fossil Men and
their Modern Representatives_ (1880); _Geological History of Plants_
(1888); _The Canadian Ice Age_ (1894). He died on the 20th of November
1899.
His son, GEORGE MERCER DAWSON (1849-1901), was born at Pictou on the 1st
of August 1849, and received his education at M'Gill University and the
Royal School of Mines, London, where he had a brilliant career. In 1873
he was appointed geologist and naturalist to the North American boundary
commission, and two years later he joined the staff of the geological
survey of Canada, of which he became assistant director in 1883, and
director in 1895. He was in charge of the Canadian government's Yukon
expedition in 1887, and his name is permanently written in Dawson City,
of gold-bearing fame. As one of the Bering Sea Commissioners he spent
the summer of 1891 investigating the facts of the seal fisheries on the
northern coasts of Asia and America. For his services there, and at the
subsequent arbitration in Paris, he was made a C.M.G. He was elected
F.R.S. in 1891, and in the same year was awarded the Bigsby medal by the
Geological Society of London. He was president of the Royal Society of
Canada in 1893. He died on the 2nd of March 1901. He was the author of
many scientific papers and reports, especially on the surface geology
and glacial phenomena of the northern and western parts of Canada.
DAWSON CITY, or DAWSON, the capital of the Yukon territory, Canada, on
the right bank of the Yukon river, and in the middle of the Klondyke
gold region, of which it is the distributing centre. It is situated in
beautiful mountainous country, 1400 ft. above the sea, and 1500 m. from
the mouth of the Yukon river. It is reached by a fleet of river
steamers, and has telegraphic communication. Founded in 1896, its
population soon reached over 20,000 at the height of the gold rush; in
1901 it was officially returned as 9142, and is now not more than 5000.
The temperature varies from 90 deg. F. in summer to 50 deg. below zero
in winter. It possesses three opera-houses and numerous hotels, and is a
typical mining town, though even at first there was much less
lawlessness than is usually the case in such cities.
DAX, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the
department of Landes, 92 m. S.S.W, of Bordeaux, on the Southern railway
between that city and Bayonne. Pop. (1906) 8585. The town lies on the
left bank of the Adour, a stone bridge uniting it to its suburb of Le
Sablar on the right bank. It has remains of ancient Gallo-Roman
fortifications, now converted into a promenade. The most remarkable
building in the town is the church of Notre-Dame, once a cathedral; it
was rebuilt from 1656 to 1719, but still preserves a sacristy, a porch
and a fine sculptured doorway of the 13th century. The church of St
Vincent, to the south-west of the town, derives its name from the first
bishop, whose tomb it contains. The church of St Paul-les-Dax, a suburb
on the right bank of the Adour, belongs mainly to the 15th century, and
has a Romanesque apse adorned with curious bas-reliefs. On a hill to the
west of Dax stands a tower built in memory of the sailor and scientist
Jean Charles Borda, born there in 1733; a statue was erected to him in
the town in 1891. Dax, which is well known as a winter resort, owes much
of its importance to its thermal waters and mud-baths (the deposit of
the Adour), which are efficacious in cases of rheumatism, neuralgia and
other disorders. The best-known spring is the Fontaine Chaude, which
issues into a basin 160 ft. wide in the centre of the town. The
principal of numerous bathing establishments are the Grands Thermes, the
Bains Sales, adjoining a casino, and the Baignots, which fringe the
Adour and are surrounded by gardens. Dax has a sub-prefecture, tribunals
of first instance and of commerce, a communal college, a training
college and a library. It has salt workings, tanneries, saw-mills,
manufactures of soap and corks; commerce is chiefly in the pine wood,
resin and cork of the Landes, in mules, cattle, horses and poultry.
Dax (_Aquae Tarbellicae_, _Aquae Augustae_, later _D'Acqs_) was the
capital of the Tarbelli under the Roman domination, when its waters were
already famous. Later it was the seat of a viscounty, which in the 11th
century passed to the viscounts of Bearn, and in 1177 was annexed by
Richard Coeur de Lion to Gascony. The bishopric, founded in the 3rd
century, was in 1801 attached to that of Aire.
DAY, JOHN (1574-1640?), English dramatist, was born at Cawston, Norfolk,
in 1574, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College,
Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a
book. He became one of Henslowe's playwrights, collaborating with Henry
Chettle, William Haughton, Thomas Dekker, Richard Hathway and Wentworth
Smith, but his almost incessant activity seems to have left him poor
enough, to judge by the small loans, of five shillings and even two
shillings, that he obtained from Henslowe. The first play in which Day
appears as part-author is _The Conquest of Brute, with the finding of
the Bath_ (1598), which, with most of his journeyman's work, is lost. A
drama dealing with the early years of the reign of Henry VI., _The Blind
Beggar of Bednal Green_ (acted 1600, printed 1659), written in
collaboration with Chettle, is his earliest extant work. It bore the
sub-title of _The Merry Humor of Tom Strowd, the Norfolk Yeoman_, and
was so popular that second and third parts, by Day and Haughton, were
produced in the next year. _The Ile of Guls_ (printed 1606), a prose
comedy founded upon Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, contains in its light
dialogue much satire to which the key is now lost, but Mr Swinburne
notes in Manasses's burlesque of a Puritan sermon a curious anticipation
of the eloquence of Mr Chadband in _Bleak House_. In 1607 Day produced,
in conjunction with William Rowley and George Wilkins, _The Travailes of
the Three English Brothers_, which detailed the adventures of Sir
Thomas, Sir Anthony and Robert Shirley.
_The Parliament of Bees_ is the work on which Day's reputation chiefly
rests. This exquisite and unique drama, or rather masque, is entirely
occupied with "the doings, the births, the wars, the wooings" of bees,
expressed in a style at once most singular and most charming. The bees
hold a parliament under Prorex, the Master Bee, and various complaints
are preferred against the humble-bee, the wasp, the drone and other
offenders. This satirical allegory of affairs ends with a royal progress
of Oberon, who distributes justice to all. The piece contains much for
which parallel passages are found in Dekker's _Wonder of a Kingdom_
(1636) and Samuel Rowley's (or Dekker's) _Noble Soldier_ (printed 1634).
