Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Dübner, Johann Friedrich" to "Dyeing" (part 3)

DUPORT, JAMES (1606-1679), English classical scholar, was born at Cambridge. His father, John Duport, who was descended from an old Norman family (the Du Ports of Caen, who settled in Leicestershire during the reign of Henry IV.), was master of Jesus College. The son was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College, where he became fellow and subsequently vicemaster. In 1639 he was appointed regius professor of Greek, in 1664 dean of Peterborough, and in 1668 master of Magdalene College. He died at Peterborough on the 17th of July 1679. Throughout the troublous times of the Civil War, in spite of the loss of his clerical offices and eventually of his professorship, Duport quietly continued his lectures. He is best known by his Homeri gnomologia (1660), a collection of all the aphorisms, maxims and remarkable opinions in the Iliad and Odyssey, illustrated by quotations from the Bible and classical literature. His other published works chiefly consist of translations (from the Bible and Prayer Book into Greek) and short original poems, collected under the title of Horae subsecivae or Stromata. They include congratulatory odes (inscribed to the king); funeral odes; carmina comitialia (tripos verses on different theses maintained in the schools, remarkable for their philosophical and metaphysical knowledge); sacred epigrams; and three books of miscellaneous poems (Sylvae). The character of Duport’s work is not such as to appeal to modern scholars, but he deserves the credit of having done much to keep alive the study of classical literature in his day.

The chief authority for the life of Duport is J.H. Monk’s “Memoir” (1825); see also Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. (1908), ii. 349.

DÜPPEL, a village of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, opposite the town of Sonderburg (on the island of Alsen). (Pop. 600.) The position of Düppel, forming as it does a bridge-head for the defenders of the island of Alsen, played a conspicuous part in the wars between Denmark and the Germans. On the 28th of May 1848 the German federal troops were there defeated by the Danes under General Hedemann, and a second battle was fought on the 6th of June 1848. On the 13th of April 1849 an indecisive battle was fought between the federal troops under von Prittwitz and the Danes under von Bulow. The most important event in the military history of Düppel was, however, the siege by the Prussians of the Danish position in 1864. The flanks of the defenders’ line rested upon the Alsen Sund and the sea, and it was strengthened by ten redoubts. A second line of trenches with lunettes at intervals was constructed behind the front attacked, and a small réduit opposite Sonderburg to cover the bridges between Alsen and the mainland. The Prussian siege corps was commanded by Prince Frederick Charles (headquarters, Düppel village), and after three weeks’ skirmishing a regular siege was begun, the batteries being opened on the 15th of March. The first parallel was completed fifteen days later, the front of attack being redoubts II. to VI., forming the centre of the Danish entrenchments on the road Düppel-Sonderburg. The siege was pushed rapidly from the first parallel and the assault delivered on the 18th of April, against the redoubts I. to VI., each redoubt being attacked by a separate column. The whole line was carried after a brief but severe conflict, and the Prussians had penetrated to and captured the réduit opposite Sonderburg by 2 P.M. The loss of the Danes, half of whose forces were not engaged, included 1800 killed and wounded and 3400 prisoners. This operation was followed by the daring passage of the Alsen Sund, effected by the Prussians in boats almost under the guns of the Danish war-ships, and resulting in the capture of the whole island of Alsen (June 29th, 1864). After being still further strengthened and linked with similar defences at Sonderburg, the Düppel entrenchments were abandoned in 1881 in favour of landward fortifications around Kiel.

See R. Neumann, Über den Angriff der Düppeler Schanzen in der Zeit vom 15. März bis 18. April 1864 (Berlin, 1865); and Der deutschdänische Krieg 1864, published by the Prussian General Staff (Berlin, 1887).

DU PRAT, ANTOINE (1463-1535), chancellor of France and cardinal, was born at Issoire on the 17th of January 1463. He began life as a lawyer, and rose rapidly in the legal hierarchy owing to the influence of his cousin Antoine Bohier, cardinal archbishop of Bourges. The first office which he held was that of lieutenant-general in the bailliage of Montferrand; in 1507 he became first president of the parlement of Paris. Louise of Savoy had employed him as her adviser in her affairs, and had made him tutor to her son. When Francis I. ascended the throne he made Du Prat chancellor of France, in which capacity he played an important part in the government. It was he who negotiated with Leo X. concerning the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction and the establishment of a concordat. After the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) he was engaged in unsuccessful negotiations with Wolsey. During the regency of Louise of Savoy he, together with Florimond Robertet, was at the head of affairs. He took an active part in the suit brought by Louise of Savoy against the Constable de Bourbon, and in 1532 completed the work of uniting Brittany to France. After the death of his wife in 1507 Du Prat had taken orders; he received the bishoprics of Valence, Die, Meaux and Albi, and the archbishopric of Sens (1525); in 1527 he became cardinal, and in 1530 papal legate. He was a determined adversary of the Reformation. He died on the 9th of July 1535.

See the marquis Du Prat, Vie d’Antoine Du Prat (Paris, 1857).

DUPRÉ, JULES (1812-1889), French painter, was one of the chief members of the Barbizon group of romantic landscape painters. If Corot stands for the lyric and Rousseau for the epic aspect of the poetry of nature, Dupré is the exponent of her tragic and dramatic aspects. He was the son of a porcelain manufacturer, and started his career in his father’s works, whence he went to his uncle’s china factory at Sèvres. After studying for some time under Diébold, a painter of clock faces, he had to pass through a short period of privation, until he attracted the attention of a wealthy patron, who came to his studio and bought all the studies on the walls at the price demanded by the artist—20 francs apiece. Dupré exhibited first at the Salon in 1831, and three years later was awarded a second-class medal. In the same year he came to England, where he was deeply impressed by the genius of Constable. From him he learnt how to express movement in nature; and the district of Southampton and Plymouth, with its wide, unbroken expanses of water, sky and ground, gave him good opportunities for studying the tempestuous motion of storm-clouds and the movement of foliage driven by the wind. He received the cross of the Legion of Honour in 1848. Dupré’s colour is sonorous and resonant; the subjects for which he showed marked preference are dramatic sunset effects and stormy skies and seas. Late in life he changed his style and gained appreciably in largeness of handling and arrived at greater simplicity in his colour harmonies. Among his chief works are the “Morning” and “Evening” at the Louvre, and the early “Crossing the Bridge” in the Wallace Collection.

DUPUIS, CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1742-1809), French scientific writer and politician, was born of poor parents at Trye-Château, between Gisors and Chaumont, on the 26th of October 1742. His father, who was a teacher, instructed him in mathematics and land-surveying. While he was engaged in measuring a tower by a geometrical method, the duc de la Rochefoucauld met him and was so taken by the lad’s intelligence that he gave him a bursary in the college of Harcourt. Dupuis made such rapid progress that, at the age of twenty-four, he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the college of Lisieux, where he had previously passed as a licentiate of theology. In his hours of leisure he studied law, and in 1770 he abandoned the clerical career and became an advocate. Two university discourses which he delivered in Latin were printed, and laid the foundation of his literary fame. His chief attention, however, was devoted to mathematics, the object of his early studies; and for some years he attended the astronomical lectures of Lalande, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. In 1778 he constructed a telegraph on the principle suggested by Guillaume Amontons (q.v.), and employed it in keeping up a correspondence with his friend Jean Fortin in the neighbouring village of Bagneux, until the Revolution made it necessary to destroy his machine to avoid suspicion. About the same time Dupuis formed his theory as to the origin of the Greek months. He endeavoured to account for the want of any resemblance between the groups of stars and the names by which they are known, by supposing that the zodiac was, for the people who invented it, a sort of calendar at once astronomical and rural, and that the figures chosen for the constellations were such as would naturally suggest the agricultural operations of the season. It seemed only necessary, therefore, to discover the clime and the period in which the constellation of Capricorn must have arisen with the sun on the day of the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox must have occurred under Libra. It appeared to Dupuis that this clime was Upper Egypt, and that the perfect correspondence between the signs and their significations had existed in that country at a period of between fifteen and sixteen thousand years before the present time; that it had existed only there; and that this harmony had been disturbed by the effect of the precession of the equinoxes. He therefore ascribed the invention of the signs of the zodiac to the people who then inhabited Upper Egypt or Ethiopia. This was the basis on which Dupuis established his mythological system, and endeavoured to explain fabulous history and the whole system of the theogony and theology of the ancients. Dupuis published several detached parts of his system in the Journal des savants for 1777 and 1781. These he afterwards collected and published, first in Lalande’s Astronomy, and then in a separate volume in 4to, 1781, under the title of Mémoire sur l’origine des constellations et sur l’explication de la fable par l’astronomie. The theory propounded in this memoir was refuted by J.S. Bailly in his Histoire de l’astronomie, but, at the same time, with a just acknowledgment of the erudition and ingenuity exhibited by the author.

Condorcet proposed Dupuis to Frederick the Great of Prussia as a fit person to succeed Thiébault in the professorship of literature at Berlin; and Dupuis had accepted the invitation, when the death of the king cancelled the engagement. The chair of humanity in the College of France having at the same time become vacant, it was conferred on Dupuis; and in 1788 he became a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. He now resigned his professorship at Lisieux, and was appointed by the administrators of the department of Paris one of the four commissioners of public instruction. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary troubles Dupuis sought safety at Évreux; and, having been chosen a member of the National Convention by the department of Seine-et-Oise, he distinguished himself by his moderation. In the third year of the republic he was elected secretary to the Assembly, and in the fourth he was chosen a member of the Council of Five Hundred. After Bonaparte’s coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire he was elected by the department of Seine-et-Oise a member of the Legislative Body, of which he became the president. He was proposed as a candidate for the senate, but resolved to abandon politics, devoting himself during the rest of his life to his favourite studies.

In 1795 he published the work by which he is best known, entitled Origine de tous les cultes, ou la religion universelle (3 vols. 4to, with an atlas, or 12 vols. 12mo). This work, of which an edition revised by P.R. Auguis was published in 1822 (10th ed., 1835-1836), became the subject of much bitter controversy, and the theory it propounded as to the origin of mythology in Upper Egypt led to the expedition organized by Napoleon for the exploration of that country. In 1798 Dupuis published an abridgment of his work in one volume 8vo, which met with no better success than the original. Another abridgment of the same work, executed upon a much more methodical plan, was published by M. de Tracy. The other works of Dupuis consist of two memoirs on the Pelasgi, inserted in the Memoirs of the Institute; a memoir “On the Zodiac of Tentyra,” published in the Revue philosophique for May 1806; and a Mémoire explicatif du zodiaque chronologique et mythologique, published the same year, in one volume 4to. He died on the 29th of September 1809.

DUPUY, CHARLES ALEXANDRE (1851- ), French statesman, was born at Le Puy on the 5th of November 1851, his father being a local official. After being a professor of philosophy in the provinces, he was appointed a school inspector, and thus obtained a practical acquaintance with the needs of French education. In 1885 he was elected to the chamber as an Opportunist Republican. After acting as “reporter” of the budget for public instruction, he became minister for the department, in M. Ribot’s cabinet, in 1892. In April 1893 he formed a ministry himself, taking as his office that of minister of the interior, but resigned at the end of November, and on 5th December was elected president of the chamber. During his first week of office an anarchist, Vaillant, who had managed to gain admission to the chamber, threw a bomb at the president, and M. Dupuy’s collected bearing, and his historic words: “Messieurs, la séance continue,” gained him much credit. In May 1894 he again became premier and minister of the interior; and he was by President Carnot’s side when the latter was stabbed to death at Lyons in June. He then became a candidate for the presidency, but was defeated, and his cabinet remained in office till January 1895; it was under it that Captain Dreyfus was arrested and condemned (23rd of December 1894). The progress of l’affaire then cast its shadow upon M. Dupuy, along with other French “ministrables,” but in November 1898, after M. Brisson had at last remitted the case to the judgment of the court of cassation, he formed a cabinet of Republican concentration. In view of the apparent likelihood that the judges of the criminal division of the court of cassation—who formed the ordinary tribunal for such an appeal—would decide in favour of Dreyfus, it was thought that M. Dupuy’s new cabinet would be strong enough to reconcile public opinion to such a result; but, to the surprise of outside observers, it was no sooner discovered how the judges were likely to decide than M. Dupuy proposed a law in the chamber transferring the decision to a full court of all the divisions of the court of cassation. This arbitrary act, though adopted by the chamber, was at once construed as a fresh attempt to maintain the judgment of the first court-martial; but in the interval President Faure (an anti-Dreyfusard) died, and the accession of M. Loubet doubtless had some effect in quieting public feeling. At all events, the whole court of cassation decided that there must be a new court-martial, and M. Dupuy at once resigned (June 1899). In June 1900 he was elected senator for the Haute Saône.

DUPUY, PIERRE (1582-1651), French scholar, otherwise known as Puteanus, was born at Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) on the 27th of November 1582. In 1615 he was commissioned by Mathieu Molé, first president of the parlement of Paris, to draw up an inventory of the documents which constituted what at that time was known as the Trésor des chartes. This work occupied eleven years. His MS. inventory is preserved in the original and in copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and transcriptions are in the national archives in Paris, at the record office in London, and elsewhere. Dupuy’s classification is still regarded with respect, but the inventory has been partially replaced by the publication of the Layettes du trésor (four volumes, coming down to 1270; 1863-1902). Dupuy also published, with his brother Jacques, and their friend Nicolas Rigault, the History of Aug. de Thou (1620, 1626). The two brothers then bought from Rigault the post of keeper of the king’s library, and drew up a catalogue of the library (Nos. 9352-9354 and 10366-10367 of the Latin collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale). In the course of this work, Dupuy became acquainted with and copied an enormous mass of unpublished documents, which furnished him with the material for some excellent works: Traité des droits et des libertés de l’église gallicane, avec les preuves (1639), Histoire de l’ordre militaire des Templiers (1654), Histoire générale du schisme qui a été dans l’église depuis 1378 jusqu’à 1428 (1654), and Histoire du différend entre le pape Boniface VIII et le roi Philippe le Bel (1655). These works, especially the last, are important contributions to the history of the relations of church and state in the middle ages. They were written from the Gallican standpoint, i.e. in favour of the rights of the crown in temporal and political matters, and this explains the delay in their publication until after Dupuy’s death. He wrote also Traité des régences et des majorités des rois de France (1655) and Recueil des droits du roi (1658). Dupuy’s papers, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, were inventoried by Léon Dorez (Catalogue de la collection Dupuy, 1899). See also L. Delisle’s Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la bibliothèque impériale. Dupuy died in Paris on the 14th of December 1651.

DUPUY DE LÔME, STANISLAS CHARLES HENRI LAURENT (1816-1885), French naval architect, the son of a retired naval officer, was born at Ploemeur, near Lorient, on the 15th of October 1816. He entered the École Polytechnique in 1835, and in 1842 was sent to England to study and report on iron shipbuilding. Acting on his report, which was published in 1844, the government built their first iron vessels under his supervision. He planned and built the steam line-of-battle ship “Napoleon” (1848-1852), and devised the method of altering sailing ships of the line into steamers, which was afterwards extensively practised in both France and England. He also showed the practicability of armouring the sides of a ship, and the frigate “Gloire” gave a very clear demonstration of his views. It was the beginning of the great change in the construction of ships of war which has been going on ever since. In 1857 Dupuy de Lôme was appointed “chef de la direction du matériel,” at Paris; and in 1861, “inspecteur général du matériel de la marine.” In 1866 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. At the beginning of the Franco-German War he was appointed a member of the committee of defence, and during the siege of Paris occupied himself with planning a steerable balloon, for carrying out which he was given a credit of 40,000 fr.; but the balloon was not ready till a few days before the capitulation. The experiments that were afterwards made with it did not prove entirely satisfactory. In 1875 he was busy over a scheme for embarking a railway train at Calais, and exhibited plans of the improved harbour and models of the “bateaux porte-trains” to the Academy of Sciences in July. In 1877 he was elected a senator for life. He received the cross of the Legion of Honour in 1845, was made a commander in 1858, and grand officer in December 1863. He died at Paris on the 1st of February 1885.

DUPUYTREN, GUILLAUME, Baron (1777-1835), French anatomist and surgeon, was born on the 6th of October 1777 at Pierre Buffière (Haute Vienne). He studied medicine in Paris at the newly established École de Médecine, and was appointed by competition prosector when only eighteen years of age. His early studies were directed chiefly to morbid anatomy. In 1803 he was appointed assistant-surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu, and in 1811 professor of operative surgery in succession to R.B. Sabatier (1732-1811). In 1815 he was appointed to the chair of clinical surgery, and became head surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu. Dupuytren’s energy and industry were alike remarkable. He visited the Hôtel-Dieu morning and evening, performing at each time several operations, lectured to vast throngs of students, gave advice to his outdoor patients, and fulfilled the duties consequent upon one of the largest practices of modern times. By his indefatigable activity he amassed a fortune of £300,000, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his daughter, with the deduction of considerable sums for the endowment of the anatomical chair in the École de Médecine, and the establishment of a benevolent institution for distressed medical men. The most important of Dupuytren’s writings is his Treatise on Artificial Anus, in which he applied the principles laid down by John Hunter. In his operations he was remarkable for his skill and dexterity, and for his great readiness of resource. He died in Paris on the 8th of February 1835.

DUQUE DE ESTRADA, DIEGO (1589-?), Spanish memoir writer, soldier and adventurer, son of Juan Duque de Estrada, also a soldier of rank, was born at Toledo on the 15th of August 1589. Having been left an orphan when very young, he was educated by a cousin. While still young he was betrothed to his cousin’s daughter. One night he found an intruder in the house, a gentleman with whom he was acquainted, and in a fit of jealousy killed both him and the young lady. The prevailing code of honour was considered a sufficient justification for Duque de Estrada’s violence, but the law looked upon the act as a vulgar assassination, and he had to flee. After leading a vagabond life in the south of Spain, he was arrested at Ecija, was brought to Toledo, and was there put to the torture with extreme ferocity, in order to extort a general confession as to his life during the past months. He had the strength not to yield to pain, and was finally able to escape from prison, partly by the help of a nun in a religious house which faced the prison, and partly by the intervention of friends. He made his way to Naples, where he entered the service of the duke of Osuna (q.v.), at that time viceroy. Duque de Estrada saw a good deal of fighting both with the Turks and the Venetians; but he is mainly interesting because he was employed by the viceroy in the conspiracy against Venice. He was one of the disguised Spanish soldiers who were sent into the town to destroy the arsenal, and who were warned in time that the conspiracy had been betrayed, and therefore escaped. After the fall of his patron, Duque de Estrada resumed his vagabond life, served under Bethlen Gabor in Transylvania, and in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1633 he entered the order of San Juan de Dios, and died at some time after 1637 in Sardinia, where he is known to have taken part in the defence of the island against an attack by the French. He left a book of memoirs, entitled Comentarios de el desengeñado de si Mismo prueba de todos estados, y eleccion del Mejor de ellos—“The Commentaries of one who knew his own little worth, the touchtstone of all the state of man, and the choice of the best.” They were written at different times, and part has been lost. The style is incorrect, and it would be unsafe to trust them in every detail, but they are amazingly vivid, and contain a wonderful picture of the moral and intellectual state of a large part of Spanish society at the time.

The memoirs have been reprinted by Don Pascual de Gayangos in the Memorial histórico español, vol. xii. (Madrid, 1860).

DUQUESNE, ARRAHAM, Marquis (1610-1688), French naval officer, was born at Dieppe in 1610. Born in a stirring seaport, the son of a distinguished naval officer, he naturally adopted the profession of a sailor. He spent his youth in the merchant service, and obtained his first distinction in naval warfare by the capture of the island of Lerins from the Spaniards in May 1637. About the same time his father was killed in an engagement with the Spaniards, and the news raised his hatred of the national enemy to the pitch of a personal and bitter animosity. For the next five years he sought every opportunity of inflicting defeat and humiliation on the Spanish navy, and he distinguished himself by his bravery in the engagement at Guetaria (1638), the expedition to Corunna (1639), and in battles at Tarragona (1641), Barcelona (1643), and the Cabo de Gata. The French navy being left unemployed during the minority of Louis XIV., Duquesne obtained leave to offer his services to the king of Sweden, who gave him a commission as vice-admiral in 1643. In this capacity he defeated the Danish fleet near Gothenburg and thus raised the siege of the city. The Danes returned to the struggle with increased forces under the command of King Christian in person, but they were again defeated—their admiral being killed and his ship taken. Peace having been concluded between Sweden and Denmark in 1645, Duquesne returned to France. The revolt at Bordeaux, supported as it was by material aid from Spain, gave him the opportunity of at once serving his country and gratifying his long-cherished hatred of the Spaniards. In 1650 he fitted out at his own expense a squadron with which he blockaded the mouth of the Gironde, and compelled the city to surrender. For this service he was promoted in rank, and received a gift of the castle and isle of Indre, near Nantes. Peace with Spain was concluded in 1659, and for some years afterwards Duquesne was occupied in endeavours to suppress piracy in the Mediterranean. On the revolt of Messina from Spain, he was sent to support the insurgents, and had to encounter the united fleets of Spain and Holland under the command of the celebrated Admiral de Ruyter. After several battles, in which the advantage was generally on the side of the French, a decisive engagement took place near Catania, on the 20th of April 1676, when the Dutch fleet was totally routed and de Ruyter mortally wounded. The greater part of the defeated fleet was afterwards burned in the harbour of Palermo, where it had taken refuge, and the French thus secured the undisputed command of the Mediterranean. For this important service Duquesne received a letter of thanks from Louis XIV., together with the title of marquis and the estate of Bouchet. His last achievements were the bombardment of Algiers (1682-1683), in order to effect the deliverance of the Christian captives, and the bombardment of Genoa in 1684. He retired from service in 1684, on the ground of age and ill-health. It is probable also that he foresaw the revocation of the edict of Nantes, which took place in the following year. He died in Paris on the 2nd of February 1688.

See Jal, Abraham Duquesne, et la marine de son temps (1873).

DUQUESNE, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, about 12 m. S.E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1900) 9036, of whom 3451 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 15,727. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway. Its most prominent buildings are the Carnegie free library and club (opened in 1904 and containing 17,500 volumes in 1908), and the city hall. A short distance N. of the borough limits Kennywood Park, with a large auditorium and pavilion, is an attractive resort. By far the most important industry of the borough is the manufacture of steel. The value of the borough’s factory products increased from $20,333,476 in 1900 to $28,494,303 in 1905, or 40.1%. The municipality owns and operates its water-works. Duquesne was settled in 1885 and was incorporated in 1891.

DURAMEN (a rare Latin word, meaning hardness, from durus, hard), a botanical term for the inner, harder wood of a tree, the heart-wood.

DURAN, a Jewish Provençal family of rabbis and scholars, of whom the following are the most important.

1. Profiaṭ Duran, called also Ephodi. He was in 1391 compelled to profess Christianity, but remained devoted to Judaism. His chief works were grammatical and philosophical. In the former realm his most important contribution was the Ma’aseh ‘Ephod (completed in 1403); in the latter, his commentary to the Guide of the Perplexed by Maimonides (q.v.).

2. Simon Ben Ẓemaḥ Duran (1361-1441), rabbi of Algiers. He was one of the first of the medieval rabbis to be a salaried official of the synagogue. Before the 14th century the rabbinical post had been almost invariably honorary, and filled by men who derived their income from a profession, especially medicine. Duran wrote a systematic work on theology, Magen ‘Aboth, but is chiefly famous for his numerous Responsa (known as Tashbaz) published in three vols. in 1738-1739. These Responsa, “Answers to questions sent from many lands,” give valuable information as to social and religious conditions in the earlier part of the 15th century.

(I. A.)

DURÁN, AGUSTÍN (1789-1862), Spanish scholar, was born in 1789 at Madrid, where his father was court physician. He was sent to the seminary at Vergara, whence he returned learned in the traditions of Spanish romance. In 1817 he began the study of philosophy and law at the university of Seville, and in due course was admitted to the bar at Valladolid. From 1821 to 1823 he held a post in the education department at Madrid, but in the latter year he was suspended on account of his political opinions. In 1834 he became secretary of the board for the censorship of the press, and shortly afterwards obtained a post in the national library at Madrid. The revolution of 1840 led to his dismissal; but he was reinstated in 1843, and in 1854 was appointed chief librarian. Next year, however, he retired to devote himself to his literary work. In 1828, shortly after his first discharge from office, he published anonymously his Discurso sobre el influjo que ha tenido la crítica moderna en la decadencia del teatro antiguo; this treatise greatly influenced the younger dramatists of the day. He next endeavoured to interest his fellow-countrymen in their ancient, neglected ballads, and in the forgotten dramas of the 17th century. Five volumes of a Romancero general appeared from 1828 to 1832 (republished, with considerable additions, in 2 vols. 1849-1851), and Talia española (1834), a reprint of old Spanish comedies. Durán’s Romancero general is the fullest collection of the kind and is therefore unlikely to be superseded, though the texts are inferior to those edited by Menendez y Pelayo.

DURANCE (anc. Druentia), one of the principal rivers descending from the French slope of the Alps towards the Mediterranean. Its total length from its source to its junction with the Rhone (of which it is one of the principal affluents), a little below Avignon, is 217½ m. For the greater part of its course it flows in a south-westerly direction, but near Pertuis gradually bends N.W. and thenceforth preserves this direction. It passes through the departments of Hautes-Alpes, of Basses-Alpes, and between those of Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône. It is commonly said to take its origin in some small lakes a little south of the summit plateau of the Mont Genèvre Pass. But really this stream is surpassed both in volume and length of course by two others which it joins beneath Briançon:—the Clairée, flowing in from the north, through the smiling Névache glen, at the head of which, not far from the foot of the Mont Thabor (10,440 ft.), it rises in some small lakes, on the east side of the Col des Rochilles; and the Guisane (flowing in from the north-west and rising near the Col du Lautaret, 6808 ft.). The united stream soon receives its first affluent, the Cerveyrette (left), and, after having passed through some fine deep-cut gorges, the Gyronde (right). It then runs through a stony plain, where it frequently overflows and causes great damage, this being indeed the main characteristic of the Durance throughout its course. At the foot of the fortress of Mont Dauphin it receives (left) the Guil, which flows through the Queyras valley from near the foot of Monte Viso. Some way beyond it passes beneath Embrun, the first important town on its banks. It soon becomes the boundary for a while between the departments of the Hautes-Alpes and of the Basses-Alpes, and receives successively the considerable Ubaye river, flowing from near the foot of Monte Viso past Barcelonnette (left), and then the small stream of the Luye (right), on which, a few miles above, is Gap. It enters the Basses-Alpes shortly before reaching Sisteron, where it is joined (right) by the wild torrent of the Buëch, flowing from the desolate region of the Dévoluy, and receives the Bléone (left) (on which Digne, the capital of the department, is situated) and the Asse (left), before quitting the department of the Basses-Alpes just as it is reinforced (left) by the Verdon, flowing from the lower summits of the Maritime Alps past Castellane. After passing through some narrow gorges near Sisteron the bed of the river becomes wide, and spreads desolation around, the frequent overflows being kept within bounds by numerous dykes and embankments. These features are especially marked when the river, after leaving the Basses-Alpes, soon bends N.W. and, always serving as the boundary between the departments of Vaucluse (N.) and of the Bouches-du-Rhône (S.), passes Cavaillon before it effects its junction with the Rhône. The drainage area of the Durance is about 5166 sq. m., while the height it descends is 6550 ft., if reckoned from the lakes on the Mont Genèvre, or 7850 ft. if we take those at the head of the Névache valley as the true source of the river.

(W. A. B. C.)