There is no earlier known edition of _The Parliament of Bees_ than that
in 1641, but a persistent tradition has assigned the piece to 1607. In
1608 Day published two comedies, _Law Trickes, or Who Would have Thought
it?_ and _Humour out of Breath_. The date of his death is unknown, but
an elegy on him by John Tatham, the city poet, was published in 1640.
The six dramas by John Day which we possess show a delicate fancy and
dainty inventiveness all his own. He preserved, in a great measure, the
dramatic tradition of John Lyly, and affected a kind of subdued
euphuism. _The Maydes Metamorphosis_ (1600), once supposed to be a
posthumous work of Lyly's, may be an early work of Day's. It possesses,
at all events, many of his marked characteristics. His prose
_Peregrinatic Scholastica or Learninges Pilgrimage_, dating from his
later years, was printed by Mr A. H. Bullen from a MS. of Day's.
Considerations partly based on this work have suggested that he had a
share in the anonymous _Pilgrimage to Parnassus_ and the _Return from
Parnassus_. The beauty and ingenuity of _The Parliament of Bees_ were
noted and warmly extolled by Charles Lamb; and Day's work has since
found many admirers.
His works, edited by A. H. Bullen, were printed at the Chiswick Press
in 1881. The same editor included _The Maydes Metamorphosis_ in vol.
i. of his _Collection of Old Plays_. _The Parliament of Bees_ and
_Humour out of Breath_ were printed in _Nero and other Plays_ (Mermaid
Series, 1888), with an introduction by Arthur Symons. An appreciation
by Mr A. C. Swinburne appeared in _The Nineteenth Century_ (October
1897).
DAY, THOMAS (1748-1789), British author, was born in London on the 22nd
of June 1748. He is famous as the writer of _Sandford and Merton_
(1783-1789), a book for the young, which, though quaintly didactic and
often ridiculous, has had considerable educational value as inculcating
manliness and independence. Day was educated at the Charterhouse and at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a great admirer of J. J.
Rousseau and his doctrine of the ideal state of nature. Having
independent means he devoted himself to a life of study and
philanthropy. His views on marriage were typical of the man. He brought
up two foundlings, one of whom he hoped eventually to marry. They were
educated on the severest principles, but neither acquired the high
quality of stoicism which he had looked for. After several proposals of
marriage to other ladies had been rejected, he married an heiress who
agreed with his ascetic programme of life. He finally settled at
Ottershaw in Surrey and took to farming on philanthropic principles. He
had many curious and impracticable theories, among them one that all
animals could be managed by kindness, and while riding an unbroken colt
he was thrown near Wargrave and killed on the 28th of September 1789.
His poem _The Dying Negro_, published in 1773, struck the keynote of the
anti-slavery movement. It is also obvious from his other works, such as
_The Devoted Legions_ (1776) and _The Desolation of America_ (1777),
that he strongly sympathized with the Americans during their War of
Independence.
DAY (O. Eng. _daeg_, Ger. _Tag_; according to the _New English
Dictionary_, "in no way related to the Lat. _dies_"), in astronomy, the
interval of time in which a revolution of the earth on its axis is
performed. Days are distinguished as solar, sidereal or lunar, according
as the revolution is taken relatively to the sun, the stars or the moon.
The solar day is the fundamental unit of time, not only in daily life
but in astronomical practice. In the latter case, being determined by
observations of the sun, it is taken to begin with the passage of the
mean sun over the meridian of the place, or at mean noon, while the
civil day begins at midnight. A vigorous effort was made during the last
fifteen years of the 19th century to bring the two uses into harmony by
beginning the astronomical day at midnight. In some isolated cases this
has been done; but the general consensus of astronomers has been against
it, the day as used in astronomy being only a measure of time, and
having no relation to the period of daily repose. The time when the day
shall begin is purely a matter of convenience. The present practice
being the dominant one from the time of Ptolemy until the present, it
was felt that the confusion in the combination of past and present
astronomical observations, and the doubts and difficulties in using the
astronomical ephemerides, formed a decisive argument against any change.
The question of a possible variability in the length of the day is one
of fundamental importance. One necessary effect of the tidal retardation
of the earth's rotation is gradually to increase this length. It is
remarkable that the discussion of ancient eclipses of the moon, and
their comparison with modern observations, show only a small and rather
doubtful change, amounting perhaps to less than one-hundredth of a
second per century. As this amount seems to be markedly less than that
which would be expected from the cause in question, it is probable that
some other cause tends to accelerate the earth's rotation and so to
shorten the day. The moon's apparent mean motion in longitude seems also
to indicate slow periodic changes in the earth's rotation; but these are
not confirmed by transits of Mercury, which ought also to indicate them.
(See MOON and TIDES.) (S. N.)
_Legal Aspects._--In law, a day may be either a _dies naturalis_ or
natural day, or a _dies artificialis_ or artificial day. A natural day
includes all the twenty-four hours from midnight to midnight. Fractions
of the day are disregarded to avoid dispute, though sometimes the law
will consider fractions, as where it is necessary to show the first of
two acts. In cases where action must be taken for preserving or
asserting a right, a day would mean the natural day of twenty-four
hours, but on the other hand, as in cases of survivorship, for
testamentary or other purposes, it would suffice if a person survived
for even the smallest portion of the last day necessary.
When a statute directs any act to be done within so many days, these
words mean _clear days_, i.e. a number of perfect intervening days, not
counting the terminal days: if the statute says nothing about Sunday,
the days mentioned mean consecutive days and include Sundays. Under some
statutes (e.g. the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, the Corrupt and
Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883) Sundays and holidays are excluded
in reckoning days, and consequently all the Sundays, &c., of a
prescribed sequence of days would be eliminated. So also, by custom, the
word "day" may be understood in some special sense. In bills of lading
and charter parties, when "days" or "running days" are spoken of without
qualification, they usually mean consecutive days, and Sundays and
holidays are counted, but when there is some qualification, as where a
charter party required a cargo "to be discharged in fourteen days,"
"days" will mean _working days_. Working days, again, vary in different
ports, and the custom of the port will decide in each case what are
working days. In English charter parties, unless the contrary is
expressed, Christmas day and other recognized holidays are included as
working days. A _weather working day_, a term sometimes used in charter
parties, means a day when work is not prevented by the weather, and
unless so provided for, a day on which work was rendered impossible by
bad weather would still be counted as a working day. _Lay days_, which
are days given to the charterer in a charter party either to load or
unload without paying for the use of the ship, are days of the week, not
periods of twenty-four hours.
_Days of Grace._--When a bill of exchange is not payable at sight or on
demand, certain days (called days of grace, from being originally a
gratuitous favour) are added to the time of payment as fixed by the
bill, and the bill is then due and payable on the last day of grace. In
the United Kingdom, by the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, three days are
allowed as days of grace, but when the last day of grace falls on
Sunday, Christmas day, Good Friday or a day appointed by royal
proclamation as a public fast or thanksgiving day, the bill is due and
payable on the preceding business day. If the last day of grace is a
bank holiday (other than Christmas day or Good Friday), or when the last
day of grace is a Sunday, and the second day of grace is a bank holiday,
the bill is due and payable on the succeeding business day. Days of
grace (_dies non_) are in existence practically among English-speaking
peoples only. They were abolished by the French Code (Code de Commerce,
Liv. i. tit. 8, art. 135), and by most, if not all, of the European
codes since framed.
_Civil Days._--An artificial or civil day is, to a certain extent,
difficult to define; it "may be regarded as a convenient term to signify
all the various kinds of 'day' known in legal proceedings other than the
natural day." (_Ency. English Law_, tit. "Day"). The Jews, Chaldeans and
Babylonians began the day at the rising of the sun; the Athenians at the
fall; the Umbri in Italy began at midday; the Egyptians and Romans at
midnight; and in England, the United States and most of the countries of
Europe the Roman civil day still prevails, the day usually commencing as
soon as the clock begins to strike 12 P.M. of the preceding day.
In England the period of the civil day may also vary under different
statutes. In criminal law the day formerly commenced at sunrise and
extended to sunset, but by the Larceny Act 1861 the day is that period
between six in the morning and nine in the evening. The same period of
time comprises a day under the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885
and the Public Health (London) Act 1891, but under the Public Health
(Scotland) Act 1897 "day" is the period between 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. By an
act of 1845, regulating the labour of children in print-works, "day" is
defined as from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. Daytime, within which distress for
rent must be made, is from sunrise to sunset (_Tulton_ v. _Darke_, 1860,
2 L.T. 361). An obligation to pay money on a certain day is
theoretically discharged if the money is paid before midnight of the day
on which it falls due, but custom has so far modified this that the law
requires reasonable hours to be observed. If, for instance, payment has
to be made at a bank or place of business, it must be within business
hours.
When an act of parliament is expressed to come into operation on a
certain day, it is to be construed as coming into operation on the
expiration of the previous day (Interpretation Act 1889, S 36; Statutes
[Definition of Time] Act 1880).
Under the orders of the supreme court the word "day" has two meanings.
For purposes of personal service of writs, it means any time of the day
or night on week-days, but excludes the time from twelve midnight on
Saturday till twelve midnight on Sunday. For purposes of service not
required to be personal, it means before six o'clock on any week-day
except Saturday, and before 2 P.M. on Saturday.
_Closed Days_, i.e. Sunday, Christmas day and Good Friday, are excluded
from all fixtures of time less than six days: otherwise they are
included, unless the last day of the time fixed falls on one of those
days (R.S.C., O. lxiv.).
_American Practice._--In the United States a day is the space of time
between midnight and midnight. The law pays no regard to fractions of a
day except to prevent injustice. A "day's work" is by statute in New
York fixed at eight hours for all employees except farm and domestic
servants, and for employees on railroads at ten hours (Laws 1897, ch.
415). In the recording acts relating to real property, fractions of a
day are of the utmost importance, and all deeds, mortgages and other
instruments affecting the property, take precedence in the order in
which they were filed for record. Days of grace are abolished in many of
the seventeen states in which the Negotiable Instruments law has been
enacted. Sundays and public holidays are usually excluded in computing
time if they are the last day within which the act was to be done.
General public holidays throughout the United States are Christmas,
Thanksgiving (last Thursday in November) and Independence (July 4th)
days and Washington's birthday (February 22nd). The several states have
also certain local public holidays. (See also MONTH; TIME.)
(T. A. I.)
DAYLESFORD, a town of Talbot county, Victoria, Australia, 74 m. by rail
N.W. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 3384. It lies on the flank of the Great
Dividing Range, at an elevation of 2030 ft. On Wombat Hill are beautiful
public gardens commanding extensive views, and a fine convent of the
Presentation Order. Much wheat is grown in the district, and
gold-mining, both quartz and alluvial, is carried on. Daylesford has an
important mining school. Near the town are the Hepburn mineral springs
and a number of beautiful waterfalls, and 6 m. from it is Mount
Franklin, an extinct volcano.
DAYTON, a city of Campbell county, Kentucky, U.S.A., on the S. bank of
the Ohio river, opposite Cincinnati, and adjoining Bellevue and Newport,
Ky. Pop. (1890) 4264; (1900) 6104 including 655 foreign-born and 63
negroes; (1910) 6979. It is served by the Chesapeake & Ohio railway at
Newport, of which it is a suburb, largely residential. It has
manufactories of watch-cases and pianos, and whisky distilleries. In
the city is the Speers Memorial hospital. Dayton was settled and
incorporated in 1849.