DURAND, ASHER BROWN (1796-1886), American painter and engraver, was born at South Orange, New Jersey, on the 21st of August 1796. He worked with his father, a watchmaker; was apprenticed in 1812 to an engraver named Peter Maverick; and his first work, the head of an old beggar after Waldo, attracted the attention of the artist Trumbull. Durand established his reputation by his engraving of Trumbull’s “Declaration of Independence.” After 1835, however, he devoted himself chiefly to portrait painting. He painted several of the presidents of the United States and many other men of political and social prominence. In 1840 he visited Europe, where he studied the work of the old masters; after his return he devoted himself almost entirely to landscape. He died at South Orange on the 17th of September 1886. He had been one of the founders of the National Academy of Design in 1826, and was its president in 1845-1861. Durand may be called the father of the Hudson River School. Although there was something hard and unsympathetic about his landscapes, and unnecessary details and trivialities were over-prominent, he was a well-trained craftsman, and his work is marked by sincerity.

DURAND, GUILLAUME (Guillelmus Durandus), also known as Duranti or Durantis, from the Italian form of Durandi filius, as he sometimes signed himself (c. 1230-1296), French canonist and liturgical writer, and bishop of Mende, was born at Puimisson, near Beziers, of a noble family of Languedoc. He studied law at Bologna, especially with Bernardus of Parma, and about 1264 was teaching canon law with success at Modena. Clement IV., his fellow-countryman, called him to the pontifical court as a chaplain and auditor of the palace, and in 1274 he accompanied Clement’s successor Gregory X. to the council of Lyons, the constitutions of which he drew up, along with some other prelates. As spiritual and temporal legate of the patrimony of St Peter, he received in 1278, in the name of the pope, the homage of Bologna and of the other cities of Romagna. Martin IV. made him vicar spiritual in 1281, then governor of Romagna and of the March of Ancona (1283). In the midst of the struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines, Durandus successfully defended the papal territories, both by diplomacy and by arms. Honorius IV. retained him in his offices, and although elected bishop of Mende in 1286, he remained in Italy until 1291. In 1295 he refused the archbishopric of Ravenna, offered him by Boniface VIII., but accepted the task of pacifying again his former provinces of Romagna and the March of Ancona. In 1296 he withdrew to Rome, where he died on the 1st of November.

Durandus’ principal work is the Speculum judiciale, which was drawn up in 1271, and revised in 1286 and 1291. It is a general explanation of civil, criminal and canonical procedure, and also includes a survey of the subject of contracts. It is a remarkable synthesis of Roman and ecclesiastical law, distinguished by its clarity, its method, and especially its practical sense, in a field in which it was pioneer, and its repute was as great and lasting in the courts as in the schools. It won for Durandus the name of “The Speculator.” It was commented upon by Giovanni Andrea (in 1346), and by Baldus, and in 1306 Cardinal Béranger drew up an alphabetical table of its contents (Inventorium). There are many manuscripts of the Speculum, and several editions, of which the most usual is that of Turin in 1578 in 2 volumes, containing all additions and tables. This edition was reproduced at Frankfort in 1612 and 1668. The next important work of Durandus is the Rationale divinorum officiorum, a liturgical treatise written in Italy before 1286, on the origin and symbolic sense of the Christian ritual. It presents a picture of the liturgy of the 13th century in the West, studied in its various forms, its traditional sources, and its relation to the church buildings and furniture. With Martène’s De antiquis Ecclesiae ritibus it is the main authority on Western liturgies. It has run through various editions, from its first publication in 1459 to the last edition at Naples, 1866. The other important works of Durandus comprise a Repertorium juris canonici (Breviarium aureum), a collection of citations from canonists on questions of controversy—often published along with the Speculum; a Commentarius in sacrosanctum Lugdunense concilium (ed. Fano, 1569), of especial value owing to the share of Durandus in the elaboration of the constitutions of this council (1274), and inserted by Boniface VIII. in the Sextus.

A nephew of “The Speculator,” also named Guillaume Durand (d. 1330), and also a canonist, was rector of the university of Toulouse and succeeded his uncle as bishop of Mende. He wrote in 1311, in connexion with the council of Vienne, De modo celebrandi concilii et corruptelis in Ecclesia reformandis. It attacks the abuses of the Church with extreme sincerity and vigour.

On the elder Durand see V. Leclerc in Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. xx. pp. 411-497 (1842); Schulte, Geschichte der Quellen des canonischen Rechts (1877); E. Male, L’Art religieux au XIIIe siècle en France (1898). On the nephew see B. Hauréau, in Journal des savants (1892), 64.

DURAND, GUILLAUME (d. 1334), French scholastic theologian, known also by the Latin form of his name as Durandus of St Pourçain (de Sancto Porciano), and as Doctor Resolutissimus, was born at St Pourçain-sur-Sioule in the Bourbonnois. He entered the Dominican order at Clermont, and in 1313 was made a doctor in Paris, where he taught till Pope John XXII. called him to Avignon as master of the sacred palace, i.e. theological adviser and preacher to the pope. He subsequently became bishop of Limoux (1317), of Le Puy (1318) and of Meaux (1326). He composed a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in which, breaking with the realism of St Thomas Aquinas, he anticipated the terminism of William of Occam, and gave up the attempt to show that dogmas can be demonstrated by reason. In the question of the beatific vision, arising out of opinions promulgated by John XXII. (q.v.), he sided with Thomas Walleis, Armand de Bellovisu and the doctors of the faculty of theology in Paris against the pope, and composed his De statu animarum post separationem a corpore. Mention should also be made of his De origine jurisdictionum quibus populus regitur, sive de jurisdictione ecclesiastica et de legibus.

See B. Hauréau, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique (2nd ed., Paris, 1872); C. Werner, Die Scholastik des spateren Mittelalters, vol. ii. (Vienna, 1883); H.S. Denifle, in Archiv f. Litteratur und Kirchengeschichte, ii. (1886); U. Chevalier, Rép. des sources hist. du moyen âge, s.v. Durand de St Pourçain.

DURANDO, GIACOMO (1807-1894), Italian general and statesman, was born at Mondovì in Piedmont. He was implicated in the revolutionary movements of 1831 and 1832, after which he was obliged to take refuge abroad. He served in the Belgian army, taking part in the war of 1832, and fought in Portugal in 1833. The following year he entered the service of Spain, when he fought in various campaigns, and was promoted colonel in 1838. After a short stay in France he returned to Italy and identified himself with the Liberal movement; he became an active journalist, and founded a newspaper called L’Opinione in 1847. In 1848 he was one of those who asked King Charles Albert for the constitution. On the outbreak of the war with Austria he took command of the Lombard volunteers as major-general, and in the campaign of 1849 he was aide-de-camp to the king. He was elected member of the first Piedmontese parliament and was a strenuous supporter of Cavour; during the Crimean campaign he took General La Marmora’s place as war minister. In 1855 he was nominated senator, lieutenant-general in 1856, ambassador at Constantinople in 1859, and minister for foreign affairs in the Rattazzi cabinet two years later. He was president of the senate from 1884 to 1887, after which year he retired from the army. He died in 1894.

His brother, Giovanni Durando (1804-1869), was in early life driven into exile on account of his Liberal opinions. He served in the armies of Belgium, Portugal and Spain, distinguishing himself in many engagements. Returning to Italy on the outbreak of the revolution of 1848, he was appointed commander of a division of the pontifical forces, and fought against the Austrians in Venetia until the fall of Vicenza, when he returned to Piedmont as major-general. In the campaign of 1849 he commanded the first Piedmontese division; he subsequently served in the Crimea, in the war of 1859, and in that of 1866 as commander of the I. Army Corps. In 1867 he was appointed president of the supreme military and naval tribunal.

DURANGO, a state of northern Mexico, bounded N. by Chihuahua, E. and S.E. by Coahuila, S. by Zacatecas and the territory of Tepic, and W. by Sinaloa. Pop. (1895) 292,549; (1900) 370,294. Area 38,009 sq. m. Durango is a continuation southward of the high, semi-arid plateau of Chihuahua, with the Sierra Madre extending along its western side. The Bolsón de Mapimí covers its N.E. angle, and in the S. there are peculiar volcanic hills, covering about 1000 sq. m. and known as La Breña. The Bolsón de Mapimí, previous to the building of the Mexican Central railway across it, had been considered an uninhabitable desert, but irrigation experiments have demonstrated that its soil is highly fertile and well adapted to the production of cotton and fruit. The rainfall is very light in the eastern part of the state, a succession of years sometimes passing without any precipitation whatever, but in the W. it is sufficient to produce good pasturage and considerable areas of forest. There are no rivers of any magnitude in the state. The largest is the Rio Nazas, which flows eastward into the lakes of the Mapimí depression, and the Mezquital, which flows S.W. through the sierras to the Pacific coast. The climate is generally dry and healthful. Cotton is produced to a limited extent, especially where irrigation is employed, and wheat, Indian corn, tobacco, sugar-cane and grapes are also grown. In the elevated valleys of the sierras stock-raising is successful. The principal industry of Durango, however, is mining, and some of the richest and best known mines of Mexico are found in the state. Besides silver, which has been extensively mined since the first arrival of the Spanish under Francisco de Ibarra (1554-1562), gold, copper, iron, cinnabar, tin, coal and rubies are found. The famous Cerro del Mercado, 2 m. from the city of Durango, is a hill composed in great part of remarkably pure iron ore, and is estimated to contain 300,000,000 tons of that metal. Near it are iron and steel works. The principal mining districts of Durango include San Dimas (on the western slope of the main sierra), Guarisamey, Buenavista, Gavilanes, Guanaceví, Mapimí, El Oro and Indé. In the first-named is the celebrated Candelaria mine, where the ores (largely argentite) assay between $70 and $140 a ton, the aggregate output being estimated as over $100,000,000 before the close of the 19th century. With the exception of silver, the mineral resources of the state have been but slightly developed because of difficult and expensive transportation. The Mexican Central railway crosses the eastern side of the state, and the Mexican International crosses N.E. to S.W. through the state capital on its way to the port of Mazatlán. The history of Durango is similar to that of Chihuahua, the state originally forming part of the province of Nueva Viscaya. The capital is Durango, and among the principal towns are Guanaceví (pop. 6859), El Oro, Nombre de Dios (the first Spanish settlement in the state), San Juan de Guadalupe, San Dimas and Villa Lerdo. These are comparatively small mining towns. Mapimí lies 130 m. N.N.E. of Durango and gives its name to the great arid depression situated still farther north.

DURANGO, sometimes called Ciudad de Victoria, a city of Mexico, capital of the state of Durango, 574 m. N.W. of the federal capital, in lat. 24° 25′ N., long. 105° 55′ W. Pop. (1900) 31,092. Durango is served by the Mexican International railway. The city stands in the picturesque Guadiana valley formed by easterly spurs of the Sierra Madre, about 6850 ft. above the sea. It has a mild, healthy climate, and is surrounded by a district of considerable fertility. Durango is an important mining and commercial centre, and was for a time one of the most influential towns of northern Mexico. It is the seat of a bishop, and has a handsome cathedral, ten parish churches, a national institute or college, an episcopal seminary, government buildings, a public library, hospital, penitentiary and bull-ring. The city is provided with urban and suburban tramways, electric light, telephone service and an abundant water-supply, and there are thermal springs in its vicinity. Its manufacturing establishments include reduction works, cotton and woollen mills, glass works, iron foundries, tanneries, flour mills, sugar refineries and tobacco factories. Durango was founded in 1563 by Alonso Pacheco under the direction of Governor Francisco de Ibarra, who named it after a city of his native province in Spain. It was known, however, as Guadiana for a century thereafter, and its first bishops were given that title. It was the capital of Ibarra’s new province of Nueva Viscaya, which included Durango and Chihuahua, and continued as such down to their separation in 1823.

DURANI, or Durrani, the dominant race of Afghans, to which the ruling family at Kabul belongs. The Duranis number 100,000 fighting men, and have two branches, the Zirak and the Panjpai. To the former section belong the Popalzai, Alikozai, Barakzai and Achakzai; and to the latter the Nurzai, Alizai, Isakzai, Khokani and Maku tribes. The Saddozai clan of the Popalzai Duranis furnished the first independent shahs of the Durani dynasty (A.D. 1747), the Barakzais furnishing the amirs. The line of the shahs was overthrown in the third generation (A.D. 1834), after a protracted period of anarchy and dissension, which broke out on the death in A.D. 1773 of Ahmad Shah Durani, the founder of Afghan national independence.

Bar Durani is a name sometimes applied to the independent Pathan tribes who inhabit the hill districts south of the Hindu Kush, parts of the Indus valley, the Salt Range, and the range of Suliman, which were first conceded to them by Ahmad Shah. Bar Durani includes the Yusafzai, Utman Khel, Tarkanis, Mohmands, Afridis, Orakzais and Shinwaris, as well as the Pathan tribes of the plains of Peshawar and those of Bangash and Khattak, although the derivation of some of these tribes from the true Durani stock is doubtful.

DURANTE, FRANCESCO (1684-1755), Italian composer, was born at Frattamaggiore, in the kingdom of Naples, on the 15th of March 1684. At an early age he entered the Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesù Cristo, at Naples, where he received lessons from Gaetano Greco, later he became a pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti at the Conservatorio di Sant’ Onofrio. He is also supposed to have studied under Pasquini and Pitoni in Rome, but no documentary proof of this statement can be given. He is said to have succeeded Scarlatti in 1725 at Sant’ Onofrio, and to have remained there until 1742, when he succeeded Porpora as head of the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, also at Naples. This post he held for thirteen years, till his death on the 13th of August 1755 at Naples. He was married three times. His fame as a teacher was all but unrivalled, and Jommelli, Paesiello, Pergolesi, Piccini and Vinci were amongst his pupils. A complete collection of Durante’s works, consisting all but exclusively of sacred compositions, was presented by Selvaggi, a Neapolitan lover of art, to the Paris library. A catalogue of it may be found in Fétis’s Biographie universelle. The imperial library of Vienna also preserves a valuable collection of Durante’s manuscripts. Two requiems, several masses (one of which, a most original work, is the Pastoral Mass for four voices) and the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah are amongst his most important settings. The fact that Durante never composed for the stage brought him a somewhat exaggerated reputation as a composer of sacred music. Although certainly one of the best church composers of his style and period, he is far inferior to Leo, and seems to have been the founder of the sentimental school of Italian church music. Leo and Scarlatti at their best have a solidity and dignity entirely wanting in Durante, and Alessandro Scarlatti at his worst is frivolous rather than sentimental. This type of music is characteristic of Durante as a man; intellectually uncultured, but sincerely devout. As a teacher he insisted on the strict observance of rules for which he either would not or could not give a reason, differing thus from Alessandro Scarlatti, whose first care was to develop his pupils’ talents according to their own individualities, regarding all rules as subservient to his exquisite sense of musical beauty. Hasse rightly protested against Durante’s being described as the greatest harmonist of Italy, a title which could be claimed only by Alessandro Scarlatti.

(E. J. D.)

DURÃO, JOSÉ DE SANTA RITA (1720-1784), Brazilian poet, was born near Marianna, in the province of Minas Geraes, in 1720, and died in Lisbon in 1754. He studied at Coimbra, in Portugal, graduated as a doctor of divinity, became a member of the Augustinian order of friars, and obtained a great reputation as a preacher. Having irritated the minister Pombal by his defence of the Jesuits, he retired from Portugal in 1759; and, after being imprisoned in Spain as a spy, found his way to Italy in 1763, where he became acquainted with Alfieri, Pindemonte, Casti and other literary men of the time. On his return to Portugal he delivered the opening address at the university of Coimbra for the year 1777; but soon after retired to the cloisters of a Gratian convent. At the time of his death he taught in the little college belonging to that order in Lisbon. His epic in ten cantos, entitled Caramúru, poema epico do descubrimento da Bahia, appeared in Lisbon in 1781, but proved at first a total failure. Its value has gradually been recognized, and it now ranks as one of the best poems in Brazilian literature—remarkable especially for its fine descriptions of scenery and native life in South America. The historic institute of Rio de Janeiro offered a prize to the author of the best essay on the legend of Caramúru; and the successful competitor published a new edition of Durão’s poem. There is a French translation which appeared in Paris in 1829.

See Adolfo de Varnhagen, Epicos Brazileiros (1845); Pereira da Silva, Os Varões illustres do Brasil (1858); Wolf, Le Brésil littéraire (Berlin, 1863); Sotero dos Reis, Curso de litteratura Portugueza e Brazileira, vol. iv. (Maranhão, 1868); José Verissimo, Estudos de literatura Brazileira, segunda serie (Rio, 1901).

DURAZZO (anc. Epidamnus and Dyrrachium; Albanian, Durresi; Turkish and Slavonic, Drach), a seaport and capital of the sanjak of Durazzo, in the vilayet of Iannina, Albania, Turkey. Pop. (1900) about 5000. Durazzo is about 50 m. S. of Scutari, on the Bay of Durazzo, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop and a Greek metropolitan, but in every respect has greatly declined from its former prosperity. The walls are dilapidated; plane-trees grow on the gigantic ruins of its old Byzantine citadel; and its harbour, once equally commodious and safe, is gradually becoming silted up. The only features worthy of notice are the quay, with its rows of cannon, and the bridge, 750 ft. long, which leads across the marshes stretching along the coast. The chief exports are olive oil—largely manufactured in the district—wheat, oats, barley, pottery and skins.

Epidamnus was founded by a joint colony of Corcyreans and Corinthians towards the close of the 7th century B.C., and from its admirable position and the fertility of the surrounding country soon rose into very considerable importance. The dissolution of its original oligarchical government by the democratic opposition, the consequent quarrel between Corcyra and the oligarchical city of Corinth, and the intervention of Athens on behalf of Corcyra, are usually included among the contributory causes of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). In 312 B.C., Epidamnus was seized by the Illyrian king Glaucias, and shortly afterwards it passed into the power of the Romans. As the name Epidamnus sounded to Roman ears like an evil omen, as though it were derived from the Latin damnum, “loss” or “harm,” the alternative name of Dyrrachium, which the city possibly received from the rugged nature of the adjoining sea-coast, came into general use. Thenceforward Epidamnus rose rapidly in importance. It was a favourite point of debarcation for the Roman armies; the great military road known as the Via Egnatia led from Dyrrachium to Thessalonica (Salonica); and another highway passed southwards to Buthrotum and Ambracia. Broad swamps rendered the city almost impregnable, and in 48 B.C. it became famous as the place where Pompey made his last successful resistance to Caesar. After the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., Augustus made over Dyrrachium to a colony of his veterans; it became a civitas libera and a great commercial emporium (for coins see Maier, Numis. Zeitschr., 1908). The summit of its prosperity was reached about the end of the 4th century, when it was made the capital of Epirus Nova. Its bishopric, created about A.D. 58, was raised to an archbishopric in 449. In 481 the city was besieged by Theodoric, the king of the East Goths; and in the 10th and 11th centuries it frequently had to defend itself against the Bulgarians. In 1082 it was stormed by the Norman Robert Guiscard, who in the previous year had defeated the Greeks under their emperor Alexius; and in 1185 it fell into the hands of King William of Sicily. Surrendered to Venice in 1202, it afterwards broke loose from the republic and in 1268 passed into the possession of Charles of Anjou. In 1273 it was laid in ruins by an earthquake, but it soon recovered from the disaster, and became an independent duchy under John, the grandson of Charles (1294-1304), and afterwards under Philip of Otranto. In 1333 it was annexed to Achaea, in 1336 to Servia, and in 1394 to Venice. The Turks obtained possession in 1501.

D’URBAN, SIR BENJAMIN (1777-1849), British general and colonial administrator, was born in 1777, and entered the British army in 1793. Promoted lieutenant and captain in 1794 he took part in that year in operations in Holland and Westphalia. In 1795 he served under Sir Ralph Abercromby in San Domingo. He went on half-pay in 1800, joining the Royal Military College, where he remained until 1805, when he went to Hanover with the force under Lord Cathcart. Returning to England he filled various staff offices, and in November 1807 went to Dublin as assistant-quartermaster-general, being transferred successively to Limerick and the Curragh. He joined the army in the Peninsula in 1808, and his marked abilities as a staff officer led to his selection by General (afterwards Viscount) Beresford as quartermaster-general in the reorganization of the Portuguese army. He served throughout the Peninsular War without once going on leave and took part in nine pitched battles and sieges, Busaco, Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, the Nivelle, the Nive and Toulouse. He was promoted major-general in the Portuguese army and colonel in the British army in 1813, and made a K.C.B. in 1815. He remained in Portugal until 1816, when he was summoned home to take up the posts of colonel of the royal staff corps and deputy quartermaster-general at the Horse Guards. In 1819 he became major-general and in 1837 lieutenant-general. From 1829 he was colonel of the 51st Foot.

Sir Benjamin began his career as colonial administrator in 1820 when he was made governor of Antigua. In 1824 he was transferred to Demerara and Essequibo, then in a disturbed condition owing to a rising among the slaves consequent on the emancipation movement in Great Britain. D’Urban’s rule proved successful, and in 1831 he carried out the amalgamation of Berbice with the other counties, the whole forming the colony of British Guiana, of which D’Urban was first governor. The ability with which he had for nine years governed a community of which the white element was largely of Dutch origin led to his appointment as governor of Cape Colony. He assumed office in January 1834, and the four years during which he held that post were of great importance in the history of South Africa. They witnessed the abolition of slavery, the establishment of a legislative council and municipal councils in Cape Colony, the first great Kaffir war and the beginning of the Great Trek. The firmness and justice of his administration won the cordial support of the British and Dutch colonists. The greater part of 1835 was occupied in repelling an unprovoked invasion of the eastern borders of the colony by Xosa Kaffirs. To protect the inhabitants of the eastern province Sir Benjamin extended the boundary of the colony to the Kei river and erected military posts in the district, allowing the Xosa to remain under British supervision. Since his appointment to the Cape there had been a change of ministry in England, and Lord Glenelg had become secretary for the Colonies in the second Melbourne administration. Prejudiced against any extension of British authority and lending a ready ear to a small but influential party in South Africa, Glenelg adopted the view that the Kaffirs had been the victims of systematic injustice. In a momentous despatch dated the 26th of December 1835 he set forth his views and instructed Sir Benjamin D’Urban to give up the newly annexed territory. At the same time Sir Andries Stockenstrom, Bart. (1792-1864), was appointed lieutenant-governor for the eastern provinces of the colony to carry out the policy of the home government, in which the Kaffir chiefs were treated as being on terms of full equality with Europeans. D’Urban in vain warned Glenelg of the disastrous consequences of his decision, the beginning of the long course of vacillation which wrought great harm to South Africa. One result of the new policy was to recreate a state of insecurity, bordering on anarchy, in the eastern province, and this condition was one of the causes of the Great Trek of the Dutch farmers which began in 1836. In various despatches D’Urban justified his position, characterizing the Trek as due to “insecurity of life and property occasioned by the recent measures, inadequate compensation for the loss of the slaves, and despair of obtaining recompense for the ruinous losses by the Kaffir invasion.” (See further South Africa: History, and Cape Colony: History.) But Glenelg was not to be convinced by any argument, however cogent, and in a despatch dated the 1st of May 1837 he informed Sir Benjamin that he had been relieved of office. D’Urban, however, remained governor until the arrival of his successor, Sir George Napier, in January 1838.

During his governorship Sir Benjamin endeavoured to help the British settlers at Port Natal, who in 1835 named their town D’Urban (now written Durban) in his honour, but his suggestion that the district should be occupied as a British possession was vetoed by Lord Glenelg. Though no longer in office D’Urban remained in South Africa until April 1846. In 1840 he was made a G.C.B., and in 1842 declined a high military appointment in India offered him by Sir Robert Peel. In January 1847 he took up the command of the troops in Canada, and was still in command at the time of his death at Montreal on the 25th of May 1849.

DURBAN, the principal seaport and largest city of Natal, South Africa, the harbour being known as Port Natal, in 29° 52′ 48″ S. 31° 42′ 49″ E. It is 6810 m. from London via Madeira and 7785 via Suez, 823 m. by water E.N.E. from Cape Town and 483 m. by rail S.S.E. of Johannesburg. Pop. (1904) 67,842, of whom 31,302 were whites, 15,631 Asiatics (chiefly British Indians), 18,929 natives and 1980 of mixed race. From its situation and the character of its buildings Durban is one of the finest cities in South Africa. The climate is generally hot and humid, but not unhealthy. Although nearly half the citizens are British, the large number of Indians engaged in every kind of work gives to Durban an oriental aspect possessed by no other town in South Africa. The town is built on the E. side of a bay (Durban Bay or Bay of Natal), the entrance to which is marked on the west by a bold cliff, the Bluff, whose summit is 195 ft. above the sea, and on the east by a low sandy spit called the Point. The city extends from the Point along the side of the bay and also for some distance along the coast of the Indian Ocean, and stretches inland to a range of low hills called the Berea.

The chief streets, Smith, West and Pine, are in the lower town, parallel to one another and to the bay. They contain the principal public buildings, warehouses and shops, the Berea being a residential quarter. Of the three streets mentioned, West Street, the central thoroughfare, is the busiest. In its centre are the public gardens, in which is a handsome block of buildings in the Renaissance style, built in 1906-1908 at a cost of over £300,000, containing the town hall, municipal offices, public library, museum and art gallery. The art gallery holds many pictures of the modern British school. Opposite the municipal buildings are the post and telegraph offices, a fine edifice (built 1881-1885) with a clock tower 164 ft. high. The post office formerly served as town hall. In Pine Street is the Central railway station and the spacious Market House. Among the churches St Cyprian’s (Anglican), in Smith Street, has a handsome chancel. The Roman Catholic cathedral is a fine building in the Gothic style. The town possesses several parks, one, the Victoria Park, facing the Indian Ocean. This part of the town is laid out with pleasure grounds and esplanades. The botanic gardens, in the upper town, contain a very fine collection of flowering shrubs and semi-tropical trees. Above the gardens is the observatory. There is a fine statue of Queen Victoria by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A., in the public gardens, and a memorial to Vasco da Gama at the Point. There is an extensive system of electric trams. Another favourite means of conveyance is by rickshaw, the runners being Zulus. The town is governed by a municipality which owns the water and electric lighting supplies and the tramway system. The sanitary services are excellent. The main water-supply is the Umlaas river, which enters the ocean 10 m. S. of the port. The municipal valuation, which is based on capital value, was £9,494,400 in 1909, the rate, including water, being 2½d. in the £.

The entrance to the harbour was obstructed by a formidable sand bar, but as the result of dredging operations there is now a minimum depth of water at the opening of the channel into the bay of over 30 ft., with a maximum depth of over 33 ft. The width of the passage between the Bluff and the Point is 450 ft. From the foot of the Bluff a breakwater extends over 2000 ft. into the sea, and parallel to it, starting from the Point, is a pier. The harbour is landlocked, and covers 7½ sq. m. Much of this area is shoal water, but the accommodation available was largely increased by the removal during 1904-1908 of 24,000,000 tons of sand. The port has over 3 m. of wharfage. It possesses a floating dock capable of lifting a vessel of 8500 tons, a floating workshop, a patent slip for small craft, hydraulic cranes, &c. The minimum depth alongside the quays at low water is 23 ft., increased at places to over 30 ft. The principal wharves, where passengers, mails and general merchandise are landed, are along the Point. On the opposite side at the foot of the Bluff land has been reclaimed and extensive accommodation provided for ships coaling. At Congella at the N.E. end of the harbour some 65 acres of land were reclaimed during 1905-1906, and wharves built for the handling of heavy and bulky goods such as timber and corrugated iron. Here also are situated warehouses and railway works. The port is defended by batteries armed with modern heavy guns. The trade of the port is almost coextensive with the foreign trade of Natal.

History.—The early history of Durban is closely identified with that of the colony of Natal. The first permanent settlement by white men in the bay was made by Englishmen in 1824, when Lieutenant F.G. Farewell, R.N., and about ten companions went thither from Cape Town in the brig “Salisbury,” from which circumstance the island in the bay gets its name. In 1835 a township was laid out and the colonists gave it the name of D’Urban, in honour of Sir Benjamin D’Urban, then governor of Cape Colony. At this time a mission church was built on the heights overlooking the bay by Captain Allen Gardner, R.N., who named the hill Berea in gratitude for support received from the settlers, whom he found “more noble than those of” Zululand—Dingaan having refused to allow the captain to start a mission among his people. From December 1838 to December 1839 a small British military force was stationed at the port. On its recall the little settlement was taken possession of by Dutch emigrants from the Cape, who had defeated the Zulu king Dingaan, and who the year before at the upper end of the bay had formed an encampment, Kangela (look-out), the present Congella. The Dutch claimed independence, and on the block-house at Durban hoisted the flag of the “Republic of Natalia.” In 1842, however, a British military force reoccupied Durban, and on the 15th of July of that year a treaty was signed in which the Dutch recognized British sovereignty (see further Natal: History). From that date Durban, though not the seat of government, became the principal town in Natal. In 1850 there were 500 white inhabitants, and in 1853 the town was granted municipal government. The first mayor was Mr George Cato (c. 1810-1893), one of the earliest settlers in Natal. In 1860 a railway from the Point to the town, the first railway in South Africa, was opened. The discovery of the gold-mines on the Rand greatly increased the importance of the port, and renewed efforts were made to remove the bar which obstructed the entrance to the bay. The Harbour Board, which was formed in 1881 and ceased to exist in 1893, effected, under the guidance of Mr Harry Escombe, enormous improvements in the port—on which the prosperity of Durban is dependent. But it was not until 1904 that the fairway was deepened sufficiently to allow mail steamers of the largest class to enter the harbour. The growth of the port as illustrated by customs receipts is shown in the increase from £250,000 in 1880 to £981,000 in 1904. In 1846 the customs revenue was returned at £3510.

See Durban: Fifty Years’ Municipal History, compiled for the corporation by W.P.M. Henderson, Asst. Town Clerk (Durban, 1904); G. Russell, History of Old Durban [to 1860] (Durban, 1899).

DURBAR, a term in India for a court or levee, from the Persian darbar. A durbar may be either a council for administering affairs of state, or a purely ceremonial gathering. In the former sense the native rulers of India in the past, like the amir of Afghanistan to-day, received visitors and conducted business in durbar. A durbar is the executive council of a native state. In the latter sense the word has come to be applied to great ceremonial gatherings like Lord Lytton’s durbar for the proclamation of the queen empress in India in 1877, or the Delhi durbar of 1903.

DÜREN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the right bank of the Roer, 19 m. E. from Aix-la-Chapelle on the main line of railway to Cologne. Pop. (1905) 29,270. It has two Protestant and six Roman Catholic churches, among the latter the Gothic St Annakirche, said to contain a portion of the head of the saint, to the shrine of which frequent pilgrimages are made. There are several high grade schools, monuments to the emperor William I., Bismarck and Moltke, and, in the town-hall, a collection of antiquities. It is the seat of considerable manufactures, notably cloth, paper, flax-spinning, carpet, artificial wool, sugar, iron wares and needles.

Düren derives its name, not, as was at one time believed, from the Marcodurum of the Ubii, mentioned in Tacitus, but from the Dura or Duria, assemblies held by the Carolingians in the 8th century. It received civic rights early in the 13th century. Hypothecated by the emperor Frederick II. to Count William of Jülich, it became incorporated with the duchy of that name, and with it passed to Prussia in 1816.

DURENE (1·2·4·5 tetramethyl benzene) C6H2(CH3)4, a hydro-carbon which has been recognized as a constituent of coal-tar. It may be prepared by the action of methyl iodide on brom-pseudocumene or 4.6 dibrom metaxylene, in the presence of sodium; or by the action of methyl chloride on toluene, in the presence of anhydrous aluminium chloride. It crystallizes in plates, having a camphor-like smell, melting at 79-80° C. and boiling at 189-191° C. It is easily soluble in alcohol, ether and benzene, and sublimes slowly at ordinary temperature. On oxidation with chromic acid mixture, it is completely decomposed into carbon dioxide and acetic acid; nitric acid oxidizes it to durylic and cumidic acids [C6H2·(CH3)2·(COOH)2].

DÜRER, ALBRECHT (1471-1528), German painter, draughtsman and engraver, was born at Nuremberg on the 21st of May 1471. His family was not of Nuremberg descent, but came from the village of Eytas in Hungary. The name, however, is German, and the family device—an open door—points to an original form Thürer, meaning a maker of doors or carpenter. Albrecht Dürer the elder was a goldsmith by trade, and settled soon after the middle of the 15th century in Nuremberg. He served as assistant under a master-goldsmith of the city, Hieronymus Holper, and in 1468 married his master’s daughter Barbara, the bridegroom being forty and the bride fifteen years of age. They had eighteen children, of whom Albrecht was the second. The elder Dürer was an esteemed craftsman and pious citizen, sometimes, as was natural, straitened in means by the pressure of his numerous progeny. His famous son writes with reverence and affection of both parents, and has left a touching narrative of their death-bed hours. He painted the portrait of his father twice, first in 1490, next in 1497. The former of these is in the Uffizi at Florence; of the latter, four versions exist, that in the National Gallery (formerly in the Ashburton-Northampton collections) having the best claim to originality.

The young Albrecht was his father’s favourite son. “My father,” he writes, “took special delight in me. Seeing that I was industrious in working and learning, he put me to school; and when I had learned to read and write, he took me home from school and taught me the goldsmith’s trade.” By and by the boy found himself drawn by preference from goldsmith’s work to painting; his father, after some hesitation on the score of the time already spent in learning the former trade, gave way and apprenticed him for three years, at the age of fifteen and a half, to the principal painter of the town, Michael Wolgemut. Wolgemut furnishes a complete type of the German painter of that age. At the head of a large shop with many assistants, his business was to turn out, generally for a small price, devotional pieces commissioned by mercantile corporations or private persons to decorate their chapels in the churches—the preference being usually for scenes of the Passion, or for tortures and martyrdoms of the saints. In such work the painters of Upper Germany at this time, working in the spirit of the late Gothic style just before the dawn of the Renaissance, show considerable technical attainments, with a love of quaint costumes and rich draperies crumpled in complicated angular folds, some feeling for romance in landscape backgrounds, none at all for clearness or balance in composition, and in the attitudes and expressions of their overcrowded figures a degree of grotesqueness and exaggeration amounting often to undesigned caricature. There were also produced in the workshop of Wolgemut, as in that of other artist-craftsmen of his town, a great number of woodcuts for book illustration. We cannot with certainty identify any of these as being by the ’prentice hand of the young Dürer. Authentic drawings done by him in boyhood, however, exist, including one in silver-point of his own likeness at the age of thirteen in the Albertina at Vienna, and others of two or three years later in the print room at Berlin, at the British Museum and at Bremen.

In the school of Wolgemut Dürer learned much, by his own account, but suffered not a little from the roughness of his companions. At the end of his apprenticeship in 1490 he entered upon the usual course of travels—the Wanderjahre—of a German youth. Their direction we cannot retrace with certainty. There had been no one at Nuremberg skilled enough in the art of metal-engraving to teach it him to much purpose, and it had at one time been his father’s intention to apprentice him to Martin Schongauer of Colmar, the most refined and accomplished German painter-engraver of his time. But after travelling two years in various parts of Germany, where we are unable to follow him, the young Dürer arrived at Colmar in 1492, only to find that Schongauer had died the previous year. He was received kindly by three brothers of the deceased master established there, and afterwards, still in 1492, by a fourth brother at Basel. Under them he evidently had some practice both in metal-engraving and in furnishing designs for the woodcutter. There is in the museum at Basel a wood-block of St Jerome executed by him and elaborately signed on the back with his name. This was used in an edition of Jerome’s letters printed in the same city in the same year, 1492. Some critics also maintain that his hand is to be recognized in several series of small blocks done about the same date or somewhat later for Bergmann and other printers of Basel, some of them being illustrations to Terence (which were never printed), some to the romance of the Ritter vom Turm, and some to the Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brandt. But the prevailing opinion is against this conjecture, and sees in these designs the work not of a strenuous student and searcher such as Dürer was, but of a riper and more facile hand working in a spirit of settled routine. Whether the young Dürer’s stay at Basel was long or short, or whether, as has been supposed, he travelled from there into the Low Countries, it is certain that in the early part of 1494 he was working at Strassburg, and returned to his home at Nuremberg immediately after Whitsuntide in that year. Of works certainly executed by him during his years of travel there are extant, besides the Basel wood-block, only a much-injured portrait of himself, very finely dressed and in the first bloom of his admirable manly beauty, dated 1493 and originally painted on vellum but since transferred to canvas (this is the portrait of the Felix Goldschmid collection); a miniature painting on vellum at Vienna (a small figure of the Child-Christ); and some half a dozen drawings, of which the most important are the characteristic pen portrait of himself at Erlangen, with a Holy Family on the reverse much in the manner of Schongauer; another Holy Family in nearly the same style at Berlin; a study from the female nude in the Bonnat collection; a man and woman on horseback in Berlin; a man on horseback, and an executioner about to behead a young man, at the British Museum, &c. These drawings all show Dürer intent above all things on the sternly accurate delineation of ungeneralized individual forms by means of strongly accented outline and shadings curved, somewhat like the shadings of Martin Schongauer’s engravings, so as to follow their modellings and roundness.

Within a few weeks of his return (July 7th, 1494) Dürer was married, according to an arrangement apparently made between the parents during his absence, to Agnes Frey, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant of the city. By the autumn of the same year, probably feeling the incompleteness of the artistic training that could be obtained north of the Alps, he must have taken advantage of some opportunity, we know not what, to make an excursion of some months to Italy, leaving his lately married wife at Nuremberg. The evidences of this travel (which are really incontestable, though a small minority of critics still decline to admit them) consist of (1) some fine drawings, three of them dated 1494 and others undated, but plainly of the same time, in which Dürer has copied, or rather boldly translated into his own Gothic and German style, two famous engravings by Mantegna, a number of the “Tarocchi” prints of single figures which pass erroneously under that master’s name, and one by yet another minor master of the North-Italian school; with another drawing dated 1495 and plainly copied from a lost original by Antonio Pollaiuolo, and yet another of an infant Christ copied in 1495 from Lorenzo di Credi, from whom also Dürer took a motive for the composition of one of his earliest Madonnas; (2) several landscape drawings done in the passes of Tirol and the Trentino, which technically will not fit in with any other period of his work, and furnish a clear record of his having crossed the Alps about this date; (3) two or three drawings of the costumes of Venetian courtesans, which he could not have made anywhere but in Venice itself, and one of which is used in his great woodcut Apocalypse series of 1498; (4) a general preoccupation which he shows for some years from this date with the problems of the female nude, treated in a manner for which Italy only could have set him the example; and (5) the clear implication contained in a letter written from Venice in 1506 that he had been there already eleven years before; when things, he says, pleased him much which at the time of writing please him no more. Some time in 1495 Dürer must have returned from this first Italian journey to his home in Nuremberg, where he seems to have lived, without further change or removal, in the active practice of his art for the next ten years.

The hour when Dürer, the typical artist of the German nation, attained maturity was one of the most pregnant in the history of his race. It was the crisis, in northern Europe, of the transition between the middle ages and our own. The awakening of Germany at the Renaissance was not, like the awakening of Italy a generation or two earlier, a movement almost exclusively intellectual. It was indeed from Italy that the races of the north caught the impulse of intellectual freedom, the spirit of science and curiosity, the eager retrospect towards the classic past; but joined with these in Germany was a moral impulse which was her own, a craving after truth and right, a rebellion against spiritual tyranny and corruption—the Renaissance was big in the north, as it was not in the south, with a Reformation to come. The art of printing had been invented in good time to help and hasten the new movement of men’s minds. Nor was it by the diffusion of written ideas only that the new art supplied the means of popular enlightenment. Along with word-printing, or indeed in advance of it, there had sprung into use another kind of printing, picture-printing, or what is commonly called engraving. Just as books were the means of multiplying, cheapening and disseminating ideas, so engravings on copper or wood were the means of multiplying, cheapening and disseminating images which gave vividness to the ideas, or served, for those ignorant of letters, in their stead. Technically one of these arts, that of line-engraving on copper, sprang from the craft of the goldsmith and metal-chaser; while that of wood-engraving sprang from the craft of the printers of pattern-blocks and playing cards. The engraver on metal habitually cut his own designs, and between the arts of the goldsmith and the painter there had always been a close alliance, both being habitually exercised by persons of the same family and sometimes by one and the same person; so that there was no lack of hands ready-trained for the new craft which required of the man who practised it that he should design like a painter and cut metal like a goldsmith. Designs intended to be cut on wood, on the other hand, were usually drawn by the artist on the block and handed over for cutting to a class of workmen—Formschneider or Briefmaler—especially devoted to that industry. Both kinds of engraving soon came to be in great demand. Independently of the illustration of written or printed books, for which purpose woodcuts were almost exclusively used, separate engravings or sets of engravings in both kinds were produced, the more finely wrought and more expensive, appealing especially to the more educated classes, on copper, the bolder, simpler and cheaper on wood; and both kinds found a ready sale at all the markets, fairs and church festivals of the land. Subjects of popular devotion predominated. Figures of the Virgin and Child, of the apostles and evangelists, the fathers of the Church, the saints and martyrs, with illustrations of sacred history and the Apocalypse, were supplied in endless repetition to satisfy the cravings of a pious and simple-minded people. But to these were quickly added subjects of allegory, of classical learning, of witchcraft and superstition and of daily life; scenes of the parlour and the cloister, of the shop, the field, the market and the camp; and lastly portraits of famous men, with scenes of court life and princely pageant and ceremony. Thus the new art became a mirror of almost all the life and thoughts of the age. The genius of Albrecht Dürer cannot be rightly estimated without taking into account the position which the arts of engraving on metal and on wood thus held in the culture of this time. He was indeed professionally and in the first place a painter; but throughout his career a great, and on the whole the most successful, part of his industry was devoted to drawing on the block for the woodcutter or engraving with his own hand on copper. The town of Nuremberg in Franconia, in the age of Dürer’s early manhood, was a favourable home for the growth and exercise of his powers. Of the free imperial cities of central Germany, none had a greater historic fame or a more settled and patriotic government. None was more the favourite of the emperors, nor the seat of a more active and flourishing commerce. Nuremberg was the chief mart for the merchandise that came to central Europe from the east through Venice and over the passes of Tirol. She held not only a close commercial intercourse, but also a close intellectual intercourse, with Italy. Without being so forward as the rival city of Augsburg to embrace the architectural fashions of the Italian renaissance—continuing, indeed, to be profoundly imbued with the old and homely German burgher spirit, and to wear, in a degree which time has not very much impaired even yet, the quaintness of the old German civic aspect—she had imported before the close of the 15th century a fair share of the new learning of Italy, and numbered among her citizens distinguished humanists like Hartmann Schedel, Sebald Schreier, Willibald Pirkheimer and Conrad Celtes. From associates like these Dürer could imbibe the spirit of Renaissance culture and research; but the external aspects and artistic traditions which surrounded him were purely Gothic, and he had to work out for himself the style and form-language fit to express what was in him. During the first seven or eight years of his settled life in his native city from 1495, he betrays a conflict of artistic tendencies as well as no small sense of spiritual strain and strife. His finest work in this period was that which he provided for the woodcutter. After some half—dozen miscellaneous single prints—“Samson and the Lion,” the “Annunciation,” the “Ten Thousand Martyrs,” the “Knight and Men-at-arms,” the “Men’s Bath,” &c.—he undertook and by 1498 completed his famous series of sixteen great designs for the Apocalypse. The northern mind had long dwelt with eagerness on these phantasmagoric mysteries of things to come, and among the earliest block-books printed in Germany is an edition of the Apocalypse with rude figures. Founding himself to some extent on the traditional motives, Dürer conceived and carried out a set of designs in which the qualities of the German late Gothic style, its rugged strength and restless vehemence, its love of gnarled forms, writhing actions and agitated lines, are fused by the fire of the young master’s spirit into vital combination with something of the majestic power and classic severity which he had seen and admired in the works of Mantegna. Of a little later date, and of almost as fine a quality, are the first seven of a large series of woodcuts known as the Great Passion; and a little later again (probably after 1500), a series of eleven subjects of the Holy Family and of saints singly or in groups: then, towards 1504-1505, come the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the Virgin: neither these nor the Great Passion were published till several years later.

In copper-engraving Dürer was at the same time diligently training himself to develop the methods practised by Martin Schongauer and earlier masters into one suitable for his own self-expression. He attempted no subjects at all commensurate with those of his great woodcuts, but contented himself for the most part with Madonnas, single figures of scripture or of the saints, some nude mythologies of a kind wholly new in northern art and founded upon the impressions received in Italy, and groups, sometimes bordering on the satirical, of humble folk and peasants. In the earliest of the Madonnas, the “Virgin with the Dragon-fly” (1495-1496), Dürer has thrown something of his own rugged energy into a design of the traditional Schongauer type. In examples of a few years later, like the “Virgin with the Monkey,” the design of Mother and Child clearly betrays the influence of Italy and specifically of Lorenzo di Credi. The subjects of the “Prodigal Son” and “St Jerome in the Wilderness” he on the other hand treats in an almost purely northern spirit. In the nudes of the next four or five years, which included a “St Sebastian,” the so-called “Four Witches” (1497), the “Dream” or “Temptation,” the “Rape of Amymome,” and the “Jealousy” or “Great Hercules,” Venetian, Paduan and Florentine memories are found, in the treatment of the human form, competing somewhat uncomfortably with his own inherited Gothic and northern instincts. In these early engravings the highly-wrought landscape backgrounds, whenever they occur, are generally the most satisfying feature. This feature reaches a climax of beauty and elaboration in the large print of “St Eustace and the Stag,” while the figures and animals remain still somewhat cramped and immature. In the first three or four years of the 16th century, we find Dürer in his graver-work still contending with the problems of the nude, but now with added power, though by methods which in different subjects contrast curiously with one another. Thus the “Nemesis,” belonging probably to 1503, is a marvellously wrought piece of quite unflinching realism in the rendering of a common type of mature, muscular, unshapely German womanhood. The conception and attributes of the figure are taken, as has lately been recognized, from a description in the “Manto” of Politian: the goddess, to whose shoulders are appended a pair of huge wings, stands like Fortune on a revolving ball, holding the emblems of the cup and bridle, and below her feet is spread a rich landscape of hill and valley. In the “Adam and Eve” of the next year, we find Dürer treating the human form in an entirely opposite manner; constructing it, that is, on principles of abstract geometrical proportion. The Venetian painter-etcher, Jacopo de Barbari, whom Dürer had already, it would seem, met in Venice in 1494-1495, and by the example of whose engravings he had already been much influenced, came to settle for a while in Nuremberg in 1500. He was conversant to some extent with the new sciences of perspective, anatomy and proportion, which had been making their way for years past in Italy, and from him it is likely that Dürer received the impulse to similar studies and speculations. At any rate a whole series of extant drawings enables us to trace the German gradually working out his own ideas of a canon of human proportion in the composition of his famous engraving of “Adam and Eve” (1504); which at first, as a drawing in the British Museum proves, had been intended to be an Apollo and Diana conceived on lines somewhat similar to one of Barbari’s. The drama of the subject has in this instance not interested him at all, but only the forms and designs of the figures, the realization of the quality of flesh surfaces by the subtlest use of the graving-tool known to him, and the rendering, by methods of which he had become the greatest of all masters, of the richness and intricacy of the forest background. Two or three other technical masterpieces of the engraver’s art, the “Coat-of-Arms with the Skull,” the “Nativity,” with its exquisite background of ruined buildings, the “Little Horse” and the “Great Horse,” both of 1505, complete the list of the master’s chief productions in this kind before he started in the last-named year for a second visit to Italy.

The pictures of this earlier Nuremberg period are not many in number and not very admirable. Dürer’s powers of hand and eye are already extraordinary and in their way almost unparalleled, but they are often applied to the too insistent, too glittering, too emphatic rendering of particular details and individual forms, without due regard to subordination or the harmony of the whole. Among the earliest seem to be two examples of a method practised in Italy especially by the school of Mantegna, but almost without precedent in Germany, that of tempera-painting on linen. One of these is the portrait of Frederick the Wise of Saxony, formerly in the Hamilton collection and now at Berlin; the second, much disfigured by restoration, is the Dresden altarpiece with a Madonna and Child in the middle and St Anthony and Sebastian in the wings. A mythology reminiscent of Italy is the “Hercules and the Stymphalian Birds” in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, founded directly upon the “Hercules and Centaur Nessus” of Pollaiuolo, now at New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. Of portraits, besides that of his father already mentioned as done in 1497, there is his own of 1498 at Madrid. Two totally dissimilar portraits of young women, both existing in duplicate examples (one pair at Augsburg and Frankfort, the other pair in the collections of M. Hengel in Paris and Baron Speck von Sternburg at Lützschema, for each of which has been claimed the name Fürlegerin, that is, a member of the Fürleger family at Nuremberg), belong to nearly the same time. Other panel portraits of the period are three small ones of members of the Tucher family at Weimar and Cassel, and the striking, restlessly elaborated half-length of Oswald Krell at Munich. In some devotional pictures of the time Dürer seems to have been much helped by pupils, as in the two different compositions of the Maries weeping over the body of Christ preserved respectively at Munich and Nuremberg. In an altarpiece at Ober St Veit and in the scattered wings of the Jabach altarpiece severally preserved at Munich, Frankfort and Cologne, the workmanship seems to be exclusively that of journeymen working from his drawings. The period is closed, so far as paintings are concerned, by two examples of far higher value than those above named, that is to say the Paumgartner altarpiece at Munich, with its romantically attractive composition of the Nativity with angels and donors in the central panel, and the fine armed figures of St George and St Eustace (lately freed from the over-paintings which disfigured them) on the wings; and the happily conceived and harmoniously finished “Adoration of the Magi” in the Uffizi at Florence.

In the autumn of 1505 Dürer journeyed for a second time to Venice, and stayed there until the spring of 1507. The occasion of this journey has been erroneously stated by Vasari. Dürer’s engravings, both on copper and wood, had by this time attained great popularity both north and south of the Alps, and had begun to be copied by various hands, among others by the celebrated Marcantonio of Bologna, then in his youth. According to Vasari, Marcantonio, in copying Dürer’s series of the Little Passion on wood, had imitated the original monogram, and Dürer, indignant at this fraud, set out for Italy in order to protect his rights, and having lodged a complaint against Marcantonio before the signory of Venice, carried his point so far that Marcantonio was forbidden in future to add the monogram of Dürer to copies taken after his works. This account will not bear examination. Chronological and other proofs show that if such a suit was fought at all, it must have been in connexion with another set of Dürer’s woodcuts, the first seventeen of the Life of the Virgin. Dürer himself, a number of whose familiar letters written from Venice to his friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg are preserved, makes no mention of anything of the kind. Nevertheless some such grievance may possibly have been among the causes which determined his journey. Other causes, of which we have explicit record, were an outbreak of sickness at Nuremberg; Dürer’s desire, which in fact was realized, of finding a good market for the proceeds of his art; and the prospect, also realized, of a commission for an important picture from the German community settled at Venice, who had lately caused an exchange and warehouse—the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi—to be built on the Grand Canal, and who were now desirous to dedicate a picture in the church of St Bartholomew. The picture painted by Dürer on this commission was the “Adoration of the Virgin,” better known as the “Feast of Rose Garlands”; it was subsequently acquired by the emperor Rudolf II., and carried as a thing beyond price upon men’s shoulders to Vienna; it now exists in a greatly injured state in the monastery of Strahow at Prague. It shows the pope and emperor, with a lute-playing angel between them, kneeling to right and left of the enthroned Virgin and Child, who crown them with rose garlands, with a multitude of other kneeling saints disposed with free symmetry in the background, and farther in the background portraits of the donor and the painter, and a flutter of wreath-carrying cherubs in the air. Of all Dürer’s works, it is the one in which he most deliberately rivalled the combined splendour and playfulness of certain phases of Italian art. The Venetian painters assured him, he says, that they had never seen finer colours. They were doubtless too courteous to add that fine colours do not make fine colouring. Even in its present ruined state, it is apparent that in spite of the masterly treatment of particular passages, such as the robe of the pope, Dürer still lacked a true sense of harmony and tone-relations, and that the effect of his work must have been restless and garish beside that of a master like the aged Bellini. That veteran showed the German visitor the most generous courtesy, and Dürer still speaks of him as the best in painting (“der pest im gemell”) in spite of his advanced years. A similar festal intention in design and colouring, with similar mastery in passages and even less sense of harmonious relations in the whole, is apparent in a second important picture painted by Dürer at Venice, “The Virgin and Child with the Goldfinch,” formerly in the collection of Lord Lothian and now at Berlin. A “Christ disputing with the Doctors” of the same period, in the Barberini Gallery at Rome, is recorded to have cost the painter only five days’ labour, and is an unsatisfying and ill-composed congeries of heads and hands, both of such strenuous character and individuality as here and there to pass into caricature. The most satisfying of Dürer’s paintings done in Venice are the admirable portrait of a young man at Hampton Court (the same sitter reappears in the “Feast of Rose Garlands”), and two small pieces, one the head of a brown Italian girl modelled and painted with real breadth and simplicity, formerly in the collection of Mr Reginald Cholmondeley and now at Berlin, and the small and very striking little “Christ Crucified” with the figure relieved against the night sky, which is preserved in the Dresden Gallery and has served as model and inspiration to numberless later treatments of the theme. An interesting, rather fantastic, portrait of a blonde girl wearing a wide cap, now in the Berlin museum, is dated 1507 and may have been done in the early months of that year at Venice. It is possible, though not certain, that to this date also belongs the famous portrait of himself at Munich bearing a false signature and date, 1500; in this it has been lately shown that the artist modified his own lineaments according to a preconceived scheme of facial proportion, so that it must be taken as an ideal rather than a literal presentment of himself to posterity as he appeared in the flower of his early middle age. From Venice Dürer kept up a continuous correspondence, which has been published, with his bosom friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg. He tells of the high position he holds among the Venetians; of the jealousy shown him by some of the meaner sort of native artist; of the honour and wealth in which he might live if he would consent to abandon home for Italy; of the northern winter, and how he knows that after his return it will set him shivering for the south. Yet he resisted all seductions and was in Nuremberg again before the summer of 1507. First, it seems, he had made an excursion to Bologna, having intended to take Mantua on the way, in order to do homage to the old age of that Italian master, Andrea Mantegna, from whose work he had himself in youth learned the most. But the death of Mantegna prevented his purpose.

From the spring of 1507 until the summer of 1520, Dürer was again a settled resident in his native town. Except the brilliant existences of Raphael at Rome and of Rubens at Antwerp and Madrid, the annals of art present the spectacle of few more honoured or more fortunate careers. His reputation had spread all over Europe. From Flanders to Rome his distinction was acknowledged, and artists of less invention, among them some of the foremost on both sides of the Alps, were not ashamed to borrow from his work this or that striking combination or expressive type. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication with all the first masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honoured in exchanging drawings with Dürer. In his own country, all orders of men, from the emperor Maximilian down, delighted to honour him; and he was the familiar companion of chosen spirits among the statesmen, humanists and reformers of the new age. The burgher life of even Nuremberg, the noblest German city, seems narrow, quaint and harsh beside the grace and opulence and poetical surroundings of Italian life in the same and the preceding generation. The great cities of Flanders also, with their world-wide commerce and long-established eminence in the arts, presented aspects of more splendid civic pomp and luxury. But among its native surroundings the career of Dürer stands out with an aspect of ideal elevation and decorum which is its own. His temper and life seem to have been remarkably free from all that was jarring, jealous and fretful; unless, indeed, we are to accept as true the account of his wife’s character which represents her as having been no fit mate for him, but an incorrigible shrew and skinflint. The name of Agnes Dürer was for centuries used to point a moral, and among the unworthy wives of great men the wife of Dürer became almost as notorious as the wife of Socrates. The source of the traditions to her discredit is to be found in a letter written a few years after Dürer’s death by his life-long intimate, Willibald Pirkheimer, who accuses her of having plagued her husband to death by her meanness, made him overwork himself for money’s sake, and given his latter days no peace. No doubt there must have been some kind of foundation for Pirkheimer’s charges; and it is to be noted that neither in Dürer’s early correspondence with this intimate friend, nor anywhere in his journals, does he use any expressions of tenderness or affection for his wife, only speaking of her as his housemate and of her helping in the sale of his prints, &c. That he took her with him on his journey to the Netherlands shows at any rate that there can have been no acute estrangement. And it is fair to remember in her defence that Pirkheimer when he denounced her was old, gouty and peevish, and that the immediate occasion of his outbreak against his friend’s widow was a fit of anger because she had not let him have a pair of antlers—a household ornament much prized in those days—to which he fancied himself entitled out of the property left by Dürer. We have evidence that after her husband’s death Agnes Dürer behaved with generosity to his brothers.