DAYTON, a city and the county-seat of Montgomery county, Ohio, U.S.A.,
at the confluence of Wolf Creek, Stillwater river and Mad river with the
Great Miami, 57 m. N.N.E. of Cincinnati and about 70 m. W.S.W. of
Columbus. Pop. (1890) 61,220; (1900) 85,333; (1910) 116,577. In 1900
there were 10,053 foreign-born and 3387 negroes; of the foreign-born
6820 were Germans and 1253 Irish. Dayton is served by the Erie, the
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Pittsburg, Cincinnati,
Chicago & St Louis, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, and the Dayton &
Union railways, by ten interurban electric railways, centring here, and
by the Miami & Erie Canal. The city extends more than 5 m. from E. to
W., and 3(1/2) m. from N. to S., lies for the most part on level ground
at an elevation of about 740 ft. above sea-level, and numerous good,
hard gravel roads radiate from it in all directions through the
surrounding country, a fertile farming region which abounds in
limestone, used in the construction of public and private buildings.
Among the more prominent buildings are the court-house--the portion
first erected being designed after the Parthenon--the Steele high
school, St Mary's college, Notre Dame academy, the Memorial Building,
the Arcade Building, Reibold Building, the Algonquin Hotel, the post
office, the public library (containing about 75,000 volumes), the Young
Men's Christian Association building and several churches. At Dayton are
the Union Biblical seminary, a theological school of the United Brethren
in Christ, and the publishing house of the same denomination. By an
agreement made in 1907 the school of theology of Ursinus College
(Collegeville, Pennsylvania; the theological school since 1898 had been
in Philadelphia) and the Heidelberg Theological seminary (Tiffin, Ohio)
united to form the Central Theological seminary of the German Reformed
Church, which was established in Dayton in 1908. The boulevard and park
along the river add attractiveness to the city. Among the charitable
institutions are the Dayton state hospital (for the insane), the Miami
Valley and the St Elizabeth hospitals, the Christian Deaconess, the
Widows' and the Children's homes, and the Door of Hope (for homeless
girls); and 1 m. W. of the city is the central branch of the National
Home for disabled volunteer soldiers, with its beautifully ornamented
grounds, about 1 sq. m. in extent. The Mad river is made to furnish good
water-power by means of a hydraulic canal which takes its water through
the city, and Dayton's manufactures are extensive and varied, the
establishments of the National Cash Register Company employing in 1907
about 4000 wage-earners. This company is widely known for its "welfare
work" on behalf of its operatives. Baths, lunch-rooms, rest-rooms,
clubs, lectures, schools and kindergartens have been supplied, and the
company has also cultivated domestic pride by offering prizes for the
best-kept gardens, &c. From April to July 1901 there was a strike in the
already thoroughly unionized factories; complaint was made of the
hectoring of union men by a certain foreman, the use in toilet-rooms of
towels laundered in non-union shops (the company replied by allowing the
men to supply towels themselves), the use on doors of springs not
union-made (these were removed by the company), and especially the
discharge of four men whom the company refused to reinstate. The company
was victorious in the strike, and the factory became an "open shop." In
addition to cash registers, the city's manufactured products include
agricultural implements, clay-working machinery, cotton-seed and linseed
oil machinery, filters, turbines, railway cars (the large Barney-Smith
car works employed 1800 men in 1905), carriages and wagons,
sewing-machines (the Davis Sewing Machine Co.), automobiles, clothing,
flour, malt liquors, paper, furniture, tobacco and soap. The total value
of the manufactured product, under the "factory system," was $31,015,293
in 1900 and $39,596,773 in 1905. Dayton's site was purchased in 1795
from John Cleves Symmes by a party of Revolutionary soldiers, and it was
laid out as a town in 1796 by Israel Ludlow (one of the owners), by whom
it was named in honour of Jonathan Dayton (1760-1824), a soldier in the
War of Independence, a member of Congress from New Jersey in 1791-1799,
and a United States senator in 1799-1805. It was made the county-seat in
1803, was incorporated as a town in 1805, grew rapidly after the opening
of the canal in 1828, and in 1841 was chartered as a city.
DEACON (Gr. [Greek: diakonos], minister, servant), the name given to a
particular minister or officer of the Christian Church. The status and
functions of the office have varied in different ages and in different
branches of Christendom.
(a) _The Ancient Church._--The office of deacon is almost as old as
Christianity itself, though it is impossible to fix the moment at which
it came into existence. Tradition connects its origin with the
appointment of "the Seven" recorded in Acts vi. This connexion, however,
is questioned by a large and increasing number of modern scholars, on
the ground that "the Seven" are not called deacons in the New Testament
and do not seem to have been identified with them till the time of
Irenaeus (A.D. 180). The first definite reference to the diaconate
occurs in St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (i. 1), where the
officers of the Church are described as "bishops and deacons"--though it
is not unlikely that earlier allusions are to be found in 1 Cor. xii. 28
and Romans xii. 7. In the pastoral epistles the office seems to have
become a permanent institution of the Church, and special qualifications
are laid down for those who hold it (1 Tim. iii. 8). By the time of
Ignatius (A.D. 110) the "three orders" of the ministry were definitely
established, the deacon being the lowest of the three and subordinate to
the bishop and the presbyters. The inclusion of deacons in the "three
orders" which were regarded as essential to the existence of a true
Church sharply distinguished them from the lower ranks of the ministry,
and gave them a status and position of importance in the ancient Church.
The functions attaching to the office varied at different times. In the
apostolic age the duties of deacons were naturally vague and undefined.
They were "helpers" or "servants" of the Church in a general way and
served in any capacity that was required of them. With the growth of the
episcopate, however, the deacons became the immediate ministers of the
bishop. Their duties included the supervision of Church property, the
management of Church finances, the visitation of the sick, the
distribution of alms and the care of widows and orphans. They were also
required to watch over the souls of the flock and report to the bishop
the cases of those who had sinned or were in need of spiritual help.