The thirteen or fourteen years of Dürer’s life between his return from Venice and his journey to the Netherlands (spring 1507-midsummer 1520) can best be divided according to the classes of work with which, during successive divisions of the period, he was principally occupied. The first five years, 1507-1511, are pre-eminently the painting years of his life. In them, working with infinite preliminary pains, as a vast number of extant drawings and studies testify, he produced what have been accounted his four capital works in painting, besides several others of minor importance. The first is the “Adam and Eve” dated 1507, in which both attitudes and proportions are as carefully calculated, though on a somewhat different scheme, as in the engraving of 1504. Two versions of the picture exist, one in Florence at the Pitti palace, the other, which is generally allowed to be the original, at Madrid. To 1508 belongs the life-sized “Virgin with the Iris,” a piece remarkable for the fine romantic invention of its background, but plainly showing the hand of an assistant, perhaps Hans Baldung, in its execution: the best version is in the Cook collection at Richmond, an inferior one in the Rudolphinum at Prague. In 1508 Dürer returned to a subject which he had already treated in an early woodcut, the “Massacre of the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia.” The picture, painted for the elector Frederick of Saxony, is now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna; the overcrowded canvas (into which Dürer has again introduced his own portrait as a spectator alongside of the elector) is full of striking and animated detail, but fails to make any great impression on the whole, and does not do justice to the improved sense of breadth and balance in design, of clearness and dignity in composition, which the master had undoubtedly brought back with him from his second visit to Italy. In 1509 followed the “Assumption of the Virgin” with the Apostles gathered about her tomb, a rich altarpiece with figures of saints and portraits of the donor and his wife in the folding wings, executed for Jacob Heller, a merchant of Frankfort, in 1509. This altarpiece was afterwards replaced at Frankfort (all except the portraits of the donors, which remained behind) by a copy, while the original was transported to Munich, where it perished by fire in 1674. The copy, together with the many careful and highly finished preparatory studies for the heads, limbs and draperies which have been preserved, shows that this must have been the one of Dürer’s pictures in which he best combined the broader vision and simpler habits of design which had impressed him in the works of Italian art with his own inherited and ingrained love of unflinchingly grasped fact and rugged, accentuated character. In 1511 was completed another famous painting, multitudinous in the number of its figures though of very moderate dimensions, the “Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints,” a subject commissioned for a chapel dedicated to All Saints in an almshouse for decayed tradesmen at Nuremberg, and now at the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. Nothing can exceed the fulness and variety of invention, or the searching force and precision of detail in this picture; nor does it leave so much to desire as several of the master’s other paintings in point of colour-harmony and pleasurable general effect.

In the meantime Dürer had added a few to the number of his line-engravings and had completed the two woodcut series of the Great Passion, begun about 1498-1499, and the Life of the Virgin. The new subjects compared with the old show some falling off in dramatic stress and intensity of expression, but on the other hand a marked gain in largeness of design and clearness of composition. In 1511 these two works were brought out for the first time, and the Apocalypse series in a second edition; and for the next three years, 1511-1514, engraving both on wood and copper, but especially the latter, took the first place among Dürer’s activities. Besides such fine single woodcuts as the “Mass of St Gregory,” the “St Christopher,” the “St Jerome,” and two Holy Families of 1511, Dürer published in the same year the most numerous and popularly conceived of all his woodcut series, that known from the dimensions of its thirty-seven subjects as the “Little Passion” on wood; and in the next year, 1512, a set of fifteen small copper-engravings on the same theme, the “Little Passion” on copper. Both of these must represent the labour of several preceding years: one or two of the “Little Passion” plates, dating back as far as 1507, prove that this series at least had been as long as five years in his mind. In thus repeating over and over on wood and copper nearly the same incidents of the Passion, or again in rehandling them in yet another medium, as in the highly finished series of drawings known as the “Green Passion” in the Albertina at Vienna, Dürer shows an inexhaustible variety of dramatic and graphic invention, and is never betrayed into repeating an identical action or motive.

In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Dürer’s works in copper-engraving, “The Knight and Death” (or simply “The Knight,” as he himself calls it, 1513), the “Melancolia” and the “St Jerome in his Study” (both 1514). These are the masterpieces of the greatest mind which ever expressed itself in this form of art. Like other masterpieces, they suggest much more than they clearly express, and endless meanings have been, rightly or wrongly, read into them by posterity. Taken together as a group, they have been supposed to be three out of an uncompleted series designed to illustrate the four “temperaments” and complexions of men. Again, more reasonably, they have been taken as types severally of the moral, the intellectual and the theological virtues. The idea at the bottom of the “Knight and Death” seems to be a combination of the Christian knight of Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis Christiani with the type, traditional in medieval imagery, of the pilgrim on his way through the world. The imaginative force of the presentation, coming from a man of Dürer’s powers, is intense; but what consciously occupied him most may well have been the problem how to draw accurately the proportions and action of a horse in motion. This problem he here solves for the first time, with the help of an Italian example: at least his design so closely repeats that of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous and early destroyed equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza that we must certainly suppose him to have seen either the model itself or such a drawing of it as is still preserved by Leonardo’s own hand. The face of the rider seems to recall that of the statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni at Venice; for the armour Dürer had recourse to an old drawing of his own, signed and dated in 1498. The “Melancolia,” numbered “1” as though intended to be the first of a series, with its brooding winged genius sitting dejectedly amidst a litter of scientific instruments and symbols, is hard to interpret in detail, but impossible not to recognize in general terms as an embodiment of the spirit of intellectual research (the student’s “temperament” was supposed to be one with the melancholic), resting sadly from its labours in a mood of lassitude and defeat. Comparatively cheerful beside these two is the remaining subject of the student saint reading in his chamber, with his dog and domestic lion resting near him, and a marvellous play of varied surface and chequered light on the floor and ceiling of his apartment and on all the objects which it contains. Besides these three masterpieces of line-engraving, the same years, 1512-1515, found Dürer occupied with his most important experiments in etching, both in dry-point (“The Holy Family and Saints” and the “St Jerome in the Wilderness”) and with the acid bath. At the same time he was more taken up than ever, as is proved by the contents of a sketch-book at Dresden, with mathematical and anatomical studies on the proportions and structure of the human frame. A quite different kind of study, that of the postures of wrestlers in action, is illustrated by a little-known series of drawings, still of the same period, at Vienna. Almost the only well-authenticated painting of the time is a “Virgin and Child” in the Imperial Museum at Vienna. The portraits of the emperors Charles the Great and Sigismund (1512), in their present state at any rate, can hardly be recognized as being by the master’s hand. An interval of five years separates the Vienna “Madonna” from the two fine heads of the apostles Philip and James in the Uffizi at Florence, the pair of boys’ heads painted in tempera on linen in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the “Madonna with the Pink” at Augsburg, and the portrait of Wolgemut at Munich, all of 1516. Among engravings of the same time are three Madonnas, the apostles Thomas and Paul, a bagpiper and two peasants dancing, and three or four experiments in etching on plates of iron and zinc. In wood-engraving his energies were almost entirely given to bearing a part—which modern research has proved to have been not nearly so large as was traditionally supposed—in the great decorative schemes commanded by the Emperor Max in his own honour, and devised and carried out by a whole corps of men of letters and artists: namely, the Triumphal Gate and the Triumphal March or Procession. A third and smaller commemorative design, the Triumphal Car, originally designed to form part of the second but in the end issued separately, was entirely Dürer’s own work. A far more successful and attractive effort of his genius in the same service is to be found in the marginal decorations done by him in pen for the emperor’s prayer-book. This unequalled treasure of German art and invention has in later times been broken up, the part executed by Dürer being preserved at Munich, the later sheets, which were decorated by other hands, having been transported to Besançon. Dürer’s designs, drawn with the pen in pale lilac, pink and green, show an inexhaustible richness of invention and an airy freedom and playfulness of hand beyond what could be surmised from the sternness of those studies which he made direct from life and nature. They range from subjects of the homeliest and most mirthful realism to others serious and devout, and from literal or almost literal transcripts of natural form to the most whimsically abstract combinations of linear pattern and tendril and flourish.

All these undertakings for his imperial friend and patron were stopped by the emperor’s death in 1519. A portrait-drawing by the master done at Augsburg a few months previously, one of his finest works, served him as the basis both of a commemorative picture and a woodcut. Other paintings of this and the succeeding year we may seek for in vain; but in line engravings we have four more Madonnas, two St Christophers, one or two more peasant subjects, the well-known St Anthony with the view of Nuremberg in the background, and the smaller of the two portraits of the Cardinal-Elector of Mainz; and in wood-engraving several fine heraldic pieces, including the arms of Nuremberg.

In the summer of 1520 the desire of Dürer to secure from Maximilian’s successors a continuance of the patronage and privileges granted during his lifetime, together with an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave occasion to the master’s fourth and last journey from home. Together with his wife and her maid he set out in July for the Netherlands in order to be present at the coronation of the young emperor Charles V., and if possible to conciliate the good graces of the all-powerful regent Margaret. In the latter part of his aim Dürer was but partially successful. His diary of his travels enables us to follow his movements almost day by day. He journeyed by the Rhine, Cologne, and thence by road to Antwerp, where he was handsomely received, and lived in whatever society was most distinguished, including that of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Besides his written notes, interesting traces of his travels exist in the shape of the scattered leaves of a sketch-book filled with delicate drawings in silver-point, chiefly views of places and studies of portrait and costume. Several of his finest portrait-drawings in chalk or charcoal, including those of his brother artists Lucas Van Leyden and Bernard Van Orley, as well as one of two fine portrait paintings of men, belong to the period of this journey. So does a magnificent drawing of a head of a nonagenarian with a flowing beard who sat to him at Antwerp, together with a picture from the same head in the character of St Jerome; the drawing is now at Vienna, the picture at Lisbon. Dürer’s interest and curiosity, both artistic and personal, were evidently stimulated by his travels in the highest degree. Besides going to Aachen for the coronation, he made excursions down the Rhine from Cologne to Nijmwegen, and back overland by ’s Hertogenbosch; to Brussels; to Bruges and Ghent; and to Zealand with the object of seeing a natural curiosity, a whale reported ashore. The vivid account of this last expedition given in his diary contrasts with the usual dry entries of interviews and disbursements. A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the diet of Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending—without, that is, being properly speaking a Reformer—Dürer in his art and his thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character and conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy.

On the 12th of July 1521 Dürer reached home again. Drawings of this and the immediately following years prove that on his return his mind was full of schemes for religious pictures. For a great group of the Madonna surrounded with saints there are extant two varying sketches of the whole composition and a number of finished studies for individual heads and figures. Less abundant, but still sufficient to prove the artist’s intention, are the preliminary studies to a picture of the Crucifixion. There exist also fine drawings for a “Lamentation over the body of Christ,” an “Adoration of the Kings,” and a “March to Calvary”; of the last-named composition, besides the beautiful and elaborate pen-and-ink drawing at Florence, three still more highly-wrought versions in green monochrome exist; whether any of them are certainly by the artist’s own hand is matter of debate. But no religious paintings on the grand scale, corresponding to these drawings of 1521-1524, were ever carried out; perhaps partly because of the declining state of the artist’s health, but more because of the degree to which he allowed his time and thoughts to be absorbed in the preparation of his theoretical works on geometry and perspective, proportion and fortification. Like Leonardo, but with much less than Leonardo’s genius for scientific speculation and divination, Dürer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the laws of nature and natural appearances. He himself attached great importance to his studies in this kind; his learned friends expected him to give their results to the world; which accordingly, though having little natural gift or felicity in verbal expression, he laboured strenuously to do. The consequence was that in the last and ripest years of his life he produced as an artist comparatively little. In painting there is the famous portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher at Berlin, in which the personality and general aspect of the sitter assert themselves with surprising power. This and the Antwerp head of Jerome are perhaps the most striking examples of Dürer’s power of forcing into subordination to a general impression such a multiplicity of insistent detail as would have smothered any weaker conception than his. No other hand could have ventured to render the hair and beard of a sitter, as it was the habit of this inveterate linearist to do, not by indication of masses, but by means of an infinity of single lines swept, with a miraculous certainty and fineness of touch, in the richest and most intricate of decorative curves. To the same period belong a pleasing but somewhat weak “Madonna and Child” at Florence; and finally, still in the same year 1526, the two famous panels at Munich embodying the only one of the great religious conceptions of the master’s later years which he lived to finish. These are the two pairs of saints, St John with St Peter in front and St Paul with St Mark in the background. The John and Paul are conceived and executed really in the great style, with a commanding nobility and force alike in the character of the heads, the attitudes, and the sweep of draperies; they represent the highest achievement of early German art in painting. In copper-engraving Dürer’s work during the same years was confined entirely to portraits, those of the cardinal-elector of Mainz (“The Great Cardinal”), Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, Willibald Pirkheimer, Melanchthon and Erasmus. To the tale of his woodcuts, besides a few illustrations to his book on measurements (that is, geometry and perspective), and on fortification, he only added one Holy Family and one portrait, that of his friend Eoban Hesse. Of his theoretical books, he only succeeded in getting two finished and produced during his lifetime, that on geometry and perspective or measurement, to use his own title—which was published at Nuremberg in 1525, and that on fortification, published in 1527; the work on human proportions was brought out shortly after his death in 1528. His labours, whether artistic or theoretic, had for some time been carried on in the face of failing health. In the canals of the Low Countries he had caught a fever, of which he never shook off the effects. We have the evidence of this in his own written words, as well as in a sketch which he drew to indicate the seat of his suffering to some physician with whom he was in correspondence, and again in the record of his physical aspect which is preserved by a portrait engraved on wood just after his death, from a drawing made no doubt not long before in this portrait we see his shoulders already bent, the features somewhat gaunt, the old pride of the abundant locks shorn away. The end came on the night of the 6th of April 1528, so suddenly that there was no time to call his dearest friends to his bedside. He was buried in a vault which belonged to his wife’s family, but was afterwards disturbed, in the cemetery of St John at Nuremberg. An appropriate Requiescat is contained in the words of Luther, in a letter written to their common friend Eoban Hesse:—“As for Dürer, assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of trouble and from greater troubles in store, lest he, that deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers: Amen.”

The principal extant paintings of Dürer, with the places where they are to be found, have been mentioned above. Of his drawings, which for students are the most vitally interesting part of his works, the richest collections are in the Albertina at Vienna, the Berlin Museum and the British Museum. The Louvre also possesses some good examples, and many others are dispersed in various public collections, as in the Musée Bonnat at Bayonne, at Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Dresden, Basel, Milan, Florence and Oxford, as well as in private hands all over Europe.

The principal editions of Dürer’s theoretical writings are these:—

Geometry and Perspective.—Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien, Ebnen und ganzen Corporen (Nuremberg, 1525, 1533, 1538). A Latin translation of the same, with a long title (Paris, Weichel, 1532) and another ed. in 1535. Again in Latin, with the title Institutionum geometricarum libri quatuor (Arnheim, 1605).

Fortification.—Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken (Nuremberg, 1527), and other editions in 1530, 1538 and 1603 (Arnheim). A Latin translation, with the title De urbibus, arcibus, castellisque muniendis ac condendis (Paris, Weichel, 1535). See the article Fortification.

Human Proportion.—Hierinnen sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Nuremberg, 1582, and Arnheim, 1603). Latin translation: De symetria partium in rectis formis humanorum corporum libri in latinum conversi, de varietate figurarum, &c. libri ii. (Nuremberg, 1528, 1532 and 1534); (Paris, 1535, 1537, 1557). French translation (Paris, 1557, Arnheim, 1613, 1614). Italian translation (Venice, 1591, 1594); Portuguese translation (1599); Dutch translation (Arnheim, 1622, 1662).

The private literary remains of Dürer, his diary, letters, &c., were first published, partially in Von Murr’s Journal zur Kunstgeschichte (Nuremberg, 1785-1787); afterwards in Campe’s Reliquien von A. Dürer (Nuremberg, 1827); again edited by Thausing, in the Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik (Vienna, 1872), but most completely in Lange and Fuhse’s Dürers schriftlicher Nachlass (Halle, 1893); W.M. Conway’s Literary Remains of A. Dürer (London, 1889) contains extensive transcripts from the MSS. in the British Museum.

The principal remaining literature of the subject will be found in the following books and treatises—Johann Neudörfer, Schreib- und Rechenmeister zu Nürnberg, Nachrichten über Künstlern und Werkleuten daselbst (Nuremberg, 1547); republished in the Vienna Quellenschrift (1875); C. Scheurl, Vita Antonii Kressen (1515, reprinted in the collection of Pirkheimer’s works, Frankfort 1610); Wimpheling, Epitome rerum Germanicarum, ch. 68 (Strassburg, 1565); Joachim von Sandrart, Deutsche Academie (Nuremberg, 1675); Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern (Nuremberg, 1730); C.G. von Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, as above; Adam Bartsch, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. vii. (Vienna, 1808); J.P. Passavant, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. iii. (Leipzig, 1842); J.F. Roth, Leben Albrecht Dürers (Leipzig, 1791); Heller, Das Leben und die Werke Albrecht Dürers, vol. ii. (Bamberg, 1827-1831); B. Hausmann, Dürers Kupferstiche, Radirungen, Holzschnitte und Zeichnungen (Hanover, 1861); R. von Rettberg, Dürers Kupferstiche und Holzschnitte (Munich, 1876); M. Thausing, Dürer, Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst (Leipzig, 1876, 2nd ed., 1884), English translation (from the 1st ed. by F.A. Eaton, London, 1882); W. Schmidt in Dohme’s Kunst und Künstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Leipzig, 1877); Œuvre de Albert Dürer reproduit et publié par Amand-Durand, texte par Georges Duplessis (Paris, 1877); C. Ephrussi, A. Dürer et ses dessins (Paris, 1882); F. Lippmann, Zeichnungen von A. Dürer in Nachbildungen (5 vols. Berlin, 1883-1905); A. Springer, Albrecht Dürer (Berlin, 1892); D. Burckhardt, Dürers Aufenthalt in Basel, 1492-1494 (Munich, 1892); G. von Terey, A Dürers venezianischer Aufenthalt, 1494-1495 (Strassburg, 1892); S.R. Koehler, A Chronological Catalogue of the Engravings, Dry Points and Etchings of A. Dürer (New York, 1894); L. Cust, A. Dürer, a Study of his Life and Works (London, 1897); Dürer Society’s Publications (10 vols., 1898-1907), edited by C. Dodgson and S.M. Peartree; H. Knackfuss, Dürer (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 6th ed., 1899), English translation, 1900; B. Haendcke, Die Chronologie der Landschaften A. Dürers (Strassburg, 1899); M. Zucker, Albrecht Dürer (Halle, 1899-1900); L. Justi, Konstruierte Figuren und Köpfe unter den Werken Albrecht Dürers (Leipzig, 1902); A. Pelzer, A. Dürer und Friedrich II. von der Pfalz (Strassburg, 1905); H. Wölfflin, Die Kunst A. Dürers (Munich, 1905); W. Weisbach, Der junge Dürer (Leipzig, 1906); V. Scherer, A. Dürer (Klassiker der Kunst, iv.), (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1906).

Apart from books, a large and important amount of the literature on Dürer is contained in articles scattered through the leading art periodicals of Germany, such as the Jahrbücher of the Berlin and Vienna museums, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, &c. A comprehensive survey of this literature is afforded by Prof. H.W. Singer’s Versuch einer Dürer-Bibliographie (Strassburg, 1903); articles published more recently will be found completely enumerated in A. Jellinek’s Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissenschaft (Berlin).

(S. C.)

DURESS (through Fr. from Lat. duritia, harshness, severity, durus, hard), in law, constraint or compulsion. Duress may be of two kinds. It may consist in personal restraint or actual violence or imprisonment; or it may be by threats (per minas), as where a person is compelled to an act by threats of immediate death or grievous bodily harm. Duress, in certain cases, may be pleaded as a defence of an act which would otherwise be a crime, but the extent to which the plea of duress can be urged is unascertained. At common law a contract entered into under duress is voidable at the option of one of the parties. See Coercion, Contract.

D’URFEY, THOMAS (1653-1723), better known as Tom d’Urfey, English song-writer and dramatist, belonged to a Huguenot family settled at Exeter, where he was born in 1653. Honoré d’Urfé, the author of Astrée, was his uncle. His first play, The Siege of Memphis, or the Ambitious Queen, a bombastic rhymed tragedy, was produced at the Theatre Royal in 1676. He was much more successful with his comedies, which had brisk, complicated plots carried out in lively dialogue. He had a light touch for fitting words on current topics to popular airs; moreover, many of his songs were set to music by his friends Dr John Blow, Henry Purcell and Thomas Farmer. Many of these songs were introduced into his plays. Addison in the Guardian (No. 67) relates that he remembered to have seen Charles II. leaning on Tom d’Urfey’s shoulder and humming a song with him. Even William III. liked to hear him sing his songs, and as a strong Tory he was sure of the favour of Princess Anne, who is said to have given Tom fifty guineas for a song on the Electress Sophia, the next heir in succession to the crown. “The crown’s far too weighty, for shoulders of eighty,” said d’Urfey, with an indirect compliment to the princess, “So Providence kept her away,—poor old Dowager Sophy.” Pope, in an amusing letter to Henry Cromwell (Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vi. 91) describes him as “the only poet of tolerable reputation in this country.” In spite of the success of his numerous comedies he was poor in his old age. But his gaiety and invincible good humour had made him friends in the craft, and by the influence of Addison his Fond Husband, or The Plotting Sisters was revived for d’Urfey’s benefit at Drury Lane on the 15th of June 1713. This performance, for which Pope wrote a prologue full of rather faint praise, seems to have eased the poet’s difficulties. He died on the 26th of February 1723, and was buried in St James’s Church, Piccadilly.

Collections of his songs with the music appeared during his lifetime, the most complete being the 1719-1720 edition (6 vols.) of Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy. The best known of the twenty-nine pieces of his which actually found their way to the stage were Love for Money; or The Boarding School (Theatre Royal, 1691), The Marriage-Hater Match’d (1692), and The Comical History of Don Quixote, in three parts (1694, 1694 and 1696), which earned the especial censure of Jeremy Collier. In his burlesque opera, Wonders in the Sun; or the Kingdom of the Birds (1706, music by G.B. Draghi), the actors were dressed as parrots, crows, &c.

DURFORT, a village of south-western France, formerly in the province of Guienne, now in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, 18 m. N.W. of Montauban by road. It was at one time the seat of a feudal lordship which gave its name to a family distinguished in French and English history. Though earlier lords are known, the pedigree of the family is only clearly traceable to Arnaud de Durfort (fl. 1305), who acquired the fief of Duras by his marriage with a niece of Pope Clement V. His descendant, Gaillard de Durfort, having embraced the side of the king of England, went to London in 1453, and was made governor of Calais and a knight of the Garter.

The greatness of the family dates, however, from the 17th century. Guy Aldonce (1605-1665), marquis de Duras and comte de Rozan, had, by his wife Elizabeth de la Tour d’Auvergne, sister of Marshal Turenne, six sons, three of whom played a distinguished part. The eldest, Jacques Henri (1625-1704), was governor of Franche Comté in 1674 and was created a marshal of France for his share in the conquest of that province (1675). The second, Guy Aldonce (1630-1702), comte de Lorges and duc de Quintin (known as the duc de Lorges), became a marshal of France in 1676, commanded the army in Germany from 1690 to 1695, and captured Heidelberg in 1693. The sixth son, Louis (1640?-1709), marquis de Blanquefort, came to England in the suite of James, duke of York, in 1663, and was naturalized in the same year. On the 19th of January 1672-1673 he was raised to the English peerage as Baron Duras of Holdenby, his title being derived from an estate in Northamptonshire bought from the duke of York, and in 1676 he married Mary, daughter and elder co-heiress of Sir George Sondes, created in that year Baron Throwley, Viscount Sondes and earl of Feversham. On the death of his father-in-law (16th of April 1677), Duras succeeded to his titles under a special remainder. He was appointed by Charles II. successively to the command of the third and second troops of Horse Guards, was sent abroad on several important diplomatic missions, and became master of the horse (1679) and lord chamberlain to the queen (1680). In 1682 he was appointed a lord of the bed-chamber, and was present at the king’s deathbed reconciliation with the Roman Church. Under James II. Feversham became a member of the privy council, and in 1685 was given the chief command against the rebels under Monmouth (q.v.), in which he mainly distinguished himself by his cruelty to the vanquished. He was rewarded with a knighthood of the Garter and the colonelcy of the first troop of Life Guards, and in 1686 he was appointed to the command of the army assembled by King James on Blackheath to overawe the people. On James’s flight, Feversham succeeded in making his peace with William, on the intercession of the queen dowager, at whose instance he received the mastership of the Royal Hospital of St Catherine near the Tower (1698). He died without issue on the 8th of April 1709. [See G.E. C(ockayne), Complete Peerage, and art. in Dict. Nat. Biog.]

Jean Baptiste (1684-1770), due de Duras, son of Jacques Henri, was also a marshal of France. In 1733 he resigned the dukedom of Duras to his son, Emmanuel Félicité, himself receiving the brevet title of duc de Durfort. Emmanuel Félicité (1715-1789), duc de Duras, took part in all the wars of Louis XV. and was made a marshal of France in 1775. His grandson, Amédée Bretagne Malo (1771-1838), duc de Duras, is mainly known as the husband of Claire Louise Rose Bonne de Coëtnempren de Kersaint (1778-1828), daughter of Armand Guy Simon de Coëtnempren Kersaint (q.v.), who, as duchesse de Duras, presided over a once celebrated salon and wrote several novels once widely read.

The family of Durfort is represented in France now by the branch of Durfort-Civrac, dating from the 16th century. Jean Laurent (1740-1826), marquis de Civrac, married his cousin, the daughter of the duc de Lorges; his son, Guy Emeric Anne (1767-1837), duc de Civrac, became afterwards duc de Lorges. Henri, marquis de Durfort-Civrac (1812-1884), was a well-known politician, and was several times elected vice-president of the chamber of deputies.

DURGA, or Devi (Sanskrit for inaccessible), in Hindu mythology, the wife of Siva (q.v.) and daughter of Himavat (the Himalayas). She has many names and many characters. As Durga (so named from having slain the demon Durga) she is warlike and ferocious, and to her in this form are offered bloody sacrifices, and such ceremonies as the Durgapuja and Churrukpuga are held in her honour (see Kali). The chief festival in Bengal—sometimes termed the Christmas of Bengal—celebrates the goddess’s birth in the sixth Hindu month (parts of September and October). Durga is pictured, in spite of her fierce nature, with a gentle face. She has ten arms, holding each a weapon, while her attendant lions and giants are grouped on each side.