"You deacons," says the Apostolical Constitutions (4th century), "ought
to keep watch over all who need watching or are in distress, and let the
bishop know." With the growth of hospitals and other charitable
institutions, however, the functions of deacons became considerably
curtailed. The social work of the Church was transferred to others, and
little by little the deacons sank in importance until at last they came
to be regarded merely as subordinate officers of public worship, a
position which they hold in the Roman Church to-day, where their duties
are confined to such acts as the following:--censing the officiating
priest and the choir, laying the corporal on the altar, handing the
paten or cup to the priest, receiving from him the pyx and giving it to
the subdeacon, putting the mitre on the archbishop's head (when he is
present) and laying his pall upon the altar.
(b) _The Church of England._--The traditionary position of the diaconate
as one of the "three orders" is here maintained. Deacons may conduct any
of the ordinary services in the church, but are not permitted to
pronounce the absolution or consecrate the elements for the Eucharist.
In practice the office has become a stepping-stone to the priesthood,
the deacon corresponding to the licentiate in the Presbyterian Church.
Candidates for the office must have attained the age of twenty-three and
must satisfy the bishop with regard to their intellectual, moral and
spiritual fitness. The functions of the office are defined in the
Ordinal--"to assist the priest in divine service and specially when he
ministereth the Holy Communion, to read Holy Scriptures and Homilies in
the church, to instruct the youth in the catechism, to baptize in the
absence of the priest, to preach if he be admitted thereto by the
bishop, and furthermore to search for the sick, poor and impotent
people and intimate their estates and names to the curate."
(c) _Churches of the Congregational Order._--In these (which of course
include Baptists) the diaconate is a body of laymen appointed by the
members of the church to act as a management committee and to assist the
minister in the work of the church. There is no general rule as to the
number of deacons, though the traditionary number of seven is often
kept, nor as to the frequency of election, each church making its own
arrangements in this respect. The deacons superintend the financial
affairs of the church, co-operate with the minister in the various
branches of his work, assist in the visitation of the sick, attend to
the church property and generally supervise the activities of the
church.
See Thomassinus, _Vetus ac nova disciplina_, pars i. lib. i. c. 51 f.
and lib. ii. c. 29 f. (Lugdunum, 1706); J. N. Seidl, _Der Diakonat in
der katholischen Kirche_ (Regensburg, 1884); R. Sohm, _Kirchenrecht_,
i. 121-137 (Leipzig, 1892); F. J. A. Hort, _The Christian Ecclesia_
(London, 1897).
DEACONESS ([Greek: he diakonos] or [Greek: diakonissa], servant,
minister), the name given to a woman set apart for special service in
the Christian Church. The origin and early history of the office are
veiled in obscurity. It is quite certain that from the 3rd century
onward there existed in the Eastern Church an order of women, known as
deaconesses, who filled a position analogous to that of deacons. They
are quite distinct from the somewhat similar orders of "virgins" and
"widows," who belonged to a lower plane in the ecclesiastical system.
The order is recognized in the canons of the councils of Nicaea (325)
and Chalcedon (451), and is frequently mentioned in the writings of
Chrysostom (some of whose letters are addressed to deaconesses at
Constantinople), Epiphanius, Basil, and indeed most of the more
important Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries. Deaconesses, upon
entering their office, were ordained much in the same way as deacons,
but the ordination conveyed no sacerdotal powers or authority.
Epiphanius says quite distinctly that they were woman-elders and not
priestesses in any sense of the term, and that their mission was not to
interfere with the functions allotted to priests but simply to perform
certain offices in connexion with the care of women. Several specimens
of the ordination service for deaconesses have been preserved (see
Cecilia Robinson, _The Ministry of Deaconesses_, London, 1878, appendix
B, p. 197). The functions of the deaconess were as follows: (1) To
assist at the baptism of women, especially in connexion with the
anointing of the body which in the ancient Church always preceded
immersion; (2) to visit the women of the Church in their homes and to
minister to the needs of the sick and afflicted; (3) according to the
Apostolical Constitutions they acted as door-keepers in the church,
received women as they entered and conducted them to their allotted
seats. In the Western Church, on the other hand, we hear nothing of the
order till the 4th century, when an attempt seems to have been made to
introduce it into Gaul. Much opposition, however, was encountered, and
the movement was condemned by the council of Orange in 441 and the
council of Epaone in 517. In spite of the prohibition the institution
made some headway, and traces of it are found later in Italy, but it
never became as popular in the West as it was in the East. In the middle
ages the order fell into abeyance in both divisions of the Church, the
abbess taking the place of the deaconess. Whether deaconesses, in the
later sense of the term, existed before 250 is a disputed point. The
evidence is scanty and by no means decisive. There are only three
passages which bear upon the question at all. (i) Romans xvi. 1: Phoebe
is called [Greek: he diakonos], but it is quite uncertain whether the
word is used in its technical sense. (ii) 1 Tim. iii. 11: after stating
the qualifications necessary for deacons the writer adds, "Women in like
manner must be grave--not slanderers," &c.; the Authorized Version took
the passage as referring to deacons' wives, but many scholars think that
by "women" deaconesses are meant. (iii) In Pliny's famous letter to
Trajan respecting the Christians of Bithynia mention is made of two
Christian maidservants "_quae ministrae dicebantur_"; whether
_ministrae_ is equivalent to [Greek: diakonoi], as is often supposed, is
dubious. On the whole the evidence does not seem sufficient to prove
the contention that an order of deaconesses--in the ecclesiastical sense
of the term--existed from the apostolic age.