DURHAM, JOHN GEORGE LAMBTON, 1st Earl of (1792-1840), English statesman, son of William Henry Lambton of Lambton Castle, Durham, was born in London on the 12th of April 1792. His mother was Anne Barbara Villiers, daughter of the 4th earl of Jersey. Lambton was only five years old when by his father’s death at Pisa (1797) he succeeded to large estates in the north of England which had been in the uninterrupted possession of his family since the 12th century. In 1805 he went to Eton, and in 1809 obtained a commission in the 10th Hussars. In 1812, while still a minor, he made a runaway match with Henrietta, natural daughter of Lord Cholmondeley, whom he married at Gretna Green, and who died in 1815. In 1813 he was elected to the House of Commons as member for the county of Durham. Whig principles of a pronounced type were traditional in Lambton’s family. His grandfather, General John Lambton, had refused a peerage in 1793 out of loyalty to Fox, and his father was not only one of Pitt’s keenest opponents, but was chairman of “The Friends of the People” and author of that society’s address to the nation in 1792. Lambton adhered to this tradition, and soon developed opinions of an extremely Radical type, which he fearlessly put forward in parliament and in the country with marked ability. His maiden speech in the House of Commons was directed against the foreign policy of Lord Liverpool’s government, who had sanctioned, and helped to enforce, the annexation of Norway by Sweden. In 1815 he vehemently opposed the corn tax, and in general began to take a prominent part in opposition to the Tories. In 1816 he made the acquaintance of Lafayette in Paris, and narrowly escaped arrest for alleged complicity in his escape. In 1817 he began to speak on every opportunity in favour of parliamentary reform.

His political position was strengthened by his marriage in December 1816 to Louisa Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Lord Grey, and as early as 1818 he was taken into the political confidence of his father-in-law and other leaders of the Whigs in matters touching the leadership and policy of the party. But from the first Lambton belonged to the avowedly Radical wing of the party, with whose aims Grey had little sympathy; and when he gave notice of a resolution in 1819 in favour of shortening the duration of parliaments, and of a wide extension of the franchise, he found himself discountenanced by old Whigs like Grey, Holland and Fitzwilliam. Having warmly espoused the cause of Queen Caroline, Lambton ably seconded Lord Tavistock’s resolution in February 1821 censuring the government for their conduct towards the queen; and in April he made his first great speech in the House of Commons on parliamentary reform, when he proposed a scheme for the extension of the suffrage to all holders of property, the division of the country into electoral districts and the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs. He was now one of the recognized leaders of the advanced Liberals, forming a connecting link between the aristocratic Whig leaders and the irresponsible and often violent politicians of the great towns. His opposition to those members of his party who in 1825 were prepared for compromise on the question of Catholic emancipation led to his first conflict with Brougham, with whom he had been on terms of close friendship. While supporting the candidature of his brother-in-law, Lord Howick, for Northumberland in the elections of 1826, Lambton fought a duel with T.W. Beaumont, the Tory candidate, but without bloodshed on either side. Unlike his father-in-law, Lambton supported the ministry of Canning, though he had some grounds for personal grievance against the new prime minister, and after Canning’s death that of Lord Goderich. On the advice of the latter Lambton was raised to the peerage in 1828 with the title of Baron Durham. Owing to his Liberal principles Lord Durham was on terms of friendship with the duke of Sussex, and also with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who sought his advice in the difficult crisis in 1829 when he was offered the throne of Greece, and who, after he became king of the Belgians as Leopold I., continued to correspond with Durham as a trusted confidant; the same confidential relations also existed between Durham and Leopold’s sister, the duchess of Kent, and her daughter, afterwards Queen Victoria.

In November 1830 when Grey became prime minister in succession to the duke of Wellington, Lord Durham entered the cabinet as lord privy seal. Parliamentary reform was in the forefront of the new government’s policy, and with this question no statesman except Lord Grey himself was more closely indentified than Durham. To ardent reformers in the country the presence in the cabinet of “Radical Jack,” the name by which Lambton had been popularly known in the north of England, was a pledge that thorough-going reform would not be shirked by the Whigs, now in office for the first time for twenty years. And it was to his son-in-law that Lord Grey confided the task of preparing a scheme to serve as the basis of the proposed legislation. Full justice has not generally been done to the leading part played by Lord Durham in preparing the great Reform Act. He was the chief author of the proposals which, after being defeated in 1831, became law with little alteration in 1832. He was chairman of the famous committee of four, which met at his house in Cleveland Row and drew up the scheme submitted by the government to parliament. His colleagues, who were appointed rather as his assistants than as his equals, were Lord John Russell, Sir James Graham and Lord Duncannon; and it was Durham who selected Lord John Russell, not then in the cabinet, to introduce the bill in the House of Commons; a selection that was hotly opposed by Brougham, whose later vindictive animosity against Durham is to be traced to his having been passed over in the selection of the committee of four. Durham was present with Grey at an audience of the king which led to the sudden dissolution of parliament in March 1831; and when the deadlock between the two Houses occurred over the second Reform Bill, he was the most eager in pressing on the prime minister the necessity for a creation of peers to overcome the resistance of the house of Lords.

After the passing of the Reform Act, Durham, whose health was bad and who had suffered the loss of two of his children, accepted a special and difficult diplomatic mission to Russia, which he carried out with much tact and ability, though without accomplishing its main purpose. On his return he resigned office in March 1833, ostensibly for reasons of health, but in reality owing to his disagreement with the government’s Irish policy as conducted by Lord Stanley; in the same month he was created earl of Durham and Viscount Lambton. His advanced opinions, in the assertion of which he was too little disposed to consider the convictions of others, gradually alienated the more moderate of his late colleagues, such as Melbourne and Palmerston, and even Lord Grey often found his son-in-law intractable and self-assertive; but the growing hostility of the treacherous Brougham was mainly due to Durham’s undoubted popularity in the country, where he was regarded by many, including J.S. Mill, as Grey’s probable successor in the leadership of the Liberal party. Durham was at this time courted by the youthful Disraeli, who, when Melbourne became prime minister in succession to Grey in 1834, declared that the Whigs could not exist as a party without Lord Durham. Brougham’s animosity became undisguised at the great banquet given to Lord Grey at Edinburgh in September 1834, where he made a venomous attack on Durham, repeated shortly afterwards at Salisbury, and anonymously in the Edinburgh Review. On the other hand the strength of Durham’s position in the country was shown on the occasion of his visit to Glasgow in October to receive the freedom of the city, when a concourse of more than a hundred thousand persons assembled to hear him speak at Glasgow Green, and where he replied to Brougham’s attacks at a great banquet held in his honour. Brougham had over-reached himself; and although Durham was no favourite with William IV., the king’s disgust with the lord chancellor was one of the principal reasons for his summary dismissal of the Whig ministry in 1834. When Melbourne returned to power after Peel’s short administration, Durham’s radicalism and impatient temper excluded him from the cabinet; and again in 1837, on his return from an appointment as ambassador extraordinary in St Petersburg (1835-1837), when there was some idea of his joining the ministry, Lord John Russell wrote: “Everybody, after the experience we have had, must doubt whether there can be peace or harmony in a cabinet of which Lord Durham is a member.”

In July 1837 he resisted the entreaty of Lord Melbourne that he should undertake the government of Canada, where the condition of affairs had become alarming; but a few months later, giving way to the urgent insistence of the prime minister who promised him “the firmest and most unflinching support” of the government, he accepted the post of governor-general and lord high commissioner, with the almost dictatorial powers conferred on him by an act passed in February 1838, by which the constitution of Lower Canada was suspended for two years. Having secured the services of Charles Buller (q.v.) as first secretary, and having with more doubtful wisdom appointed Thomas Turton and Edward Gibbon Wakefield (q.v.) to be his unofficial assistants, Durham arrived at Quebec on the 28th of May 1838. Papineau’s rebellion had been quelled, but the French Canadians were sullen, the attitude of the United States equivocal, and the general situation dangerous, especially in the Lower Province where government was practically in abeyance. Durham at once issued a conciliatory proclamation. His next step was to dismiss the executive council of his predecessor and to appoint a new one consisting of men uncommitted to any existing faction, a step much criticized at home but generally commended on the spot. On the 28th of June, the day of Queen Victoria’s coronation, he issued a proclamation of amnesty, from the benefit of which eight persons only of those who had taken part in the rebellion were excepted; while an accompanying ordinance provided for the transference of these eight excepted persons from Montreal to Bermuda, where they were to be imprisoned without trial. Papineau and fifteen other fugitives were forbidden on pain of death to return to Canada. In a letter of congratulation to the queen, Durham took credit for the clemency of his policy towards the rebels, and it was defended on the same ground by Charles Buller and by public opinion in the colony.

In England, however, as soon as these proceedings became known, Brougham seized the opportunity for venting his malice against both Durham and the ministry. He had already raised objections to the appointment of Turton and Wakefield; he now attacked the ordinance in the House of Lords, challenging the legality of the clause transporting prisoners to Bermuda, where Durham had no jurisdiction. Melbourne and his colleagues, with the honourable exception of Lord John Russell, made little effort to defend the public servant to whom they had promised “the most unflinching support”; and, although both the prime minister and the colonial secretary when first fully informed of the governor-general’s proceedings had hastened to assure him of their “entire approval,” three weeks later, cowed by Brougham’s malignant invective, they disallowed the ordinance, and carried an Act of Indemnity the terms of which were insulting to Durham. The latter immediately resigned; but before returning to England he put himself in the wrong by issuing a proclamation in which he not only justified his own conduct in detail, but made public complaint of his grievances against the ministers of the Crown, a step that alienated much sympathy which his unjust treatment by the government would otherwise have called forth, though it was defended by men like Charles Buller and J.S. Mill. The usual official honours given to a returning plenipotentiary were not accorded to Durham on his arrival at Plymouth on the 30th of November 1838, but the populace received him with acclamation. He immediately set about preparing his memorable “Report on the Affairs of British North America,” which was laid before parliament on the 31st of January 1839. This report, one of the greatest state papers in the English language, laid down the principles, then unrecognized, which have guided British colonial policy ever since. It was not written or composed by Charles Buller, as Brougham was the first to suggest, and the credit for the statesmanship it exhibits is Lord Durham’s alone, though he warmly acknowledged the assistance he had derived from Buller, Wakefield and others in preparing the materials on which it was based. With regard to the future government of British North America, Durham had at first inclined towards a federation of all the colonies on that continent, and this aim, afterwards achieved, remained in his eyes an ideal to be striven for; but as a more immediately practical policy he advised the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada, his avowed aim being to organize a single state in which the British inhabitants would be in a majority. He further urged the creation of an executive council responsible to the colonial legislature; he advised state-aided emigration on the broadest possible scale, and the formation of an intercolonial railway for the development of the whole country. Meantime Durham, who almost alone among the statesmen of his time saw the importance of imperial expansion, interested himself in the emigration schemes of Gibbon Wakefield (q.v.); he became chairman of the New Zealand Company, and was thus concerned in the enterprise which forestalled France in asserting sovereignty over the islands of New Zealand in September 1839. His health, however, had long been failing, and he died at Cowes on the 28th of July 1840, just five days after the royal assent had been given to the bill giving effect to his project for uniting Upper and Lower Canada.

Lord Durham filled a larger place in the eyes of his contemporaries than many statesmen who have been better remembered. He was in his lifetime regarded as a great popular leader; and his accession to supreme political power was for some years considered probable by many; his opinions were, however, too extreme to command the confidence of any considerable party in parliament before 1840. That Brougham hated him and Melbourne feared him, is a tribute to his abilities; and in the first Reform Act, of which he was the chief author, and in the famous Report on the principles of colonial policy, he left an indelible mark on English history. His personal defects of character did much to mar the success of a career, which, it must be remembered, terminated at the age of forty-eight. He was impatient, hot-tempered, hypersensitive to criticism, vain and prone to take offence at fancied slights; but he was also generous and unvindictive, and while personally ambitious his care for the public interest was genuine and untiring.

By his first wife Durham had three daughters; by his second, who was a lady of the bedchamber to Queen Victoria but resigned on her husband’s return from Canada, he had two sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Charles William, the “Master Lambton” of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s celebrated picture, died in 1831; the second, George Frederick d’Arcy (1828-1879), succeeded his father as 2nd earl of Durham. The latter’s son, John George Lambton (b. 1855), became 3rd earl in 1879.

See Stuart J. Reid, Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham (2 vols., London, 1906); The Greville Memoirs, parts i. and ii. (London, 1874-1887); Richard, duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of William IV. and Victoria (2 vols., London, 1861); William Harris, History of the Radical Party in Parliament (London, 1885); Harriet Martineau, History of the Thirty Years’ Peace (4 vols., London, 1877); William Kingsford, History of Canada, vol. x. (10 vols., Toronto, 1887-1898), H.E. Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy (London, 1897).

(R. J. M.)

DURHAM, a northern county of England, bounded N. by Northumberland, E. by the North Sea, S. by Yorkshire, and W. by Westmorland and Cumberland. Its area is 1014.6 sq. m. It is wholly on the eastern slope, the western angle being occupied by spurs of the Pennine chain, exceeding 2300 ft. in height at some points on the Cumberland border. West of a line from Barnard Castle by Wolsingham to the neighbourhood of Consett the whole of the land, excepting narrow valleys, lies at elevations exceeding 1000 ft. This area represents roughly one quarter of the total. The principal rivers rising in these hills are the Derwent, tributary to the Tyne, forming part of the county boundary with Northumberland, the Wear and the Tees, which forms almost the whole of the boundary with Westmorland and Yorkshire. The dales traversed by these rivers in their upper parts, though sufficiently strongly contrasted with the dark, barren moors surrounding them, yet partake of somewhat the same wild character. Lower down, however, are beautiful and fertile valleys, the main rivers flowing between steep, well-wooded banks; while the lesser streams of the coastal district have carved out denes or ravines on the steep flanks of which vegetation is luxuriant. Castle Eden Dene, 7 m. N.W. of Hartlepool, is famous for its beautiful trees and wild flowers. The coastward slope is fairly steep in the northern half of the county, but it is steady, and the coast itself has no striking scenic features, save where the action of the waves upon the magnesian limestone has separated great masses, leaving towering fragments standing, and fretting the face of the rock with caverns and arches. The cluster of rocks named the Black Halls, 6 m. N.W. of Hartlepool, best exhibits these features. Other natural phenomena include the Linnkirk caves near Stanhope in Weardale in which numerous fossils and bones, with evidence of habitation by man, have been discovered; and the Hell Kettles, S. of Darlington, near the junction of the Tees and the Skerne, four cavities filled with water, reputed to be unfathomable, and measuring from 80 to 120 ft. in diameter. The water is sulphurous.

Except in the moorlands of the west only a few scraps of the county have been left in their natural state; but these portions are of great interest to the student of natural history. The ballast-hills at Shields, Jarrow and Hartlepool, formed by the discharge of material from ships arriving in ballast from foreign countries, are overgrown with aliens, many of which are elsewhere unknown in this country. Nearly fifty different species have been found. Stockton was almost the last retreat in England of the native black rat. Of the former abundance of deer, wild ox and boar every peat bog testifies by its remains; the boar appears to have existed in the reign of Henry VIII., and records of red deer in the county may be traced down to the middle of the 18th century.

Geology.—The uplift of the Pennine hills causes nearly all the stratified rocks of Durham to dip towards the east or south-east. Thus the oldest rocks are to be found in the west, while in passing eastward younger rocks are continually met. In the hilly district of Weardale and Teesdale the Carboniferous Limestone series prevails; this is a succession of thick beds of limestone with intervening sandstones and shales. Some of the calcareous beds are highly fossiliferous; those at Frosterley near Stanhope are full of the remains of corals and the stone is polished as a marble. Much of the higher ground in the west is capped by Millstone Grit, as at Muggleswick and Walsingham commons. The outcrop of this formation broadens eastward until it is covered by the Durham coalfield which occupies the centre of the county from Newcastle and South Shields to Barnard Castle. The Coal Measures are about 2000 ft. thick and contain upwards of 100 seams of coal, including many of great importance—the Brockwell coal, Low Main coal and High Main coal are some of the well-known seams. Fireclays of great value are obtained from beneath many of the coal seams. Apart from the coals, the Coal Measures are made up of beds of sandstone and shale, the former called “post” and the latter “plate” by the local miners. Permian magnesian limestone succeeds the Coal Measures on the east, it reaches from the Tees to South Shields in a broad tract and occupies the coast between that town and Hartlepool. Remarkable concretionary forms are found in the Fulwell Quarries simulating honeycomb and coral structures. The stone is quarried at Marsden for the manufacture of Epsom salts; it is also used for lime-making and building. Fish remains are not uncommon in it. The sandstones and marls seen between the magnesian limestone and the Coal Measures at South Shields, Newbottle and several miles farther south are usually classed as Permian, but they may possibly prove to belong to the lower series. In the south-east corner of the county, by Darlington, Stockton and Seaton Carew, the low ground is made of Triassic rocks, red marls and sandstones with beds of gypsum and rock salt. Coal Measures undoubtedly underlie the Permian and Triassic strata. Normal faults traverse the district, mostly from east to west. Great dykes and sills of basalt lie in the Tees valley above Middleton and one, the Great Whin Sill, may be followed in an easterly direction for over 120 m. The Cockfield dyke and Little Whin Sill are similar intrusions of basalt. Lead mines have been extensively worked in the limestone districts of Weardale and Teesdale; the limestone itself is quarried on a large scale for fluxing in the ironworks. Glacial deposits obscure the older rocks over much of the county, they contain travelled stones from the Pennines and Cheviots. Submerged forests appear off the coast at West Hartlepool and other points. A small patch of Silurian occurs near Cronkley on the Tees; here slate pencils were formerly made.

Agriculture.—Near the river Tees, and in some places bordering on the other rivers, the soil is loam or a rich clay. At a farther distance from these rivers it is of inferior quality, with patches of gravel interspersed. The hills east of the line from Barnard Castle to Consett are covered with a dry loam, the fertility of which varies with its depth. West of the line the summits and flanks of the hills are in great part waste moorland. Only some two-thirds of the total area of the county are under cultivation, and nearly two-thirds of this are in permanent pasture. There are also nearly 60,000 acres of hill-pasture. Of the diminished area under corn crops oats occupy more than one-half, and barley much exceeds wheat. Nearly two-thirds of the average under green crops are occupied by turnips, as many cattle are raised and have a long-standing reputation. The cows are especially good yielders of milk. The sheep are also highly esteemed, particularly the Teesdale breed. Those of Weardale are small, but their mutton is finely flavoured.

Mining.—The mountain limestone contains veins of lead ore and zinc ore. The beds of coal in the Coal Measures have long been a source of enormous wealth. The mines are among the most extensive and productive in the kingdom. At Sunderland the coal trade furnishes employment for hundreds of vessels, independently of the “keels” or lighters which convey the coal from the termini of the railways and tramways to the ships. The seams worked extend horizontally for many miles, and are from 20 to 100 fathoms beneath the surface. The Frosterley marble has been quarried for many centuries near Stanhope for decorative purposes, in Durham cathedral and elsewhere taking the place of Purbeck marble, while in modern houses it is used chiefly for chimney-pieces. Ironstone is worked in the neighbourhood of Whickham and elsewhere. Excellent slate is quarried at several places. The neighbourhood of Wolsingham abounds in fine millstones. The Newcastle grindstones are procured at Gateshead Fell; and firestone for building ovens, furnaces and the like is obtained in various parts of Durham, and exported in considerable quantity.

Other Industries.—The manufacturing industries are extensive, and all are founded upon the presence of coal, of which, moreover, large quantities are exported. The industrial and mining districts may be taken to lie almost wholly east of a line from Darlington through Bishop Auckland to Consett. Textile industries are not carried on to any great extent, but a large number of hands are employed in the manufacture of machines, appliances, conveyances, tools, &c. Of this manufacture the branch of shipbuilding stands first; the yards on the Tyne are second only to those on the Clyde, and the industry is prosecuted also at Sunderland, the Hartlepools and Stockton-on-Tees. The founding and conversion of metal stands next in importance; and other industries include the manufacture of paper, chemicals (chiefly on the Tyne), glass and bottles and earthenware (at Gateshead and Sunderland). The output of limestone is greater than that of any other county in the United Kingdom. As regards iron, the presence of the coal and the proximity of the Cleveland iron district of North Yorkshire enable the county to produce over one million tons of pig-iron annually, though the output of iron from within the county itself is inconsiderable. There is a large production of salt from brine. The sea fisheries of Sunderland and Hartlepool are valuable.

Communications.—Railway communication is provided entirely by the North Eastern company. The main line runs northward through Darlington, Durham and Gateshead, and there are a large number of branches through the mining and industrial districts, while the company also owns some of the docks. From Stockton to Darlington ran the railway engineered by George Stephenson and opened in 1825. The chief ports of Durham are Jarrow and South Shields on the Tyne, Sunderland at the mouth of the Wear, Seaham Harbour, Hartlepool East and West and Stockton-on-Tees.

Administration and Population.—Durham is one of the Counties Palatine, the others being Lancashire and Cheshire. The area of the ancient county is 649,352 acres, and that of the administrative county 649,244 acres. There were formerly three outlying portions of the county, known as North Durham (including Norhamshire and Islandshire), Bedlingtonshire and Crayke. These were attached to the county as having formed parcels of the ancient “patrimony of St Cuthbert,” of which the land between Tyne and Tees was the chief portion. The population in 1891 was 1,016,454 and in 1901 1,187,361. The birth-rate is much above, the death-rate also above, but the percentage of illegitimacy considerably below, the average. The county is divided into 4 wards. The following are municipal boroughs: Darlington (pop. 44,511), Durham, city (14,679), Gateshead, county borough (109,888), Hartlepool (22,723), Jarrow (34,295), South Shields, county borough (97,263), Stockton-on-Tees (51,478), Sunderland, county borough (146,077), West Hartlepool (62,627). The other urban districts may be distributed so as to indicate roughly the most populous and industrial districts:

1. In the Tyne district (where Gateshead, Jarrow and South Shields are the chief centres)—Blaydon (19,623), Felling (22,467), Hebburn (20,901), Ryton (8452), Whickham (12,852).

2. North-western district—Annfield Plain (12,481), Benfieldside (7457), Consett (9694), Leadgate (4657), Tanfield (8276), Stanley (13,554).

3. Durham and Bishop Auckland district (continuation south of the preceding)—Bishop Auckland (11,969), Brandon and Byshottles (15,573), Crook (11,471), Shildon and East Thickley (11,759), Spennymoor (16,665), Tow Law (4371), Willington (7887).

4. Durham and Sunderland district (N.E. of preceding)—Hetton (13,673), Houghton-le-Spring (7858), Seaham Harbour (10,163), Southwick-on-Wear (12,643). The township of Chester-le-Street (11,753) is also in this district.

The only other urban districts are Barnard Castle (4421) in Teesdale and Stanhope (1964) in Weardale. Durham is in the north-eastern circuit, and assizes are held at Durham. It has one court of quarter sessions and is divided into 16 petty sessional divisions. All the boroughs have separate commissions of the peace. The ancient county, which is in the diocese of Durham, excepting part of one parish in that of York, contains 243 ecclesiastical parishes wholly or in part. There are 288 civil parishes. The county is divided into eight parliamentary divisions, each returning one member—Jarrow, Chester-le-Street, Houghton-le-Spring, Mid, North-west, Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, South-east. It also includes the parliamentary borough of Sunderland, returning two members, and the boroughs of Darlington, Durham, Gateshead, Hartlepool, South Shields and Stockton-on-Tees, returning one member each. Among educational establishments there may be mentioned the university and the grammar school in the city of Durham, and the Roman Catholic college of Ushaw near Durham.

History.—After the death of Ida in the 6th century the kingdom of Northumbria was divided into the two states of Bernicia and Deira, separated from each other by the Tees, the latter including the district afterwards known as Durham. The post-conquest palatinate arose by a process of slow growth from the grant of land made by Egfrith to St Cuthbert on his election to the see of Lindisfarne in 684. On the transference of the see to Chester-le-Street in the 9th century, Guthred the Dane endowed it with the whole district between the Tyne and the Wear, stretching west as far as Watling Street, a grant confirmed by Alfred; and when in 995 the see was finally established at Durham, the endowment was again largely enriched by various donations. Durham continued, however, to form part of the earldom of Northumbria, and not until after the purchase of the earldom by Bishop Walcher in 1075 did the bishops begin to exercise regal rights in their territory. The term palatinus is applied to the bishop in 1293, and from the 13th century onwards the bishops frequently claim such rights in their lands as the king enjoys in his kingdom. At the time of the Conquest the bishop’s possessions included nearly all the district between the Tees and the Tyne, except Sadberge, and also the outlying districts of Bedlingtonshire, Norhamshire, Islandshire and Crayke, together with Hexhamshire, the city of Carlisle, and part of Teviotdale. Henry I. deprived the bishopric of the last three, but in compensation made over to it the vills of Burdon, Aycliffe and Carlton, hitherto included in the earldom of Northumberland. The wapentake of Sadberge also formed part of the earldom of Northumberland; it was purchased for the see by Bishop Pudsey in 1189, but continued an independent franchise, with a separate sheriff, coroner and court of pleas. In the 14th century Sadberge was included in Stockton ward and was itself divided into two wards. The division into the four wards of Chester-le-Street, Darlington, Easington and Stockton existed in the 13th century, each ward having its own coroner and a three-weekly court corresponding to the hundred court. The diocese was divided into the archdeaconries of Durham and Northumberland. The former is mentioned in 1072, and in 1291 included the deaneries of Chester-le-Street, Auckland, Lanchester and Darlington.

Until the 15th century the most important administrative officer in the palatinate was the steward. Other officers were the sheriff, the coroners, the chamberlain and the chancellor. The palatine exchequer was organized in the 12th century. The palatine assembly represented the whole county, and dealt chiefly with fiscal questions. The bishop’s council, consisting of the clergy, the sheriff and the barons, regulated the judicial affairs, and later produced the Chancery and the courts of Admiralty and Marshalsea. The prior of Durham ranked first among the bishop’s barons. He had his own court, and almost exclusive jurisdiction over his men. The quo warranto proceedings of 1293 exhibit twelve lords enjoying more or less extensive franchises under the bishop. The repeated efforts of the crown to check the powers of the palatinate bishops culminated in 1536 in the Act of Resumption, which deprived the bishop of the power to pardon offences against the law or to appoint judicial officers; indictments and legal processes were in future to run in the name of the king, and offences to be described as against the peace of the king, not against that of the bishop. In 1596 restrictions were imposed on the powers of the chancery, and in 1646 the palatinate was formally abolished. It was revived, however, after the Restoration, and continued with much the same power until the act of 1836, which provided that the palatine jurisdiction should in future be vested in the crown. There were ten palatinate barons in the 12th century, the most important being the Hiltons of Hilton Castle, the Bulmers of Brancepeth, the Conyers of Sockburne, the Hansards of Evenwood, and the Lumleys of Lumley Castle. The Nevilles owned large estates in the county; Raby Castle, their principal seat, was built by John de Neville in 1377. Owing to its isolated position the palatinate took little part or interest in any of the great rebellions of the Norman and Plantagenet period. During the Wars of the Roses Henry VI. passed through Durham, and the novelty of a royal visit procured him an enthusiastic reception. On the outbreak of the Great Rebellion Durham inclined to support the cause of the parliament, and in 1640 the high sheriff of the palatinate guaranteed to supply the Scottish army with provisions during their stay in the county. In 1642 the earl of Newcastle formed the western counties into an association for the king’s service, but in 1644 the palatinate was again overrun by the Scottish army, and after the battle of Marston Moor fell entirely into the hands of the parliament.

Durham has never possessed any manufactures of importance, and the economic history of the county centres round the growth of the mining industry, which employed almost the whole of the non-agricultural population. Stephen possessed a mine in Durham which he granted to Bishop Pudsey, and in the same century colliers are mentioned at Coundon, Bishopwearmouth and Sedgefield. Cockfield Fell was one of the earliest Landsale collieries in Durham. Edward III. issued an order allowing coal dug at Newcastle to be taken across the Tyne, and Richard II. granted to the inhabitants of Durham licence to export the produce of the mines, without paying dues to the corporation of Newcastle. Among other early industries lead-mining was carried on in the western part of the county, and mustard was extensively cultivated. Gateshead had a considerable tanning trade and shipbuilding was carried on at Jarrow.

In 1614 a bill was introduced in parliament for securing representation to the county and city of Durham and the borough of Barnard Castle. The movement was strongly opposed by the bishop, as an infringement of his palatinate rights, and the county was first summoned to return members to parliament in 1654. After the Restoration the county and city returned two members each. By the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned two members for two divisions, and the boroughs of Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland acquired representation. The boroughs of Darlington, Stockton and Hartlepool returned one member each from 1868 until the Redistribution Act of 1885.

Antiquities.—To the Anglo-Saxon period are to be referred portions of the churches of Monk Wearmouth (Sunderland), Jarrow, Escomb near Bishop Auckland, and numerous sculptured crosses, two of which are in situ at Aycliffe. The best remains of the Norman period are to be found in Durham cathedral and in the castle, also in some few parish churches, as at Pittington and Norton near Stockton. Of the Early English period are the eastern portion of the cathedral, the fine churches of Darlington, Hartlepool, and St Andrew, Auckland, Sedgefield, and portions of a few other churches. The Decorated and Perpendicular periods are very scantily represented, on account, as is supposed, of the incessant wars between England and Scotland in the 14th and 15th centuries. The principal monastic remains, besides those surrounding Durham cathedral, are those of its subordinate house or “cell,” Finchale Priory, beautifully situated by the Wear. The most interesting castles are those of Durham, Raby, Brancepeth and Barnard. There are ruins of castelets or peel-towers at Dalden, Ludworth and Langley Dale. The hospitals of Sherburn, Greatham and Kepyer, founded by early bishops of Durham, retain but few ancient features.

See W. Hutchinson, History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (3 vols., Newcastle, 1785-1794); R. Surtees, History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (4 vols., London, 1816-1840); B. Bartlet, The Bishoprick Garland, Collection of Legends, Songs, Ballads ... of Durham (London, 1834); J. Raine, History and Antiquities of North Durham (London, 1852); Perry and Herman, Illustrations of the Medieval Antiquities of the County of Durham (Oxford, 1867); G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham (New York, &c., 1900); Victoria County History, Durham. See also the Surtees Society’s Publications, and Transactions of the Architectural Society of Durham and Northumberland.

DURHAM, a city and municipal and parliamentary borough, and the county town of Durham, England, 256 m. N. by W. from London, on the North Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 14,679. The nucleus of the site is a narrow, bold peninsula formed by a bend of the river Wear, on which stand the cathedral and the castle. The city, however, extends both E. and W. of this.

The position of the cathedral of St Cuthbert, its west end rising immediately from the steep wooded bank of the river, is surpassed in beauty by no other English cathedral. Its foundation arose from the fact that here, after wandering far over the north of England, the monks of Lindisfarne rested with the body of St Cuthbert, which they had removed from its tomb in fear of Danish invaders. This was in 995. Soon afterwards a church was built by Bishop Ealdhune, and the see was removed hither from Lindisfarne. The peninsula was called Dunholme (Hill Island), which in Norman times was softened to Duresme, whence Durham. It is said that the monks of Lindisfarne, knowing the name of the place where they should find retreat, but ignorant of its situation, were guided hither by a woman searching for her cow, and the bas-relief of a cow on the north wall of the church commemorates this incident. In 1093 Ealdhune’s church was rebuilt by Bishop Carilef, who changed the early establishment of married priests into a Benedictine abbey. The grand Norman building in which his designs were carried out remains with numerous additions. The stone-vaulting is particularly noteworthy. The choir contains the earliest work, but Carilef’s eastern apses made way for the exquisite chapel of the Nine Altars, with its rose windows and beautiful carving, of late Early English workmanship. The nave is massive Norman, with round pillars ornamented with surface-carving of various patterns. The western towers are Norman with an Early English superstructure. The famous Galilee chapel, of the finest late Norman work, projects from the west end. The central tower is a lofty and graceful Perpendicular structure. Other details especially worthy of notice are the altar screen of c. 1380, and the curious semi-classical font-cover of the 17th century. There is a fine sanctuary-knocker on the north door. The cloisters are of the early part of the 15th century. The chapter-house is a modern restoration of the original Norman structure, a very fine example, which was destroyed by James Wyatt c. 1796, in the course of restoration of which much was ill-judged. The cathedral library, formerly the dormitory and refectories of the abbey, contains a number of curious and interesting printed books and MSS., and the portable altar, vestments and other relics found in St Cuthbert’s grave. The Galilee contains the supposed remains of the Venerable Bede. The total length of the cathedral within is 496½ ft., the greatest height within (except the lantern) 74½ ft., and the height of the central tower 218 ft. The diocese of Durham covers the whole county excepting a small fragment, and also very small parts of Northumberland and Yorkshire.

The naturally strong position selected for the resting-place of St Cuthbert’s remains was possibly artificially fortified also, but it was not until 1072 that William the Conqueror caused the erection of a castle to the north of the cathedral across the neck of the peninsula. Of this there remain a beautiful crypt-chapel, and a few details incorporated in later work. Other interesting portions are the Norman gallery, with its fine arcade, Bishop Hatfield’s hall of c. 1350, a reconstruction of the previous Norman one by Bishop Pudsey, and the Black Staircase of fine woodwork of the 17th century. The keep is a modern reconstruction. The castle, with the exception of some apartments used by the judges of assize, is appropriated to the uses of Durham University. On the peninsula are also the churches of St Mary le Bow in the North Bailey and St Mary the Less, the one a 17th-century building on a very ancient site, possibly that on which the first church rose over St Cuthbert’s remains; the other possessing slight traces of Norman work, but almost completely modernized. Of other churches in Durham, the site of St Oswald is apparently pre-Norman, and the building contains Norman work of Bishop Pudsey, also some fine early 15th-century woodwork. St Margaret’s and St Giles’ churches show work of the same period, and the second of these has earlier portions.

Several of the streets of Durham preserve an appearance of antiquity. Three of the bridges crossing the Wear are old, that of Framwellgate having been built in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 15th. In the neighbourhood of the city certain sites are of interest as adding detail to its history. To the south on Maiden Hill there is an encampment, occupied, if not constructed, by the Romans. Immediately W. of Durham is Neville’s Cross, of which little remains. The battle of Neville’s Cross was fought in 1346, resulting in the defeat of the invading Scots by the English under Lord Neville and Henry Percy. The Scots had encamped at Beaurepaire or Bearpark, where a few ruins mark the site of the county residence of the priors of Durham, which had suffered from previous invaders. On the Wear below Durham is the priory of Finchale (1196), of which there are considerable remains of Early English date and later, but in the main Decorated. The valley of the Wear in the neighbourhood of Durham is well wooded and picturesque, but there are numerous collieries on the uplands above it, and the beauty of the county is marred.

Among educational establishments in Durham the university stands first. The earliest connexion of the ecclesiastical foundation at Durham with an actual educational foundation was made by Prior Richard de Hoton (1290-1308), who erected a hall in Oxford for students from Durham, who had previously enjoyed no such provision. In 1380 Bishop Hatfield refounded this hall as Durham College, which became Trinity College (see Oxford) on a new foundation (1555) when the possessions of the abbey of Durham had been surrendered in 1540, after which Durham College survived as a secular foundation only for a few years. Henry VIII. had the unfulfilled intention of founding a college in Durham, and a similar attempt failed in the time of the Commonwealth. In 1831 the scheme for a college was projected by the chapter; an act of 1832 specified the foundation as a university, and in Michaelmas 1833 its doors were opened. The first warden, and a prime mover in the scheme of foundation, was Archdeacon Charles Thorp (d. 1862). In 1837 the university received its charter from William IV. The dean and chapter of the cathedral are governors, and the bishop of Durham is visitor, but the active management is in the hands of the warden, senate and convocation. The system and life of the university are broadly similar to those of the greater universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Proctorial administration is carried on by two proctors annually nominated by the warden. Among the various residential divisions of the university may be mentioned Bishop Hatfield’s Hall (1846), which, through its endowment, by means of such methods of economy as provision for all meals in common, permits men of limited means to become students. The degree for bachelor of arts is awarded after two public examinations, and may be taken in two years, with a total of six months’ residence in each year. Special examinations are provided for candidates who seek honours, and those who obtain honours are admissible, after a certain period, to the mastership of arts without further examination, but in other cases further examination must have been taken, or an essay presented as a qualification for this degree. A theological course is provided for bachelors of the university, those who have passed a similar course elsewhere, or non-graduates aged nineteen who have passed a certain standard of examination. Instruction in civil engineering and mining was established as early as 1837, but was subsequently given up; and in 1871 the university and the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers co-operated to found the college of physical science at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which provides such instruction and was incorporated with the university in 1874. The college of medicine at Newcastle has been in connexion with Durham University since 1852, and the professors there are professors of the university. In 1895 degrees for women were established, and in 1889 a hostel was opened for the accommodation of women, who may take any course of instruction except the theological. In 1889 musical degrees were instituted, and a professorship was founded in 1897. Among other subjects may be mentioned the granting of degrees in hygiene, and of diplomas in public health and education (see J.T. Fowler, Durham University, uniform with series of College Histories; London, 1904).

The grammar school was refounded by Henry VIII. out of the monastic school. It is a flourishing institution on the lines of the public schools, and has “king’s scholarships” tenable in the school, and scholarships and exhibitions tenable at the universities. There are also a diocesan training college for schoolmasters and mistresses, and a high school for girls; and 4 m. W. of the city is the great Roman Catholic College of St Cuthbert, Ushaw, the representative of the old college at Douai. Here are preserved the magnificent natural history collections of Charles Waterton. Other buildings worthy of notice in Durham are the town-hall, a 16th-century building reconstructed in 1851, the police station, and the guildhall, the shire hall and county buildings, and the county hospital. There are ironworks and manufactures of hosiery, carpets and mustard in the city. The parliamentary borough returns one member. The corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1070 acres.

History of the City.—The foundation of the city followed on that of the church by the monks of Lindisfarne at the close of the 10th century. The history of the city is closely associated with that of the palatinate of Durham. The bishop of Durham among other privileges claimed a mint in the city, which, according to Boldon Book, rendered ten marks yearly until its value was reduced by that established by Henry II. at Newcastle, and it was temporarily abolished by the same king. The earliest charter, dated 1179 or 1180, is a grant of exemption from toll merchet and heriot made by Bishop Hugh Pudsey and confirmed by Pope Alexander. Before that time, however, the monks had a little borough at Elvet, which is divided from Durham by the Wear and afterwards became part of the city. In 1183 the city was at farm and rendered sixty marks. It was at first governed by a bailiff appointed by the bishop, but in 1565 Bishop Pilkington ordained that the government should consist, in addition to the bailiff, of one alderman and twelve assistants, the latter to continue in office for life, and the former to be chosen every year from among their number. This form of government was replaced in 1602, under the charter of Bishop Matthew, by that of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 24 burgesses, the aldermen and burgesses forming a common council and electing a mayor every year from among the aldermen. This was confirmed by James I., but in 1684 the corporation were obliged to resign their charters to Bishop Crew, who granted them a new one, probably reserving to himself a right of veto on the election of the mayor and aldermen. At the time of the Revolution, however, Bishop Matthew’s charter was revived, and continued to be the governing charter of the city until 1770, when, owing to dissensions as to the election of the common council, the number of aldermen was reduced to four and the charter became void. No mayor or aldermen were elected for ten years, but in 1780 Bishop Egerton, on the petition of the burgesses, granted them a new charter, which was practically a confirmation of that of 1602, and remained in force until the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. Being within the county palatine, the city of Durham sent no members to parliament, until, after several attempts beginning in 1614, it was enabled by an act of 1673 to return two members, which it continued to do until 1885, when by the Redistribution of Seats Act the number was reduced to one.

The corporation of Durham claim their fair and market rights under Bishop Pudsey’s charter of 1179, confirmed in 1565, as a weekly market on Saturday and three yearly fairs on the feasts of St Cuthbert in September and March and on Whit Monday, each continuing for two days. In 1610 the bishop of Durham brought a suit in chancery against the burgesses and recovered from them the markets and fairs, which he afterwards leased to the corporation for a rent of £20 yearly until they were purchased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1860. Durham has never been noted for any particular trade; and the attempts to introduce the manufacture of cloth and wool in the 17th and 18th centuries were failures. The manufacture of carpets was begun in 1814.

DURHAM, a city and the county-seat of Durham county, North Carolina, U.S.A., in a township of the same name, 25 m. N.W. of Raleigh. Pop. (1900) 6679, of whom 2241 were negroes; (1910) 18,241; of the township (1900) 19,055; (1910) 27,606. Adjacent to the city and also in the township are East Durham and West Durham (both unincorporated), which industrially are virtually part of the city. Durham is served by the Southern, the Seaboard Air Line, the Norfolk & Western, and the Durham & Southern railways, the last a short line connecting at Apex and Dunn, N.C., respectively with the main line of the Seaboard and the Atlantic Coast Line railways. Durham is nearly surrounded by hills. Its streets are shaded by elms. The city is the seat of Trinity College (Methodist Episcopal, South), opened in 1851 as a normal college, growing out of an academy called Union Institute, which was established in the north-western part of Randolph county in 1838 and was incorporated in 1841. In 1852 the college was empowered to grant degrees; in 1856 it became the property of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; in 1859 it received its present name; and in 1892 it was removed to a park near Durham, included in 1901 in the corporate limits of the city. A new charter was adopted in 1903, and a law school was organized in 1904. The college has received many gifts from the Duke family of Durham. In 1908 its endowment and property were valued at about $1,198,400, and the number of its students was 288. Although not officially connected with the college, the South Atlantic Quarterly, founded by a patriotic society of the college and published at Durham since 1902, is controlled and edited by members of the college faculty. The North Carolina Journal of Education and the Papers of the Trinity College Historical Society also are edited by members of the college faculty. The Trinity Park school is preparatory for the college. Near the city are Watts hospital (for whites) and Lincoln hospital (for negroes). Durham’s chief economic interest is in the manufacture of granulated smoking tobacco, for which it became noted after the Civil War. In the city are two large factories and store houses of the American Tobacco Company. The tobacco industry was founded by W.T. Blackwell (1839-1904) and Washington Duke (1820-1905). The city also manufactures cigars, cigarettes, snuff, a fertilizer having tobacco dust as the base, cotton goods, lumber, window sashes, blinds, drugs and hosiery. Durham has a large trade with the surrounding region. The town of Durham was incorporated in 1869, and became the county-seat of the newly-erected county in 1881, and in 1899 was chartered as a city. Its growth is due to the tobacco and cotton industries. In the Bennett house, at Durham Station, near the city, General J.E. Johnston surrendered on the 26th of April 1865 the Confederate army under his command to General W.T. Sherman.

DURIAN (Malay, duri, a thorn), the fruit of Durio zibethinus, a tree of the natural order Bombaceae, which attains a height of 70 or 80 ft., has oblong, tapering leaves, rounded at the base, and yellowish-green flowers, and bears a general resemblance to the elm. The durio is cultivated in Sumatra, Java, Celebes and the Moluccas, and northwards as far as Mindanao in the Philippines; also in the Malay Peninsula, in Tenasserim, on the Bay of Bengal, to 14° N. lat., and in Siam to the 13th and 14th parallels. The fruit is spherical, and 6 to 8 in. in diameter, approaching the size of a large coco-nut; it has a hard external husk or shell, and is completely armed with strong pyramidal tubercles, meeting one another at the base, and terminating in sharp thorny points; these sometimes inflict severe injuries on persons upon whom the fruit may chance to fall when ripe. On dividing the fruit at the joins of the carpels, where the spines arch a little, it is found to contain five oval cells, each filled with a cream-coloured, glutinous, smooth pulp, in which are embedded from one to five seeds about the size of chestnuts. The pulp and the seeds, which latter are eaten roasted, are the edible parts of the fruit. With regard to the taste of the pulp, A.R. Wallace remarks, “A rich butter-like custard, highly flavoured with almonds, gives the best idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry and other incongruities;... it is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is.” The fruit, especially when not fresh from the tree, has, notwithstanding, a most offensive smell, which has been compared to that of rotten onions or of putrid animal matter. The Dyaks of the Sarawak river in Borneo esteem the durian above all other fruit, eat it unripe both cooked and raw, and salt the pulp for use as a relish with rice.

See Linschoten, Discours of Voyages, bk. i. chap. 57, p. 102, fol. (London, 1598); Bickmore, Travels in the East Indian Archipelago, p. 91 (1868); Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (3rd ed., 1872).

DURIS, of Samos, Greek historian, according to his own account a descendant of Alcibiades, was born about 340 B.C. He must have been born and passed his early years in exile, since from 352 to 324 Samos was occupied by Athenian cleruchs, who had expelled the original inhabitants. He was a pupil of Theophrastus of Eresus, whom he met at Athens. When quite young, he obtained a prize for boxing at the Olympic games; a statue by Hippias was set up in commemoration of his victory (Pausanias vi. 13. 5). He was for some time despot of his native island. Duris was the author of a comprehensive historical work (Ἱστορίαι) on Hellenico-Macedonian history, from the battle of Leuctra (371) down to the death of Lysimachus (281), which was largely used by Diodorus Siculus. Other works by him included a life of Agathocles of Syracuse, the annals (ῶροι) of Samos chronologically arranged according to the lists of the priests of Hera, and a number of treatises on literary and artistic subjects. Ancient authorities do not appear to have held a very high opinion of his merits as a historian. Plutarch (Pericles, 28) expresses doubt as to his trustworthiness, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De compos. verborum, 4) speaks disparagingly of his style, and Photius (cod. 176) regards the arrangement of his work as altogether faulty. Cicero (ad Att. vi. 1) accords him qualified praise as an industrious writer.

Fragments in C.W. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. ii. 446, where the passage of Pausanias referred to above and the date of Duris’s victory at Olympia are discussed.

DÜRKHEIM, a town of Germany, in the Bavarian Palatinate, near the foot of the Hardt Mountains, and at the entrance of the valley of the Isenach, 15 m. N.W. of Spires on the railway Monsheim-Neustadt. Pop. 6300. It possesses two Evangelical churches and one Roman Catholic, a town hall occupying the site of the castle of the princes of Leiningen-Hartenburg, an antiquarian and a scientific society, a public library and a high school. It is well known as a health resort, for the grape cure and for the baths of the brine springs of Philippshalle, in the neighbourhood, which not only supply the bathing establishment, but produce considerable quantities of marketable salt. There is a brisk trade in wine and oil; tobacco, glass and paper are manufactured.

As a dependency of the Benedictine abbey of Limburg, which was built and endowed by Conrad II., Dürkheim or Thurnigheim came into the possession of the counts of Leiningen, who in the 14th century made it the seat of a fortress, and enclosed it with wall and ditch. In the three following centuries it had its full share of the military vicissitudes of the Palatinate; but it was rebuilt after the French invasion of 1689, and greatly fostered by its counts in the beginning of next century. In 1794 its new castle was sacked by the French, and in 1849 it was the scene of a contest between the Prussians and the insurrectionists. The ruins of the Benedictine abbey of Limburg lie about 1 m. S.W. of the town; and in the neighbourhood rises the Kastanienberg, with the ancient rude stone fortification of the Heidenmauer or Heathen’s Wall.

DURLACH, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Baden, 2½ m. by rail from Carlsruhe, with which it is connected by a canal and an avenue of poplars, on the left bank of the Pfinz, at the foot of the vineyard-covered Thurmberg, which is crowned by a watch-tower and to the summit of which a funicular railway ascends. Pop. (1905) 6207. It possesses a castle erected in 1565 and now used as barracks, an ancient town hall, a church with an excellent organ, a high-grade school, an orphan asylum, and in the market-place a statue of the margrave Charles II. It has manufactures of sewing-machines, brushes, chemicals, tobacco, beer, vinegar and chicory; and considerable trade in market produce.

Durlach was bestowed by the emperor Frederick II. on the margrave Hermann V. of Zähringen as an allodial possession, but afterwards came into the hands of Rudolph of Habsburg. It was chosen as his residence by the margrave Charles II. in 1565, and retained this distinction till the foundation of Carlsruhe in 1715, though it was almost totally destroyed by the French in 1688. In 1846 it was the seat of a congress of the Liberal party of the Baden parliament; and in 1849 it was the scene of an encounter between the Prussians and the insurgents. Reichenbach the mechanician, and E.L. Posselt (1763-1804) the historian, were natives of the town.

See Fecht, Geschichte der Stadt Durlach (Heidelberg, 1869).

DUROC, GÉRAUD CHRISTOPHE MICHEL, duc de Frioul (1772-1813), French general, was born at Pont à Mousson (Meurthe et Moselle) on the 25th of October 1772. The son of an officer, he was educated at the military schools of his native town and of Châlons. He was gazetted second lieutenant (artillery) in the 4th regiment in 1793, and advanced steadily in the service. Captain Duroc became aide-de-camp to Napoleon in 1796, and distinguished himself at Isonzo, Brenta and Gradisca in the Italian campaigns of 1796-97. He served in Egypt, and was seriously wounded at Aboukir. His devotion to Napoleon was rewarded by complete confidence. He became first aide-de-camp (1798), general of brigade (1800), and governor of the Tuileries. After the battle of Marengo he was sent on missions to Vienna, St Petersburg, Stockholm and Copenhagen. As grand marshal of the Tuileries he was responsible for the measures taken to secure Napoleon’s personal safety whether in France or on his campaigns, and he directed the minutest details of the imperial household. After Austerlitz, where he commanded the grenadiers in the absence of General Oudinot, he was employed in a series of important negotiations with Frederick William of Prussia, with the elector of Saxony (December 1806), in the incorporation of certain states in the Confederation of the Rhine, and in the conclusion of the armistice of Znaim (July 1808). In 1808 he was created duke of Friuli, and after the Russian campaign he became senator (1813). He was in attendance on Napoleon at the battle of Bautzen (20th-21st May 1813) in Saxony, when he was mortally wounded, and died in a farmhouse near the battlefield on the 23rd of May. Napoleon bought the farm and erected a monument to his memory. Duroc was buried in the Invalides.

The chief source for Duroc’s biography is the Moniteur (31st of May 1797, 24th of October 1798, 30th of May 1813, &c.).

DUROCHER, JOSEPH MARIE ELISABETH (1817-1858), French geologist, was born at Rennes on the 31st of May 1817. Educated at the École Polytechnique and École des Mines in Paris, he qualified as a mining engineer. Early in his career he travelled in the northern parts of Europe to study the metalliferous deposits, and he contributed the articles on geology, mineralogy, metallurgy and chemistry to Paul Gaimard’s Voyages de la Commission scientifique du nord, en Scandinavie, en Laponie, au Spitzberg et aux Feröe, pendant les années 1838-1840. In 1844 he became professor of geology and mineralogy at Rennes. His attention was now largely directed to the study of the artificial production of minerals, to the metamorphism of rocks, and to the genesis of igneous rocks. In 1857 he published his famous Essai de pétrologie comparée, in which he expressed the view that the igneous rocks have been derived from two magmas which coexist beneath the solid crust, and are respectively acid and basic. He died at Rennes on the 3rd of December 1858.

DURRA (also written dourah, dhura, &c.; Arabic for a pearl, hence a grain of corn), a cereal grass, Sorghum vulgare, extensively cultivated in tropical and semi-tropical countries, where the grain, made into bread, forms an important article of diet. In non-Arabic-speaking countries it is known by other names, such as Indian or African millet, pearl millet, Guinea corn and Kaffir corn. In India it is called jowari, jowaree, jawari, &c. (Hindī, jawārī).

DURUY, JEAN VICTOR (1811-1894), French historian and statesman, was born in Paris on the 11th of September 1811. The son of a workman at the factory of the Gobelins, he was at first intended for his father’s trade, but succeeded in passing brilliantly through the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied under Michelet, whom he accompanied as secretary in his travels through France, supplying for him at the École Normale in 1836, when only twenty-four. Ill-health forced him to resign, and poverty drove him to undertake that extensive series of school textbooks which first brought him into public notice. He devoted himself with ardour to secondary school education, holding his chair in the Collège Henri IV. at Paris for over a quarter of a century. Already known as a historian by his Histoire des Romains et des peuples soumis à leur domination (2 vols., 1843-1844), he was chosen by Napoleon III. to assist him in his life of Julius Caesar, and his abilities being thus brought under the emperor’s notice, he was in 1863 appointed minister of education. In this position he displayed incessant activity, and a desire for broad and liberal reform which aroused the bitter hostility of the clerical party. Among his measures may be cited his organization of higher education (“enseignement spécial”), his foundation of the “conférences publiques,” which have now become universal throughout France, and of a course of secondary education for girls by lay teachers, and his introduction of modern history and modern languages into the curriculum both of the lycées and of the colleges. He greatly improved the state of primary education in France, and proposed to make it compulsory and gratuitous, but was not supported in this project by the emperor. In the new cabinet that followed the elections of 1869, Duruy was replaced by Louis Olivier Bourbeau, and was made a senator. After the fall of the Empire he took no part in politics, except for an unsuccessful candidature for the senate in 1876. From 1881 to 1886 he served as a member of the Conseil Supérieur de l’Instruction Publique. In 1884 he was elected to the Academy in succession to Mignet. He died in Paris on the 25th of November 1894.

As a historian Duruy aimed in his earlier works at a graphic and picturesque narrative which should make his subject popular. His fame, however, rests mainly on the revised edition of his Roman history, which appeared in a greatly enlarged form in 7 vols. under the title of Histoire des Romains depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la mort de Théodose (1879-1885), a really great work; a magnificent illustrated edition was published from 1879 to 1885 (English translation by W.J. Clarke, in 6 vols., 1883-1886). His Histoire des Grecs, similarly illustrated, appeared in 3 vols. from 1886 to 1891 (English translation in 4 vols., 1892). He was the editor, from its commencement in 1846, of the Histoire universelle, publiée par une société de professeurs et de savants, for which he himself wrote a “Histoire sainte d’après la Bible,” “Histoire grecque,” “Histoire romaine,” “Histoire du moyen âge,” “Histoire des temps modernes,” and “Abrégé de l’histoire de France.” His other works include Atlas historique de la France accompagné d’un volume de texte (1849); Histoire de France de 1453 à 1815 (1856), of which an expanded and illustrated edition appeared as Histoire de France depuis l’invasion des barbares dans la Gaule romaine jusqu’à nos jours (1892); Histoire populaire de la France (1862-1863); Histoire populaire contemporaine de la France (1864-1866); Causeries de voyage (1864); and Introduction générale à l’histoire de France (1865).

A memoir by Ernest Lavisse appeared in 1895 under the title of Un Ministre: Victor Duruy. See also the notice by Jules Simon (1895), and Portraits et souvenirs by S. Monod (1897).

DU RYER, PIERRE (1606-1658), French dramatist, was born in Paris in 1606. His earlier comedies are in the loose style of Alexandre Hardy, but after the production of the Cid (1636) he copied the manner of Corneille, and produced his masterpiece Scévole, probably in 1644 (the date generally given is 1646). Alcionée (1638) was so popular that the abbé d’Aubignac knew it by heart, and Queen Christina is said to have had it read to her three times in one day. Du Ryer was a prolific dramatist. Among his other works may be mentioned Saül (printed 1642), and a comedy, Les Vendanges de Suresnes (1635 or 1636). He died in Paris on the 6th of November 1658.

DUSE, ELEANORA (1859- ), Italian actress, was born at Vigevano of a family of actors, and made her first stage appearance at a very early age. The hardships incident to touring with travelling companies unfavourably affected her health, but by 1885 she was recognized at home as Italy’s greatest actress, and this verdict was confirmed by that of all the leading cities of Europe and America. In 1893 she made her first appearances in New York and in London. For some years she was closely associated with the romanticist Gabriele d’Annunzio, and several of his plays, notably La Città morta (1898) and Francesca da Rimini (1901), provided her with important parts. But some of her great successes during the ’eighties and early ’nineties—the days of her chief triumphs—were in Italian versions of such plays as La Dame aux camélias, in which Sarah Bernhardt was already famous; and Madame Duse’s reputation as an actress was founded less on her “creations” than on her magnificent individuality. In contrast to the great French actress she avoided all “make-up”; her art depended on intense naturalness rather than stage effect, sympathetic force and poignant intellectuality rather than the theatrical emotionalism of the French tradition. Her dramatic genius gave a new reading to the parts, and during these years the admirers of the two leading actresses of Europe practically constituted two rival schools of appreciation. Ill-health kept Madame Duse off the stage for some time; but though, after 1900, it was no longer possible for her to avoid “make-up,” her rank among the great actresses of history remained indisputable.