In modern times several attempts have been made to revive the order of
deaconesses. In 1833 Pastor Fleidner founded "an order of deaconesses
for the Rhenish provinces of Westphalia" at Kaiserswerth. The original
aim of the institution was to train nurses for hospital work, but its
scope was afterwards extended and it trained its members for teaching
and parish work as well. Kaiserswerth became the parent of many similar
institutions in different parts of the continent. A few years later, in
1847, Miss Sellon formed for the first time a sisterhood at Devonport in
connexion with the Church of England. Her example was gradually followed
in other parts of the country, and in 1898 there were over two thousand
women living together in different sisterhoods. The members of these
institutions do not represent the ecclesiastical deaconesses, however,
since they are not ministers set apart by the Church; and the
sisterhoods are merely voluntary associations of women banded together
for spiritual fellowship and common service. In 1861 Bishop Tait set
apart Miss Elizabeth Ferard as a deaconess by the laying on of hands,
and she became the first president of the London Deaconess Institution.
Other dioceses gradually adopted the innovation. It has received the
sanction of Convocation, and the Lambeth Conference in 1897 declared
that it "recognized with thankfulness the revival of the office of
deaconess," though at the same time it protested against the
indiscriminate use of the title and laid it down emphatically that the
name must be restricted to those who had been definitely set apart by
the bishop for the position and were working under the direct
supervision and control of the ecclesiastical authority in the parish.
In addition to Miss Robinson's book cited above, see _Church Quarterly
Review_, xlvii. 302 ff., art. "On the Early History and Modern Revival
of Deaconesses" (London, 1899), and the works there referred to; D.
Latas, [Greek: Christianike Archaiologia], i. 163-171 (Athens, 1883);
_Testamentum Domini_, ed. Rahmani (Mainz, 1899); L. Zscharnack, _Der
Dienst der Frau in den ersten Jahrhunderten der chr. Kirche_ (1902).
DEAD SEA, a lake in Palestine occupying the deepest part of the valley
running along the line of a great "fault" that has been traced from the
Gulf of Akaba (at the head of the Red Sea) to Hermon. This fracture was
caused after the end of the Eocene period by the earth-movement which
resulted in the raising of the whole region out of the sea. Level for
level, the more ancient rocks are on the eastward side of the lake: the
cretaceous limestones that surmount the older volcanic substrata come
down on the western side to the water's edge, while on the eastern side
they are raised between 3000 and 4000 feet above it. In the Pleistocene
period the whole of this depression was filled with water forming a lake
about 200 m. long north to south, whose waters were about the same level
as that of the Mediterranean Sea. With the diminishing rainfall and
increased temperature that followed that period the effects of
evaporation gradually surpassed the precipitation, and the waters of the
lake slowly diminished to about the extent which they still display.
The length of the sea is 47 m., and its maximum breadth is about 9(1/2)
m.; its area is about 340 sq. m. It lies nearly north and south. Its
surface being 1289-1300 ft. below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, it
has of course no outlet. It is bounded on the north by the broad valley
of the Jordan; on the east by the rapidly rising terraces which
culminate in the Moabite plateau, 3100 ft. above the level of the lake;
on the south by the desert of the Arabah, which rises to the watershed
between the Dead and the Red Sea--65(1/2) m. from the former, 46(1/2)
from the latter; height 660 ft.--and on the west by the Judean mountains
which attain a height of 3300 ft. On the east side a peninsula, El-Lisan
("the tongue"), of white calcareous marl with beds of salt and gypsum,
divides the sea into two unequal parts: this peninsula is about 50 ft.
high, and is connected by a narrow strip of marshland with the shore.
Its northern and southern extremities have been named Cape Costigan and
Cape Molyneux, in memory of two explorers who were among the first in
modern times to navigate the sea and succumbed to the consequent fever
and exhaustion. North of the peninsula the lake has a maximum depth of
1278 ft.; south of it the water is nowhere more than 12 ft., and in some
places only 3 ft. The surface level of the lake varies with the season,
and recent observations taken on behalf of the Palestine Exploration
Fund seem to show that there are probably cyclical variations also
(ultimately dependent on the rainfall), the nature and periodicity of
which there are as yet no sufficient data to determine. In 1858 there
was a small island near the north end rising 10 or 12 ft. above the
surface and connected with the shore by a causeway; this has been
submerged since 1892; and owing to the gradual rise of level within
these years the fords south of the Lisan, and the pathway which formerly
rounded the Ras Feshkhah, are now no longer passable.
The slopes on each side of the sea are furrowed with watercourses, some
of them perennial, others winter torrents only. The chief affluents of
the sea are as follows:--on the north, Jordan and 'Ain es-Suweimeh; on
the east Wadis Ghuweir, Zerka Ma'in (Callirrhoe), Mojib (Arnon),
Ed-Dera'a, and el-Hesi; on the west, Wadis Muhawat and Seyal, 'Ain Jidi
(En-Gedi), Wadi el Merabbah, 'Ain Ghuweir, Wadi el-Nar, 'Ain Feshkhah.
The quantity of water poured daily into the sea is not less than
6,000,000 tons, all of which has to be carried off by evaporation. The
consequence of the ancient evaporation, by which the great Pleistocene
lake was reduced to its present modest dimensions, and of the ceaseless
modern daily evaporation, is the impregnation of the waters of the lake
with salts and other mineral substances to a remarkable degree. Ocean
water contains on an average 4-6% of salts: Dead Sea water contains 25%.
The following analysis, by Dr Bernays, gives the contents of the water
more accurately:--
Specific gravity 1.1528 at 15.5 deg. C.