See also a biography by L. Rasi (1901); A. Symons, Studies in Seven Arts (1906).

DUSSEK, JOHANN LUDWIG (1761-1812), Bohemian pianist and composer, was born at Czaslau, in Bohemia, on the 9th of February 1761. His father, Johann Joseph Dussek, a musician of high reputation, was organist and choir-master in the collegiate church of Czaslau, and several other members of the family were distinguished as organists. Under the careful instruction of his father he made such rapid progress that he appeared in public as a pianist at the age of six. A year or two later he was placed as a choir boy at the convent of Iglau, and he obtained his first instruction in counterpoint from Spenar, the choir-master. When his voice broke he entered on a course of general study, first at the Jesuits’ college, and then at the university of Prague, where he took his bachelor’s degree in philosophy. During his curriculum of two and a half years he had paid unremitting attention to the practice and study of his art, and had received further instruction in composition from a Benedictine monk. In 1779 he was for a short time organist in the church of St Rombaut at Mechlin. At the close of his engagement he proceeded to Holland, where he attained great distinction as a pianist, and was employed by the stadtholder as musical instructor to his family. While at the Hague he published his first works, several sonatas and concertos for the piano. He had already composed at the age of thirteen a solemn mass and several small oratorios. In 1783 he visited Hamburg, and placed himself under the instruction of Philip Emmanuel Bach. After spending two years in Lithuania in the service of Prince Radziwill, he went in 1786 to Paris, where he remained, with the exception of a short period spent at Milan, until the outbreak of the Revolution, enjoying the special patronage of Marie Antoinette and great popularity with the public. In Milan he appeared not only as a pianist but also as a player of the harmonica, an instrument which was much sought after on account of its novelty in those days. Towards the close of 1789 he removed to London, where on the 2nd of March 1790 he appeared at Salomon’s concerts, and he married a daughter of Dominico Corri, herself a clever harpist and pianist. Unfortunately he was tempted by the large sale of his numerous compositions to open a music-publishing warehouse in partnership with Montague Corri, a relative of his wife. The result was injurious to his fame and disastrous to his fortune. Writing solely for the sake of sale, he composed many pieces that were quite unworthy of his genius; and, as he was entirely destitute of business capacity, bankruptcy was inevitable. In 1800 he was obliged to flee to Hamburg to escape the claims of his creditors. Some years later he was attached in the capacity of musician to the household of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. On the death of his patron in 1806 he passed into the service of the prince of Isenburg as court musician. In 1809 he went to Paris to fill a similar situation in the household of Prince Talleyrand, which he held until his death on the 20th of March 1812.

Dussek had an important influence on the development of pianoforte music. As a performer he was distinguished by the purity of his tone, the combined power and delicacy of his touch, and the facility of his execution. His sonatas, known as The Invocation, The Farewell and The Harmonic Elegy, though not equally sustained throughout, contain movements that have scarcely been surpassed for solemnity and beauty of idea.

See also Alexander W. Thayer’s articles in Dwight’s Journal of Music (Boston, 1861).

DÜSSELDORF, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the right bank of the Rhine, 24 m. by rail N. by W. from Cologne. Pop. (1885) 115,190; (1895) 175,985; (1905) 252,630. Düsseldorf is one of the handsomest cities of western Germany. Its situation on the great mid-European waterway and as the junction of several main lines of railway has largely favoured its rapid growth and industrial development. It is the principal banking centre of the Westphalian coal and iron trade, and the favourite residence of the leading merchants of the lower Rhine.

The city consists of five main portions—the Altstadt, the original town with narrow, irregular streets; the Karlstadt, dating from 1787 and so called after the electoral prince Charles Theodore; the Neustadt, laid out between 1690 and 1716; and the Friedrichstadt and the Königstadt, of recent formation. In addition, the former villages of Pempelfort, Oberbilk, Unterbilk, Flingern and Derendorf have been incorporated and form the outer suburbs of the town proper. On the south side the town has been completely metamorphosed by the removal of the Köln-Mindner and Bergisch-Maerkisch stations to a central station lying to the east. The site thus gained was converted into new boulevards, while the railway to Neuss and Aix-la-Chapelle was diverted through the suburb of Bilk and thence across the Rhine by an iron bridge. A road bridge (completed 1898, 2087 ft. long), replacing the old bridge of boats, carries the electric tram-line to Crefeld. The town, with the exception of the Altstadt, is regularly built, but within its area are numerous open grounds and public squares, which prevent the regularity of its plan degenerating into monotony: the market-place, with the colossal bronze statue of the elector John William, the parade, the Allee Strasse, the Königs Allee, and the Königs Platz may be specially mentioned. Of the thirty-seven churches, of which twenty-six are Roman Catholic, the most noticeable are:—St Andrew’s, formerly the Jesuit and court church, with frescoes by J. Hübner (1806-1882), E. Deger (1809-1885), and H. Mücke (1806-1891), and the embalmed bodies of several Rhenish electors; St Lambert’s, with a tower 180 ft. high and containing a monument to Duke William (d. 1592); Maximilians, with frescoes by J.A.N. Settegast (1813-1890); the Romanesque St Martin’s, and the new Gothic church of St Mary. Besides the old ducal palace, laid in ruins by the French in 1794, but restored in 1846, the secular buildings comprise the government offices, the post-office in Italian style, the town hall on the market square, the law courts, the municipal music hall, the municipal theatre, the assembly hall of the Rhenish provincial diet, an Italian Renaissance edifice erected in 1879, the academy of art (1881; in pure Renaissance), the industrial art museum (1896), the historical museum, and the industrial art school. The town also possesses a library of 50,000 volumes, several high-grade schools, and is the seat of a great number of commercial and intellectual associations; but to nothing is it more indebted for its celebrity than to the Academy of Painting. This famous institution, originally founded by the elector Charles Theodore in 1767, was reorganized by King Frederick William III. in 1822, and has since attained a high degree of prosperity as a centre of artistic culture. From 1822 till 1826 it was under the direction of Cornelius, a native of the town, from 1826 to 1859 under Schadow, and from 1859 to 1864 under E. Bendemann (1811-1889). From Bendemann’s resignation it continued in the hands of a body of curators till 1873, when Hermann Wislicenus (1825-1899) of Weimar was chosen director. The noble collection of paintings which formerly adorned the Düsseldorf gallery was removed to Munich in 1805, and has not since been restored; but there is no lack of artistic treasures in the town. The academy possesses 14,000 original drawings and sketches by the great masters, 24,000 engravings, and 248 water-colour copies of Italian originals; the municipal gallery contains valuable specimens of the local school; and the same is the case with the Schulte collection. The principal names are Cornelius, Lessing, the brothers Andreas and Oswald Achenbach, A. Baur (b. 1835), A. Tidemand (1814-1876), and L. Knaus (b. 1829). An annual exhibition is held under the auspices of the Art Union; and the members of the Artists’ Society, or Malkasten, as they are called, have annual festivals and masquerades.

The town is embellished with many handsome monuments—notably a bronze statue of Cornelius, by A. Donndorf (b. 1835), an equestrian statue of the emperor William I. (1896), and a large bronze group in front of the assembly hall of the diet, representing the river Rhine and its chief tributaries. In the suburb of Bilk there are the Floragarten and Volksgarten, the astronomical observatory and the harbour. Extensive quays afford accommodation for vessels of deep draught, and the trade with the Dutch cities and with London has been thereby greatly enhanced. Within recent years Düsseldorf has made remarkable progress as an industrial centre. The first place is occupied by the iron industries, embracing foundries, furnaces, engineering and machine shops, &c. Next come cotton spinning and weaving, calico printing, yarn-spinning, dyeing and similar textile branches, besides a variety of other industries.

A little to the north of the town lies the village of Düsselthal, with Count von der Recke-Volmerstein’s establishment for homeless children in the former Trappist monastery, and in the suburb of Pempelfort is the Jägerhof, the residence at one time of Prince Frederick of Prussia, and afterwards of the prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

Düsseldorf, as the form of the name—the village on the Düssel—clearly indicates, was long a place of small consideration. In 1288 it was raised to the rank of a town by Count Adolf of Berg; from his successors it obtained various privileges, and in 1385 was chosen as their residence. After it had suffered greatly in the Thirty Years’ War and the War of the Spanish Succession, it recovered its prosperity under the patronage of the electoral prince John William of the Palatinate, who dwelt in the castle for many years before his death in 1716. In 1795 the town, after a violent bombardment, was surrendered to the French; and after the peace of Lunéville it was deprived of its fortifications. In 1805 it became the capital of the Napoleonic duchy of Berg; and in 1815 it passed with the duchy into Prussian possession. Among its celebrities are Johann Georg and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Heinrich Heine, Varnhagen von Ense, Peter von Cornelius, Wilhelm Camphausen and Heinrich von Sybel.

See H. Ferber, Historische Wanderung durch die alte Stadt Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, 1889-1890); Brandt, Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Ver-waltungsgeschichte der Stadt Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, 1902); and local Guide by Bone.

DUSSERAH, or Dasara, a Hindu new-moon festival (sometimes called Maha-navami), held in October, and specially connected with ancestral worship. In the native states, such as Mysore, the rajas give public entertainments lasting for ten days, and especially invite European officials to the festivities, which include horse-racing, athletic contests, and banquets.

See J.A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 577.

DUST, earth or other matter reduced to fine dry and powdery particles; the word is Teutonic and appears in such various forms as the Dutch duist, Danish dyst, for the dust of flour or meal, and in the older forms donst; the modern German Dunst, vapour, probably preserves the original form and meaning, that of something which can be blown about by the wind.

Atmospheric Dust.—The presence of dust in the atmosphere has probably been known from the earliest ages, as prehistoric man must have had plenty of opportunities of noticing it lighting up the paths of sunbeams that penetrated his dark caves, yet it is only of recent years that it has become the subject of scientific observation. Formerly it was considered as simply matter in the wrong place, the presence of which had to be tolerated, but was supposed to serve no useful purpose in nature. It was not till the year 1880 that atmospheric dust came under scientific investigation, when it soon became evident that it played a most important part in nature, and that instead of being a nuisance to be got rid of, it added much to the comforts and pleasures of life.

The atmosphere is composed of a number of gases which have a nearly constant proportion to each other, and of varying proportions of water vapour. This vapour, constantly rising from land and sea, mixes with the gases in the atmosphere and so long as it remains vapour is invisible, but when it becomes cooled by the actual processes in nature the vapour tends to condense to the liquid condition and form cloud particles. Before 1880 it had always been assumed that when this condensation took place, the vapour molecules simply combined with each other to form the little globules of water, but J. Aitken showed that vapour molecules in the atmosphere do not combine with each other, that before condensation can take place there must be some solid or liquid nucleus on which the vapour molecules can combine, and that the dust in the atmosphere forms the nuclei on which the water-vapour molecules condense. Every cloud particle being grown round a dust nucleus thus has a dust particle in it. The presence of dust in the atmosphere allows the condensation of the vapour to take place whenever the air is cooled to the saturation point, and if there were no dust present the condensation would not take place till the air was cooled far below that point, and become highly supersaturated; and when it did take place the condensation would be violent and result in heavy rain-drops without the formation of what we know as cloud. This might be in some ways an advantage, but living in such supersaturated air would have many disadvantages. The supersaturated air having no dust to condense on would condense on our clothes, the inside and outside walls of our dwellings, and on every solid and liquid surface with which it came in contact.

Many of the dust particles in the atmosphere which form the nuclei of condensation are extremely minute, so small as to be beyond the powers of the microscope, and at first sight it might appear to be impossible to get any reliable information as to their numbers. But Aitken, having shown that water vapour must have a nucleus to condense on, saw that this placed in our hands the means of counting the dust particles in our atmosphere, and in 1888 showed how it could be done. As water vapour in the air condenses on the dust particles present and forms cloud particles, he showed that all that would be necessary would be to cause the dust particles to become centres of condensation, when they would be so increased in size as to come within the range of an ordinary magnifying lens, and that by counting the cloud particles it would be possible to determine the number of dust particles. To carry out this idea the air under examination was placed in an air-tight receiver and saturated with water vapour. It was then expanded by an air-pump, and in this way cooled and condensation produced. The cloud particles so formed were allowed to fall on a micrometer and their number counted by the aid of an ordinary short-focussed lens. Certain precautions are necessary in carrying out this process. There must not be more than 500 particles per cubic centimetre of air, or all the particles will not form nuclei, and will not therefore be thrown down as cloud particles. When the number in the air tested exceeds that figure, the dusty air must be mixed with such a quantity of dustless air as will reduce the number below 500 per c.c., and the correct number in the air tested is obtained by allowing for the proportion of dustless air to dusty air, and for the expansion necessary for cooling.

Thousands of tests of the atmospheric dust have been made with this instrument at many places over the world, and in no part of it has dustless air been found; indeed it is very rare to find air with less than 100 particles per c.c., whilst in most country places the numbers rise to thousands, and in cities such as London and Paris the number may be as high as 100,000 to 150,000 per c.c.

The sources of dust particles in the atmosphere are numerous. In nature volcanoes supply a large quantity, and the meteoric matter constantly falling towards the earth and becoming dissipated by the intense heat produced by the friction of the atmosphere keep up a constant supply. Large quantities of dust are also raised from the surface of the earth by strong winds, from dusty roads and dry soil, and there is good reason for supposing that large quantities of sand are carried from the deserts by the wind and transported great distances, the sand, for instance, from the desert of Africa being carried to Europe. It is, however, to artificial causes that most of the dust is due. The burning of coal is the principal source of these, not only when the coal is burned with the production of smoke, but also when smokeless, and even when the coal is first converted into gas and burned in the most perfect forms of combustion. It results from this that while in the air over the uninhabited parts of the earth and over the ocean the number of particles is small, being principally produced by natural causes or carried from distant lands, they are much more numerous in inhabited areas, especially in those where much coal is burned. It is evident that if there were not some purifying process in nature there would be a tendency for the dust particles to increase in numbers, because though some dust particles may fall out of the air, many of them are so small they have but little tendency to settle, but by becoming centres of cloud particles they are carried downwards to the earth, and, further, these when showering down as rain tend to wash the others out of the atmosphere. We may therefore look on all uninhabited areas of the earth as purifying areas, and their purifying power seems to depend partly on their extent, but principally on their rainfall. The following table illustrates the purifying effect of some of these areas obtained from the results of hundreds of observations. The areas referred to are: (1) Mediterranean Sea, the observations being made on the south coast of France on the air blowing inshore; (2) the Alps, the observations being made on the Rigi Kulm; (3) the Highlands of Scotland, the observations being made at various places; and (4) the Atlantic Ocean, the observations being made on the west coast of Scotland, when the wind blew from the ocean.

Mediterranean. Alps. Highlands. Atlantic.

Mean of lowest 891 381 141 72

Mean of number 1611 892 552 338

These numbers are all low for atmospheric dust, much lower than in air from inhabited areas. On the Rigi Kulm, for instance, the number was sometimes over 10,000 per c.c. when the wind was from inhabited areas and the sun causing ascending currents; and at the same place as the Atlantic air was tested the numbers went up to over 5000 per c.c. when the wind blew from the inhabited areas of Scotland, though the distance to the nearest was over 60 m.

E.D. Fridlander made many observations on the dust of the atmosphere with the same instrument as employed by Aitken. In crossing the Atlantic he got no low numbers, always over 2000 per c.c., but in the Gulf of St Lawrence he got a reading as low as 280 per c.c. In crossing the Pacific the lowest obtained was 245, in the Indian Ocean 243, in the Arabian Sea 280, in the Red Sea 383, and in the Mediterranean 875 per c.c. He has also made observations in Switzerland. The lowest number obtained by him was in the air at the top of the Bieshorn, 13,600 ft. above sea-level, where the number was as low as 157 per c.c. Professor G. Melander of Helsingfors studied the dust in the atmosphere. His observations were made in Switzerland, Biskra in the Sahara, Finland, the borders of Russia, and in Norway; but in none of these places were low numbers observed. The minimum numbers were over 300 per c.c., while maximum numbers in some cases went high.

Aitken when observing on the Rigi Kulm noticed during some conditions of weather that there was a daily variation in the number of particles, a maximum near the hottest part of the day and a minimum in the morning, and attributed the rise in the numbers to the impure air of the valleys rising on the sun-heated slopes of the mountain or driven up by the wind. A. Rankin, at the Ben Nevis observatory, also observed this daily variation, and his observations also indicate a yearly variation at that station, the numbers being highest in March, April and May. This may possibly be due to small rainfall in these months, but more probably to the fact that south-easterly winds blow more frequently during these months on Ben Nevis than at any other season, and these winds bring the impure air from the more densely inhabited parts of the country.

Without atmospheric dust not only would we not have the glorious cloud scenery we at present enjoy, but we should have no haze in the atmosphere, none of the atmospheric effects that delight the artist. The white haze, the blue haze, the tender sunset glows of red, orange and yellow, would all be absent, and the moment the sun dipped below the horizon the earth would be in darkness; no twilight, no after-glows, such as those given some years ago by the volcanic dust from Krakatoa; none of the poetry of eventide. Why, it may be asked, is this so? Simply because all these are due to matter suspended in the air, to dust. Water has no such effects as long as it is a vapour, and if it condensed without the presence of dust, the particles would be far too few to give any appreciable effect and too heavy to remain in suspension.

Turning now to the investigations on this point, Aitken has shown that there is no evidence to indicate that water vapour has any hazing effect, and shows that the haze is entirely due to dust, the density of the haze increasing with the increase in the number of dust particles in the air, and also with the relative humidity; but the humidity does not act as vapour, but by condensing on the dust and increasing the size of the particles, as it is not the amount of vapour present but the degree of saturation that affects the result; the more saturated the air, the more vapour is condensed on the particles, they so become larger and their hazing effect increased.

The relation of haze or transparency of the air to the number of dust particles was observed on five visits to the Rigi Kulm. The visibility of Hochgerrach, a mountain 70 m. distant from the Rigi, was used for estimating the amount of haze when the air was clear. During the visits this mountain was visible thirteen times, and it was never seen except when the number of particles was low. On eight occasions the mountain was only one-half to one-fifth hazed, and on these days the number of particles was as low as from 326 to 850 per c.c. It was seen five times when the number was from 950 to 2000 per c.c., but the mountain on these occasions was only just visible, and it was never seen when the number was a little over 2000 per c.c.

It has been pointed out that the relative humidity has an effect on the dust by increasing the size of the particles and so increasing the haze. It was therefore necessary in working out the dust and haze observations made at the different places to arrange all the observations in tables according to the wet-bulb depressions at the time. All the observations taken when the wet-bulb depression was between 2° and 4° were put in one table, all those when it was between 4° and 7° in another, and all those when it was over 7° in a third. It should be here noted that when the dust particles were counted and the wet and dry bulb observations taken, an estimate of the amount of haze was also made. This was done by estimating the amount of haze on a mountain at a known distance. Suppose the mountain to be 25 m. distant, and at the time to be one-half hazed, then the limit of visibility of the mountain under the conditions would be 50 m., and that was taken as the number representing the transparency of the atmosphere at the time. In the tables above referred to along with the number of particles was entered the limit of visibility at the time; when this was done it was at once seen that as the number of particles increased the limit of visibility decreased, as will be seen from the following short table of the Rigi Kulm observations when the wet-bulb depression was between 2° and 4°.

Date. Lowest
Number. Highest
Number. Mean
Number. Limit of
Visibility in
Miles. C.

19th May 1891 428 690 559 150 83,850 }Mean 75,176.

22nd May 1889 434 850 642 100 64,200

16th May 1893 1225 2600 1912 40 77,480

When the number of particles is multiplied by the limit of visibility in the tables a fairly constant number C. is obtained; see preceding table. All the observations taken at the different places were treated in a similar manner and the means of all the observations at the different humidities were obtained, and the following table gives the mean values of C. at the different wet-bulb depressions of all the observations made at the different places.

Wet-bulb depression 2° to 4° 4° to 7° 7° and over

Mean values of C. 76,058 105,545 141,148

From the above table it will be seen that as the dryness of the air increased it required a larger number of particles to produce a complete haze, nearly double the number being required when the wet-bulb depression was over 7° than when it was only from 2° to 4°. To find the number of particles required to produce a complete haze, that is, to render a mountain just invisible, all that is necessary is to multiply the above constant C. by 160,930, the number of centimetres in a mile, when this is done with the observations made in the West Highlands we get the numbers given in the following table:—

Wet-bulb depression. Number of Particles to
produce a complete haze.

2° to 4° 12,500,000,000

4° to 7° 17,100,000,000

7° to 10° 22,600,000,000

The above table gives the number of particles of atmospheric dust in a column of air having a section of one centimetre square, at the different humidities, required to produce a complete haze, that is, to make a distant object invisible, and is of course quite independent of the length of the column.

In making these dust and transparency observations three things were noted: 1st, the number of particles; 2nd, the humidity; and 3rd, the limit of visibility. From the results above given, it is evident that if we now know any two of these we can calculate the third. Suppose we know the limit of visibility and the humidity, then the number of particles can be calculated by the aid of the above tables.

To show the hazing effects of dust it is not, however, necessary to use a dust counter. Aitken for some years made observations on the haze in the air at Falkirk by simply noting the direction of the wind, the wet-bulb depression at the time, and the transparency of the air. Falkirk is favourably situated for such observations owing to the peculiar distribution of the population surrounding it. The whole area from west, north-west to north, is very thinly populated, while in all other directions it is densely populated. It was found that the air from the thinly inhabited parts, that is, the north-west quadrant, was nine times clearer than the air from other directions with the same wet-bulb depression, and that the density of the haze was directly proportional to the density of the population of the area from which the wind blew. These observations also showed that the transparency of the air increases with the dryness, being 3.7 times clearer when the wet-bulb depression is 8° than when it is only 2°, and that the air coming from the densely inhabited parts is about 10 times more hazed than if there were no inhabitants in the country.

(J. A.*)

“Atmospheric Dust Observations from various parts of the World,” Quart. Journ. Roy. Met. Soc. (July 1896).

La Condensation de la vapeur d’eau dans l’atmosphère (Helsingfors, 1897).

DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY, THE (Oostindische Vereenigde Maatschappij), a body founded by a charter from the Netherlands states-general on the 20th of March 1602. It had a double purpose: first to regulate and protect the already considerable trade carried on by the Dutch in the Indian Ocean, and then to help in prosecuting the long war of independence against Spain and Portugal. Before the union between Portugal and Spain in 1580-81, the Dutch had been the chief carriers of eastern produce from Lisbon to northern Europe. When they were shut out from the Portuguese trade by the Spanish king they were driven to sail to the East in order to make good their loss. Unsuccessful attempts were made to find a route to the East by the north of Europe and Asia, which would have been free from interference from the Spaniards and Portuguese. It was only when these failed that the Dutch decided to intrude on the already well-known route by the Cape of Good Hope, and to fight their way to the Spice Islands of the Malay Archipelago. A first expedition, commanded by Cornelius Houtman, a merchant long resident at Lisbon, sailed on the 2nd of April 1595. It was provided with an itinerary or book of sailing instructions drawn up by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutchman who had visited Goa. The voyage was marked by many disasters and losses, but the survivors who reached the Texel on their return on the 20th of August 1597 brought back some valuable cargo, and a treaty made with the sultan of Bantam in Java.

These results were sufficient to encourage a great outburst of commercial adventure. Companies described as “Van Ferne”—that is, of the distant seas—were formed, and by 1602 from sixty to seventy Dutch vessels had sailed to Hindustan and the Indian Archipelago. On those distant seas the traders could neither be controlled nor protected by their native government. They fought among themselves as well as with the natives and the Portuguese, and their competition sent up prices in the eastern markets and brought them down at home. Largely at the suggestion of Jan van Oldenbarneveldt, and in full accordance with the economic principles of the time, the states-general decided to combine the existing separate companies into one united Dutch East India Company, which could discharge the functions of a government in those remote seas, prosecute the war with Spain and Portugal, and regulate the trade. A capital estimated variously at a little above and a little under 6,500,000 florins, was raised by national subscription in shares of 3000 florins. The independence of the states which constituted the United Netherlands was recognized by the creation of local boards at Amsterdam, in Zealand, at Delft and Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen. The boards directed the trade of their own districts, and were responsible to one another, but not for one another as towards the public. A general directorate of 60 members was chosen by the local boards. Amsterdam was represented by 20 directors, Zealand by 12, Delft and Rotterdam by 14, and Hoorn and Enkhuizen also by 14. The real governing authority was the “Collegium,” or board of control of 17 members, of whom 16 were chosen from the general directorate in proportion to the share which each local branch had contributed to the capital or joint stock. Amsterdam, which subscribed a half, had eight representatives; Zealand, which found a quarter, had four; Delft and Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen had two respectively, since each of the pairs had subscribed an eighth. The seventeenth member was nominated in succession by the other members of the United Netherlands. A committee of ten was established at the Hague to transact the business of the company with the states-general. The “collegium” of seventeen nominated the governors-general who were appointed after 1608. The charter, which was granted for twenty-one years, conferred great powers on the company. It was endowed with a monopoly of the trade with the East Indies, was allowed to import free from all custom dues, though required to pay 3% on exports, and charged with a rent to the states. It was authorized to maintain armed forces by sea and land, to erect forts and plant colonies, to make war or peace, to arrange treaties in the name of the stadtholder, since eastern potentates could not be expected to understand what was meant by the states-general, and to coin money. It had full administrative, judicial and legislative authority over the whole of the sphere of operations, which extended from the west of the Straits of Magellan westward to the Cape of Good Hope.

The history of the Dutch East India Company from its formation in 1602 until its dissolution in 1798 is filled, until the close of the 17th century, with wars and diplomatic relations. Its headquarters were early fixed at Batavia in Java. But it extended its operations far and wide. It had to deal diplomatically with China and Japan; to conquer its footing in the Malay Archipelago and in Ceylon; to engage in rivalry with Portuguese and English; to establish posts and factories at the Cape, in the Persian Gulf, on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel and in Bengal. Only the main dates of its progress can be mentioned here. By 1619 it had founded its capital in Batavia in Java on the ruins of the native town of Jacatra. It expelled the Portuguese from Ceylon between 1638 and 1658, and from Malacca in 1641. Its establishment at the Cape of Good Hope, which was its only colony in the strict sense, began in 1652. A treaty with the native princes established its power in Sumatra in 1667. The flourishing age of the company dates from 1605 and lasted till the closing years of the century. When at the summit of its prosperity in 1669 it possessed 150 trading ships, 40 ships of war, 10,000 soldiers, and paid a dividend of 40%. In the last years of the 17th century its fortunes began to decline. Its decadence was due to a variety of causes. The rigid monopoly it enforced wherever it had the power provoked the anger of rivals. When Pieter Both, the first governor-general, was sent out in 1608, his instructions from the Board of Control were to see that Holland had the entire monopoly of the trade with the East Indies, and that no other nation had any share whatever. The pursuit of this policy led the company into violent hostility with the English, who were also opening a trade with the East. Between 1613 and 1632 the Dutch drove the English from the Spice Islands and the Malay Archipelago almost entirely. The English were reduced to a precarious footing at Bantam in Java. One incident of this conflict, the torture and judicial murder of the English factors at Amboyna in 1623, caused bitter hostility in England. The success of the company in the Malay Archipelago was counterbalanced by losses elsewhere. It had in all eight governments: Amboyna, Banda, Ternate, Macassar, Malacca, Ceylon, Cape of Good Hope and Java. Commissioners were placed in charge of its factories or trading posts in Bengal, on the Coromandel coast, at Surat, and at Gambroon (or Bunder Abbas) in the Persian Gulf, and in Siam. Its trade was divided into the “grand trade” between Europe and the East, which was conducted in convoys sailing from and returning to Amsterdam; and the “Indies to Indies” or coasting trade between its possessions and native ports.