Calcium carbonate 70.00 grains
Calcium sulphate 163.39
Magnesium nitrate 175.01
Potassium chloride 1089.06
Sodium chloride 5106.00
Calcium chloride 594.46
Magnesium chloride 7388.21
Magnesium bromide 345.80
Iron and aluminium oxides 10.50
Organic matter, water of crystallization, loss 317.57
--------
Total residue per gallon 15260.00
The density of the water averages 1.166. It increases from north to
south, and with the depth. The increase is at first rapid, then, after
reaching a certain point, becomes more uniform. At 300 metres its
density is 1.253. The boiling point is 221 deg. F. To the quantity of
solid matter suspended in its water the Dead Sea owes, beside its
saltness, its buoyancy and its poisonous properties. The human body
floats on the surface without exertion. Owing principally to the large
proportion of chloride and bromide of magnesia no animal life can exist
in its water. Fish, which abound in the Jordan and in the brackish
spring-fed lagoons that exist in one or two places around its shores
(such as 'Ain Feshkhah), die in a very short time if introduced into the
main waters of the lake. The only animal life reported from the lake has
been some tetanus and other bacilli said to have been found in its mud;
but this discovery has not been confirmed. To the chloride of calcium is
due the smooth and oily feeling of the water, and to the chloride of
magnesia its disagreeable taste. In Roman times curative properties were
ascribed to the waters: Mukaddasi (A.D. 985) asserts that people
assembled to drink it on a feast day in August. The salt of the Dead Sea
is collected and sold in Jerusalem; smuggling of salt (which in Turkey
is a government monopoly) is a regular occupation of the Bedouin. The
bitumen which floats to shore is also collected. The origin of this
bitumen is disputed: it was supposed to be derived from subaqueous
strata of bituminous marl and rose to the surface when loosened by
earthquakes. It is, however, now more generally believed that it exists
in the breccia of some of the valleys on the west side of the lake,
which is washed into the sea and submerged, till the small stones by
which it is sunk are loosened and fall out, when the bitumen rises to
the surface.
_History._--The earliest references to the sea or its basin are in the
patriarchal narratives of Lot and Abraham, the most striking being the
destruction of the neighbouring cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. (See
SODOM.) The biblical name is the Salt Sea, the Sea of the Arabah (the
south end of the Jordan valley), or the East Sea. The name in Josephus
is _Asphaltites_, referring to the bituminous deposits above alluded to.
The modern name is Bahr Lut or "Sea of Lot"--a name hardly to be
explained as a survival of a vague tradition of the patriarch, but more
probably due to the literary influences of the Hebrew Scriptures and the
Koran filtering through to the modern inhabitants or their ancestors.
The name Dead Sea first appears in late Greek writers, as Pausanias and
Galen. At En-Gedi on its western bank David for a while took refuge.
South of it is the stronghold of Masada, built by Jonathan Maccabaeus
and fortified by Herod in 42 B.C., where the last stand of the Jews was
made against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem, and where the
garrison, when the defences were breached, slew themselves rather than
fall into Roman hands.
The sea has been but little navigated. Tacitus and Josephus mention
boats on the lake, and boats are shown upon it in the Madeba mosaic. The
navigation dues formed part of the revenue of the lords of Kerak under
the crusaders. In modern times navigation is practically _nil_. The
lake, with the whole Jericho plain, is claimed as the personal property
of the sultan.
The medieval travellers brought home many strange legends of the sea and
its peculiarities--some absurd, others with a basis of fact. The absence
of sea-birds, due to the absence of fish, probably accounts for the
story that no birds could fly over it. The absence of vegetation on its
shores, due to the scanty rainfall and general want of fresh
water--except in the neighbourhood of springs like 'Ain Feshkhah and
'Ain Jidi, where a luxuriant subtropical vegetation is found--accounts
for the story that no plant could live in the poisonous air which broods
over the sea. The mists, due to the great heat and excessive
evaporation, and the noxious miasmata, especially of the southern
region, were exaggerated into the noisome vapours that the "black and
stinking" waters ever exhaled. The judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (which
of course they believed to be _under_ the waters of the lake, in
accordance with the absurd theory first found in Josephus and still
often repeated) blinded these good pilgrims to the ever-fresh beauty of
this most lovely lake, whose blue and sparkling waters lie deep between
rocks and precipices of unsurpassable grandeur. The play of brilliant
colours and of ever-changing contrasts of light and shade on those
rugged mountain-sides and on the surface of the sea itself might have
been expected to appeal to the most prosaic. The surface of the sea is
generally smooth (seldom, however, absolutely inert as the pilgrims
represented it), but is frequently raised by the north winds into waves,
which, owing to the weight and density of the water, are often of great
force.
The first to navigate the sea in modern times was an Irish traveller,
Costigan by name, in August and September 1835. Owing largely to the
folly of his Greek servant, who, without his master's knowledge, threw
overboard the drinking-water to lighten the boat, the explorer after
circumnavigating the sea reached Jericho in an exhausted condition, and
was there attacked by a severe fever. The greatest difficulty was
experienced in obtaining assistance for him, but he was ultimately
conveyed on camel-back to Jerusalem, where he died; his grave is in the
Franciscan cemetery there. His fate was shared by his successor, a
British naval officer, Lieutenant Molyneux (1847), whose party was
attacked and robbed by Bedouins. W. F. Lynch, an American explorer
(1848), equipped by the United States government, was more successful,
and he may claim to be the first who examined its shores and sounded its
depths. Since his time the duc de Luynes, Lartet, Wilson, Hull,
Blanckenhorn, Gautier, Libbey, Masterman and Schmidt, to name but a few,
have made contributions to our knowledge of this lake; but still many
problems present themselves for solution. Among these may be mentioned
(1) the explanation of a remarkable line of white foam that extends
along the axis of the lake almost every morning--supposed by
Blanckenhorn to mark the line of a fissure, thermal and asphaltic, under
the bed of the lake, but otherwise explained as a consequence of the
current of the Jordan, which is not completely expended till it reaches
the Lisan, or as a result of the mingling of the salt water with the
brackish spring water especially along the western shore; (2) a
northward current that has been observed along the east coast; (3)
various disturbances of level, due possibly to differences of barometric
pressure; (4) some apparently electrical phenomena that have been
observed in the valley. Before we can be said to know all that we might
regarding this most interesting of lakes further extensive scientific
observations are necessary; but these are extremely difficult owing to
the impossibility of maintaining self-registering instruments in a
region practically closed to Europeans for nearly half the year by the
stifling heat, and inhabited only by Bedouins, who are the worst kind of
ignorant, thievish and mischievous savages. (R. A. S. M.)
DEADWOOD, a city and the county-seat of Lawrence county, South Dakota,
U.S.A., about 180 m. W. of Pierre. Pop. (1890) 2366; (1900) 3498, of
whom 707 were foreign-born; (1905) 4364; (1910) 3653. It is served by
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and the Chicago & North-Western
railways. It lies on hilly ground in the canyon of Whitewood Creek at an
elevation of about 4530 ft. Deadwood is the commercial centre of the
Black Hills. About it are several gold mines (including the well-known
Home-stake mine), characterized by the low grade of their ores (which
range from $2 to $8 per ton), by their vast quantity, and by the ease of
mining and of extracting the metal. The ore contains free gold, which is
extracted by the simple process of stamping and amalgamation, and
refractory values, extracted by the cyaniding process. Several hundred
tons of ore are treated thus in Deadwood and its environs daily, and its
stamp mills are exceeded in size only by those of the Treadwell mine in
S.E. Alaska, and by those on the Rand in South Africa. The discovery of
gold here was made known in June 1875, and in February 1877 the United
States government, after having purchased the land from the Sioux
Indians, opened the place for legal settlement.
DEAF AND DUMB.[1] The term "deaf" is frequently applied to those who are
deficient in hearing power in any degree, however slight, as well as to
people who are unable to detect the loudest sounds by means of the
auditory organs. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between
the deaf and the hearing at any particular point. For the purposes of
this article, however, that denotation which is generally accepted by
educators of the deaf may be given to the term. This makes it refer to
those who are so far handicapped as to be incapable of instruction by
the ordinary means of the ear in a class of those possessing normal
hearing. Paradoxical though it may seem, it is yet true to say that
"dumbness" in our sense of the word does not, strictly speaking, exist,
though the term "dumb" may, for all practical purposes, fairly be
applied to many of the deaf even after they are supposed to have learnt
how to speak. Oral teachers now confess that it is not worth while to
try to teach more than a large percentage of the deaf to speak at all.
We are not concerned with aphasia, stammering or such inability to
articulate as may be due to malformation of the vocal organs. In the
case of the deaf and dumb, as these words are generally understood,
dumbness is merely the result of ignorance in the use of the voice, this
ignorance being due to the deafness. The vocal organs are perfect. The
deaf man can laugh, shout, and in fact utter any and every sound that
the normal person can. But he does not speak English (if that happens to
be his nationality) for the same reason that a French child does not,
which is that he has never heard it. There is in fact no more a priori
reason why an English baby, born in England, should talk English than
that it should talk any other language. English may be correctly
described as its "mother tongue," but not its _natural_ language; the
only reason why one person speaks English and another Russian is that
each imitated that particular language which he heard in infancy. This
imitation depends upon the ability to hear. Hence if one has never
heard, or has lost hearing in early childhood, he has never been able to
imitate that language which his parents and others used, and the
condition of so-called dumbness is added to his deafness. From this it
follows that if the sense of hearing be not lost till the child has
learnt to speak fluently, the ability to speak is unaffected by the
calamity of deafness, except that after many years the voice is likely
to become high-pitched, or too guttural, or peculiar in some other
respect, owing to the absence of the control usually exercised by the
ear. It also follows that, to a certain extent, the art of speech can be
taught the deaf person even though he were born deaf. Theoretically, he
is capable of talking just as well as his hearing brother, for the
organs of speech are as perfect in one as in the other, except that they
suffer from lack of exercise in the case of the deaf man. Practically,
he can never speak perfectly, for even if he were made to attempt
articulation as soon as he is discovered to be deaf, the fact that the
ear, the natural guide of the voice, is useless, lays upon him a
handicap which can never be wiped out. He can never hear the tone of his
teacher's voice nor of his own; he can only see small and, in many
instances, scarcely discernible movements of the lips, tongue, nose,
cheeks and throat in those who are endeavouring to teach him to speak,
and he can never hope to succeed in speech through the instrumentality
of such unsatisfactory appeals to his eye as perfectly as the hearing
child can with the ideal adaptation of the voice to the ear. Sound
appeals to the ear, not the eye, and those who have to rely upon the
latter to imitate speech must suffer by comparison.
Deafness then, in our sense, means the incapacity to be instructed by
means of the ear in the normal way, and dumbness means only that
ignorance of how to speak one's mother tongue which is the effect of the
deafness.
Of such deaf people many can hear sound to some extent. Dr Kerr Love
quotes several authorities (_Deaf Mutism_, pp. 58 ff.) to show that 50
or 60% are absolutely deaf, while 25% can detect loud sounds such as
shouting close to the ear, and the rest can distinguish vowels or even
words. He himself thinks that not more than 15 or 20% are totally
deaf--sometimes only 7 or 8%; that ability to hear speech exists in
about one in four, while ten or fifteen in each hundred are only
semi-deaf. He rightly warns against the use of tuning forks or other
instruments held on the bones of the head as tests of hearing, because
the vibration which is felt, not heard, may very often be mistaken for
sound.
Dr Edward M. Gallaudet, president of the Columbia Institution for the
Deaf in Washington, D.C., suggests the following terms for use in
dividing the whole class of the deaf into its main sections, though it
is obviously impossible to split them up into perfectly defined
subdivisions, where, as a matter of fact, you have each degree of
deafness and dumbness shading into the next:--the _speaking deaf_, _the
semi-speaking deaf_, the _mute deaf_ (or _deaf-mute_), the _speaking
semi-deaf_, the _mute semi-deaf_, the _hearing mute_ and the _hearing
semi-mute_. He points out that the last two classes are usually persons
of feeble mental power. We should exclude these altogether from the
list, since their hearing is, presumably, perfect, and should add the
_semi-speaking semi-deaf_ before the mute semi-deaf. This would give two
main divisions--those who cannot hear at all, and those who have partial
hearing--with three subsections in each main division--those who speak,
those who have partial speech and those who do not speak at all. Where
the hearing is perfect it is paradoxical to class a person with the
deaf, and the dumbness
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