The rivalry and the hostilities of French and English gradually drove the Dutch from the mainland of Asia and from Ceylon. The company suffered severely in the War of American Independence. But it extended and strengthened its hold on the great islands of the Malay Archipelago. The increase of its political and military burdens destroyed its profits. In the early 18th century it was already embarrassed, and was bankrupt when it was dissolved in 1798, though its credit remained unshaken, largely, if its enemies are to be believed, because it concealed the truth and published false accounts. In the later stages of its history its revenue was no longer derived from trade, but from forced contributions levied on its subjects. At home, the directors, who were accused of nepotism and corruption, became unpopular at an early date. The company was subject to increasing demands and ever more severe regulation on the successive renewals of its charters at intervals of twenty-one years. The immediate causes of its destruction were the conquest of Holland by the French revolutionary armies, the fall of the government of the stadtholder, and the establishment of the Batavian Republic in 1798.

Authorities.—The great original work on the history of the Dutch East India Company is the monumental Beschryving van oud en niew oost Indien (Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1724), by François Valentyn, in 8 vols., folio, profusely illustrated. Two modern works of the highest value are: J.K.J. de Jonge, De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in oost Indien (The Hague and Amsterdam, 1862-1888), in 13 vols.; J.J. Meinsma, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche oost-Indische Bezittingen (3 vols., Delft and the Hague, 1872-1875). See also John Crawford, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820); Clive Day, The Dutch in Java (New York, 1904); Sir W.W. Hunter, A History of British India (London, 1899); and Pierre Bonnassieux, Les Grandes Compagnies de commerce (Paris, 1892).

Linschoten was born at Haarlem in or about 1563. He started his travels at the age of sixteen and, after some years in Spain, went with the Portuguese East India fleet to Goa, where he arrived in September 1583, returning in 1589. In 1594 and 1595 he took part in the Dutch Arctic voyages, and in 1598 settled at Enkhuizen, where he died on the 8th of February 1611. His Navigatio ac itinerarium (1595-1596) is a compilation based partly on his own experiences, partly on those of other travellers with whom he came in contact. It was translated into English and German in 1598; two Latin versions appeared in 1599 and a French translation in 1610. The famous English version was reprinted for the Hakluyt Society in 1885. Large selections, with an Introduction, are published in C. Raymond Beazley’s Voyages and Travels, vol. ii. (English Garner, London, 1903).

DUTCH LANGUAGE. When the Romans reached the territory now forming the kingdom of Holland, they found a number of tribes south of the Rhine, who—though here and there mixed with Germans—belonged to a non-Germanic race, and who, closely related to the Belgian tribes, spoke a language belonging to the Celtic group. Possibly they were also situated on the more elevated grounds north of the Rhine, at least vestiges of them may still be traced. We do not know anything about their being mixed with or subdued by the intruding German tribes. We can only guess it.

At that time the fertile delta of the Rhine was already occupied by German tribes who in language and national customs must have stood in some relation to the tribes living along the Rhine in Germany, later called Franks. The consonantal system of their language was in accordance with the other Low-German dialects, which is proved by the remains we have in the glosses of the Lex Salica, for the greater part handed down in a bad condition. These tribes, whom we shall take together under the name of Low-Franks—the Romans called them Batavi, Caninefates, Chamavi, &c.—were spread over Gelderland, Overysel, part of Utrecht and South Holland, and the south-western part of North Holland. When in the sixth century allied tribes from the present north Germany, who named themselves Saxons after one of those tribes living alongside the Elbe, conquered the territory occupied by the Franks a great many retreated from the eastern parts, and then the Franks, who already in the time of the Romans had begun to invade into the territory of the Belgian tribes, continued their wars of conquest in a southward direction and subdued all the land south of the branch of the Rhine that is called the “Waal.” Since that time the Frankish dialect came there, and the Celtic-speaking population of the south suffered its language to be entirely supplanted by that of the conquerors. Hence in the formerly Celtic-speaking parts of Brabant and Limburg we find but Frankish dialects, somewhat corresponding with those of part of Gelderland, Utrecht and Holland. The deviation that is perceptible concerns less the use of words than the way of laying the stress.

In part of Gelderland, east of the Ysel, and in Overysel, the older Frankish dialect (of the Salian Franks) was given up and the language of the victorious Saxons was assumed, perhaps here and there strongly mixed with the older language. The language which is spoken there, and farther to the north through Drente as far as in some parts of Groningen, is called Saxon. Indeed, these dialects correspond in a great many respects with the language of the Old-Saxon poem Heliand (q.v.) and with the North-German dialects—from the latter they deviate considerably in some respects. The chief point of conformity is the formation of the plural of the verb: wi loopt, wi gåt, Heliand: wi hlopad, wi gangad, which are wèi loopen, wèi gaan in the Frankish dialects. In the vocal system, too, there are peculiar differences.

In the north of Holland there lived, and still lives alongside the coast, a tribe with which Caesar did not come in contact. The Frisians were spread over a large distance along the shore as far as the mouth of the Elbe, and in the west at least as far as the country north of Haarlem. In the time of the Romans they cannot have extended their power farther southward. Later, however, this seems to have been the case. Maerlant and Melis Stoke (13th century) tell us that time was when their power extended even over part of Flanders. About the year 339 they were repelled as far as the mouth of the Meuse, and ever afterwards the Franks, led by their counts, pushed their dominion back farther and farther to the north, as far as the country north of Alkmaar. After all, a great many Frisian peculiarities may be perceived in the language of the country people of the parts which were once in their power.

To begin with the south: in Zeeland the population has quite given up the former probably non-Germanic language. Frisian influence is still perceptible in many words and expressions, but for all that the language has lost the Frisian character and assumed the nature of the neighbouring Frankish dialects in the present Belgium and Brabant. If it was then influenced by the south, later it was influenced rather by the language of Holland. Farther to the north Frisian elements may be perceived in Holland at the seashore and also in many respects still in North Holland. The real Frisian tongue has only been preserved in the province of Friesland, where intrusion of the dialect spoken in Holland is already perceptible since the 13th century. With the Frisian tongue this formed a new dialect in the towns, the “Stadfriesch,” whereas the country people in the villages and the peasants have preserved the old Frisian tongue as “Boerenfriesch.”

The more eastward dialects of Frisian in Groningen, the eastern part of Friesland (Stellingawerf) and West-Drente were first strongly mixed with Saxon; at the same time we find a strong mixture of Frisian and Saxo-Frankish east of the Zuider Zee. Later the Saxon dialect of the town of Groningen, once the capital of East-Drente, became prominent over the whole province.

In all parts, however, the language of Holland, mixed with and changed by the living speech, is getting more and more influence, issuing from the towns and large villages.

This influence over the whole country began at the opening of the 17th century, and, in connexion with the prevalent written language, gradually produced a colloquial language, deviating from the written language as well as from the native idioms of the country, though assuming elements from both. In this colloquial speech the idiom of Holland forms the basis, whereas the written language formed itself on quite different principles.

If we compare the colloquial speech and the native idiom with the written language, we find remarkable differences, which are caused by the origin of the Dutch written language.

The first to write in any of the idioms of the Dutch language, if we leave apart the old version of the psalms in East Low Frankish, was an inhabitant of the neighbourhood of Maastricht, Henrik van Veldeke, who wrote a Servatius legend and an Aeneid; the latter we only know by a Mid High German copy. This dialect deviates from the western dialects and has likeness to the Middle-Frankish. His work had no influence whatever on the written language.

In the west of Belgium, in the districts of Antwerp, East and West Flanders and Brabant, great prosperity and strong development of commerce caused a vivid intellectual life. No wonder we find there the first writings in the West-Low-Frankish native idiom. This language spread over the neighbouring districts. At least in 1254 we find the same language used in the statute (i.e. privilege) of Middelburg.

In those parts a great deal was written in poetry and prose, and the writings in this language are known under the name of Middle-Dutch literature.

If originally the south took the lead in all departments, later the north gradually surpasses the south, and elements from the northern native idiom begin to intrude into the written language.

North of the Meuse and the Rhine little was written as yet in the 13th century. Not until about 1300 does literary life begin to develop here (Melis Stoke’s Rijmcronijk), and these writings were written in the language of the south with slight deviations here and there. Chancery and clergy had taken a written language to the north, deviating considerably from the native idiom in vogue there, which belonged to the Frisio-Frankish idioms. So this written language gradually spread over the west of the Netherlands and Belgium. The east of the Netherlands agreed in its chancery style more with the districts of Low Germany.

There was a great difference between the written language and the dialect spoken on the banks of the Y. This becomes quite conspicuous if we compare what Roemer Visscher, Coster, Bredero borrow from their native idiom with the language of Huygens or Cats, in the latter of which the southern elements predominate, mixed with the dialects of Zeeland and Holland. Vondel, too, in his first period was influenced by the idiom of Brabant. Only after 1625 does he get on more familiar terms with the Amsterdam dialect. In the various editions of his poems it may be seen how not only loan-words, but also words belonging to the southern idiom, are gradually replaced by other words, belonging to the vocabulary of North Holland, and still to be heard.

The written language passed from the south to the north, and, considerably changed at Amsterdam, was also assumed in the other provinces in the 17th century, after the Union of Utrecht. In the north, in Groningen and Friesland, the official writings and laws were still noted down in a Frisian or Saxo-Frisian idiom as late as the 15th and 16th centuries. When the contact with Holland grew stronger, and the government officials ever and again came in contact with Holland, chancery, too, gradually assumed the Holland idiom. The same took place in the eastern provinces.

This, however, did not yet make the written language popular, which did not happen before the population of the Dutch provinces got its Statenbÿbel, the well-known authorized version of the Bible, made at Dordrecht between 1626 and 1637.

By the frequent use of this so-called Statenvertaling the language of Holland obtained its vogue in all provinces on the point of religion, and many expressions, borrowed from that Bible, were preserved in the native idiom.

By the remarkable vicissitudes of these parts from the earliest time up to the moment when Holland became an independent kingdom, during which alternately German elements under the Bavarian counts and French influences under the Burgundian princes were predominant, and also later in the 16th and 17th centuries elements from these languages were mixed with the language in common use. Moreover, various words passed from the eastern languages into Dutch by the colonial and commercial connexions, while at the same time many words were borrowed from Latin, the language of the learned people, especially in the 16th century, and from French, under the influence of the poetic clubs of the 17th and 18th centuries. In the time of the rhetoricians, in the 16th century, and of Coornhert, as well as in the days of Bredero, Hooft and Vondel, we repeatedly find opposition against these foreign words, often successful, so that in 1650 Vondel could say: “Onze spraak is sedert weinige jaren herwaart van bastaard-woorden en onduitsch allengs geschuimt.” Some people, e.g. Hooft, went even so far as to make very clumsy versions of Latin and French bastard words, handed down of old.

Under the influence of the club “Nil Volentibus Arduum” and the predominant literary clubs of the 18th century, people became inclined towards expressing their thoughts as much as possible in pure Dutch. Therefore a large number of rules were given, with respect to prose as well as to poetry, in consequence of which the written language grew very stiff in choice of words and forms, and remains so till the latter half of the 19th century. The obtrusion of the French language during the reign of Napoleon had no effect. But the subsequent union of Holland and Belgium strengthened the French element, especially in the higher ranks of society. King William I. had tried to make Dutch more popular in Belgium by a general teaching of the Dutch language. When north and south were separated, the French became predominant in the south. Only in the Flemish provinces of Belgium the people tried to preserve the native idiom and to do away with French words. These endeavours, called “De Vlaamsche beweging”, begun by F. v. Willems, Heremans and others in the south, were supported in the north by Professor de Vries at Leiden. In order to get a pure Dutch language, the idea of composing a general Dutch dictionary was introduced. M. de Vries and his partner L. te Winkel, however, did not begin this task before having given a new formulation of the rules for spelling. These rules, deviating in many respects from the spelling then in vogue, introduced by Siegenbeek in 1806, have been predominant up to the present moment. Since 1891 Dr R.A. Kollewyn and Dr F. Buitenrust Hettema have been engaged in trying to bring about a simplification in the spelling. As this simplification is not generally considered efficient, their principles are not yet generally adopted; see for instance C.H. den Hertog, Waarom onaannemelyk? (Groningen, 1893).

Excepting Belgium (Flanders, Antwerp, Brabant) the Dutch language is heard outside Holland in Dutch East India and in the West Indies. In East India pure Dutch has been preserved, though some Javanese and Malay bastard words may have slipped in by the habit of speaking to the population in the Malay tongue or in the native idiom. Hence no Indo-Dutch was formed there. This is different in the West Indies, where a great number of negro words and English words as well as English syntactical constructions have slipped in.

In the 17th century a number of Dutchmen, for the greater part from Holland and Zeeland, under Jan van Riebeek, had settled in South Africa, in Cape Town, where the Dutch navigation called into being a Dutch port. In course of time they were joined there by French emigrants (most of them Huguenots who left their country about 1688 and joined with other Huguenots from Holland in assuming the Dutch language), perhaps also by Portuguese and by Malay people, who, together with the English who settled there and after 1820 became numerous in Cape Colony, mixed some peculiarities of their language with the Dutch idioms. Thus in the first half of the 18th century the language arose which is now called the South African Dutch. Since 1880 the present Dutch language has became more frequently used in official writings, though with certain adaptations agreeably to the native idiom.

In order to offer an example of the Middle-Dutch language beside the present language, we give here a single strophe from Maerlant’s Wapene Martyn, with a metrical translation in modern Dutch from the pen of Nikolaas Beets (1880).

God, diet al bi redene doet,

Gaf dat wandel ertsche goet

Der menschelt gemene,

Dattere mede ware gevoet,

Ende gecleet, ende gescoet,

Ende leven soude rene.

Nu es giericheit so verwoet,

Dat elc settet sinen moet

Om al te hebbene allene.

Hieromme stortmen menschenbloet,

Hieromme stichtmen metter spoet

Borge ende hoge stene

Menegen te wene.

God, die het al met wijsheid doet,

Gaf dit verganklijk aardsche goed

Den menschen in’t gemeen,

Op dat zij zouden zijn gevoed,

Het lijf gekleed, geschoeid de voet

En leven rein van zeen.

Maar zie nu hoe de hebzucht woedt

Dat iedereen in arren moed

’t Al hebben wil alleen’

Hierom vergiet men menschenbloed

En bouwt met roekeloozen spoed

Burchtsloten, zwaar van steen,

Tot smart van menigeen.

A Survey of the Sounds used in Dutch.—The Consonants. As regards the consonants, Dutch in the main does not differ from the other Low German languages. The explosive g and the th are wanting. Instead of the former there is a g with “fricative” pronunciation, and as in High German the th has passed over into d.

The final consonants in Middle Dutch are sharpened, and the sharp sounds are graphically represented; in Modern Dutch, on the other hand, the historical development of the language being more distinctly kept in view, and the agreement observed with the inflexional forms, the soft consonant is written more frequently than it is sounded; thus we have Middle Dutch dach, Modern Dutch dag, in analogy with the plural dagen.

The gutturals are g, k, ch and h.

G is the soft spirant, not used in English. In Middle Dutch this letter was also indicated by gh. K was pronounced like English k. In Middle Dutch c was sometimes used instead of k; now this is no longer done.

Ch (pronounced as German ch without the i-sound, not as English ch) loses its sound when combined with s to sch at the end of a syllable, for instance, vleesch, but the s-sound is not purely dental as in dans. As an initial consonant sch is nearly pronounced as sg (schip, English ship); only in Frisian and Saxon dialects the old consonant sk in skip, skool is retained.

H has the same pronunciation as in English.

The dentals are d and t. The d is formed by placing the point of the tongue against the upper teeth. At the end of a word d is sharpened into t, but written d, for instance, goed, pronounced gut. In the idiom of the east of the Netherlands final d is preserved. When between two vowels after oe (Engl. ô in do), ō, or ui, d is not pronounced, though it is written. After it has been left out, a j-sound has developed between the two vowels, so, for instance, goede became first goe:e and then goeje. Thus it is pronounced, though it is still spelled goede. After ou d disappeared and ou became ouw, for instance koude > kouw.

T has the same pronunciation as in English. In some dialects final t is dropped, for instance, heef for heeft, nie for niet.

S has the pronunciation of English s in sound, z that of English z in hazel; only in zestig and zeventig z has the pronunciation of s.

The labials are b, f, v, p.

At the beginning and in the body of a word b has the same sound as in English. At the end of a word, when shortened from bb, followed by a vowel, it became p in the pronunciation, so older krabbe became krabb, krab (the present spelling), which is now pronounced krap.

F has the same pronunciation as English f. In many cases older initial f passed into v, hence most words which have f in English have initial v in Dutch, for instance vader, vol, vechten.

This v, initial and between vowels, has the pronunciation of English v in lover. Dutch p is the same as English p, also the liquids and nasals.

The w in Dutch is mostly labiodental; in the eastern parts before vowels bilabial pronunciation is heard.

Vowels.—A has in open syllables the sound of English a in father, in closed syllables that of English a in ass, but more open; when there is a clear sound in closed syllables the spelling is aa (jaar), in open syllables a (maken), pronounced as a in ask; in bad, nat, a = ă. An original short a and a long a in open syllables are even in Middle Dutch pronounced alike, and may be rhymed with each other (dagen, lagen, a rhyme which was not permitted in Middle High German). In the Saxon dialects â was expressed by ao, a or â in the Frisio-Saxon districts passes into è before r, as jèr (jaar). Middle Dutch preserved a in several words where in Modern Dutch it passes into e before r (arg, erg; sarc, zerk; warf, werf); in others, as aarde, staart, zwaard, the Middle Dutch had e and a (erde, stert, swert, swart, start; Modern Dutch zwaard, staart). In foreign words, likewise, e before r has become a; paars, perse; lantaarn, lanterne (in the dialects e is still frequently retained).

E. The sound of the e derived from a does not differ from that of an original e, or of an e derived from i, as they appear in open syllables (steden, vele, pronounced as a in English name). If the e derived from a or i or the original e occurs in closed syllables, it has a short sound, as in English men, end, Modern Dutch stem. The e in closed syllables with a full sound (as English a; Sweet, ei) is spelled ee: veel, week (e from i), beek. The sharp, clear ee is indicated by the same letters in both open and closed syllables: eer, sneeuw, zee.

In some dialects this ee is pronounced like English ee, not only in the present dialects, but also in the 17th century.

The pronunciation of ei (from ai, or eg: ag, French ai, ei, ée) is that of English i, for instance, Dutch ei, English egg, is pronounced like English I.

I is pronounced short (somewhat like i of English pit), for instance in pit, binden, sikkel; it has a clear sound in fabrikant, though it has no stress.

Ie is pronounced like English ee in see, but somewhat shorter; so, fabriek, fabrieken, Pieter; also in bieden, stierf, &c. For original long î, Middle Dutch ii and ij, afterwards ÿ, was used. This vowel, though still written y, is pronounced like English i in I, like; so in sysje (English siskin), lÿken, &c.

The letter o represents three sounds:—(1) the short sharp o and (2) the short soft o, the former like the o in English not and French soldat (Dutch bod, belofte, tocht, kolf), the latter like the English o in don, the French o in ballon (Dutch dof, ploffen, ochtend, vol), and (3) the full, clear o as in English note, French noter (Dutch kolen, sloten, verloren). The sharp clear oo, in stroom, dood, has almost the same sound as the full o, in some dialects (among others the Saxon) it is pronounced as o with a glide o, in others (Flemish and Hollandsch) somewhat like au. In Middle Dutch, the lengthening of the vowels was frequently indicated by e (before r sometimes by i, as in oir); hence ae for â, oe for ô. Where oe occurs in the modern language, it has the sound of u (pronounced like the u in High German, and answering to the Gothic ô), which in Middle Dutch was frequently represented by ou. oe is pronounced ou (au; Sweet, p. 6) in West Flemish and the Groningen dialects. Before labials and gutturals oe in Middle Dutch was expressed by ue and oe (bouc, souken, and also guet, but usually goet, soeken, boec). The Saxon dialects still preserve an ô sound which agrees with the Dutch oe (bôk, môder); in two words—romer (roemer, however, is also used) and spook—o has passed from these dialects into Dutch. As the u (Old German û), which in the Dutch tongue has passed into ui except before r and w, retains the û-sound in the Saxon districts, some words have come into Dutch from these dialects, being written with oe from the similar sound of oe (from ô) in Dutch and û in Saxon (snoet, boer, soezen), by the side of which are Frankish words (snuit, suizen, &c.).

In the language of the people oe before m is often pronounced as ŏ, for instance bloem and blom.

Eu is not a diphthong, but the modification (Umlaut) of the clear ō; it has the same sound as German ö in schön; so in vleugel, leugen, keuken.

U before a double consonant or before a consonant in monosyllables has about the same pronunciation as in English stuff, rug; so in kunnen, snurken, put. When used in open syllables it has the same sound as in French nature.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Middle Dutch û passed over through oi into ui by the influence of the Holland dialect. In the Saxon districts û kept the old pronunciation, but only in the language of the peasants. The common language has everywhere ui, pronounced nearly as German eu, English oy; so in duizend, vuil, buigen, &c.

Ou and au in vrouw and blauw are nearly pronounced in the same way, very much like English ow in crowd.

Authorities.—For a full survey of a history of the Dutch language the reader is referred to Jan te Winkel, “Geschichte der niederländischen Sprache,” Grundriss der germ. Philologie, 2, p. 704 (Strassburg, K. Grübner). Here an elaborate account may be found on p. 704 of the different works on the grammar and phonology of the various periods of the Dutch language. For explanation and history of words of the current language see the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, by De Vries and Te Winkel, continued by A. Kluyver, A. Beets, for a time by J.W. Müller and De Vreese, who left at their nomination as professors at Utrecht and Ghent. The Middle Dutch language may be known from the Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, first by E. Verwys and J. Verdam, after the death of Verwys by Verdam alone. For the dialects the different grammars and glossaries issued at Martinus Nÿhoff (The Hague) and Kemink & Son (Utrecht) are of great importance. The Flemish dialect may be found in De Bo, Westvlaamsch Idioticon; other Belgian dialects are recorded in the publications of the Vlaamsche Academie (Ghent). Phonetic explanations are given in Roorda’s or in ten Bruggencate’s Phonetic Works, and a survey of the pronunciation in Branco van Dantzig’s Dutch Pronunciation and Dykstra’s Dutch Grammar.

(J. H. G.)

i.e. “Within a few years our language has been gradually skimmed of bastard words and non-Dutch elements.”

DUTCH LITERATURE. The languages now known as Dutch and Flemish did not begin to take distinct shape till about the end of the 11th century. From a few existing fragments—two incantations from the 8th century, a version of the Psalms from the 9th century, and several charters—a supposed Old Dutch language has been recognized; but Dutch literature actually commences in the 13th century, as Middle Dutch, the creation of the first national movement in Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zealand.

From the wreck of Frankish anarchy no genuine folk-tales of Dutch antiquity have come down to us, and scarcely any echoes of German myth. On the other hand, the sagas of Charlemagne and Arthur appear immediately in Middle Dutch forms. These were evidently introduced by wandering minstrels and jongleurs, and translated to gratify the curiosity of the noble women. It is rarely that the name of such a translator has reached us, but we happen to know that the fragments we possess of the French romance of William of Orange were written in Dutch by a certain Klaas van Haarlem, between 1191 and 1217. The Chanson de Roland was translated about the same time, and considerably later Parthenopeus de Blois. The Flemish minstrel Diederic van Assenede completed his version of Floris et Blanchefleur about 1250. The Arthurian legends appear to have been brought to Flanders by some Flemish colonists in Wales, on their return to their mother-country. About 1250 a Brabantine minstrel translated Walter Map’s Lancelot du lac at the command of his liege, Lodewijk van Velthem. The Gauvain was translated by Penninc and Vostaert before 1260, while the first original Dutch writer, the famous Jakob van Maerlant, occupied himself about 1260 with several romances dealing with Merlin and the Holy Grail. The earliest existing fragments of the epic of Reynard the Fox were written in Latin by Flemish priests, and about 1250 the first part of a very important version in Dutch was made by Willem the Minstrel, of whom it is unfortunate that we know no more save that he was the translator of a lost romance, Madoc. In his existing work the author follows Pierre de Saint-Cloud, but not slavishly; and he is the first really admirable writer that we meet with in Dutch literature. The second part was added by another hand at the end of the 14th century.

It is not necessary to dwell at any length on the monkish legends and the hymns to the Virgin Mary which were abundantly produced during the 13th century, and which, though destitute of all literary merit, were of use as exercises in the infancy of the language. The first lyrical writer of Holland was John I., duke of Brabant, who practised the minnelied with success, but whose songs are only known to us through a Swabian version of a few of them. In 1544 the earliest collection of Dutch folk-songs saw the light, and in this volume one or two romances of the 14th century are preserved, of which Het Daghet in den Oosten is the best known. Almost the earliest fragment of Dutch popular poetry, but of later time, is an historical ballad describing the murder of Count Floris V. in 1296. A very curious collection of mystical medieval hymns by Sister Hadewych, a nun of Brabant, was first printed in 1875 by Heremans and Ledeganck.

Hitherto, as we have seen, the Middle Dutch language had placed itself at the service of the aristocratic and monastic orders, flattering the traditions of chivalry and of religion, but scarcely finding anything to say to the bulk of the population. With the close of the 13th century a change came over the face of Dutch literature. The Flemish towns began to prosper and to assert their commercial supremacy over the North Sea. Under such mild rulers as William II. and Floris V., Dort, Amsterdam, and other cities contrived to win such privileges as amounted almost to political independence, and with this liberty there arose a new sort of literary expression. The founder and creator of this original Dutch literature was Jacob van Maerlant (q.v.). His Naturen Bloeme, written about 1263, forms an epoch in Dutch literature; it is a collection of moral and satirical addresses to all classes of society. With his Rijmbijbel (Rhyming Bible) he foreshadowed the courage and free-thought of the Reformation. It was not until 1284 that he began his masterpiece, De Spieghel Historiael (The Mirror of History), at the command of Count Floris V. Of his disciples, the most considerable in South Holland was Jan van Boendale (1280-1365), known as Jan de Klerk. He was born in Brabant, and became clerk to the justices at Antwerp in 1310. He was entrusted with various important missions. His works are historical and moral in character. In him the last trace of the old chivalric and romantic element has disappeared. He completed his famous rhyme chronicle, the Brabantsche Yeesten, in 1350; it contains the history of Brabant down to that date, and was brought down to 1440 by an anonymous later writer. For English readers it is disappointing that Boendale’s other great historical work (Van den derden Edewaert, coninc van Ingelant ..., ed. J.F. Willems, Ghent, 1840), an account of Edward III. and his expedition to Flanders in 1338, has survived only in some fragments. The remainder of Boendale’s works are didactic poems, pursuing still further the moral thread first taken up by Maerlant, and founded on medieval scholastic literature. In Ypres the school of Maerlant was represented by Jan de Weert, a surgeon, who died in 1362, and who was the author of two remarkable works of moral satire and exhortation, the Nieuwe Doctrinael of Spieghel der Sonden, and a Disputacie van Rogier end van Janne. In the beginning of the 13th century Gielijs van Molhem wrote a Dutch version of part of the Miserere of the Picard poet who concealed his identity under the name of the recluse of Moiliens. The poem consisted of meditations on the origin and destiny of man, and on the sins of pride, envy, &c. The translation, completed later by an author calling himself Heinrec, was critically edited (Groningen, 1893) by P. Leendertz. In North Holland a greater talent than that of Weert or of Boendale was exhibited by Melis Stoke, a monk of Egmond, who wrote the history of the state of Holland to the year 1305; this work, the Rijmkronik, was printed in 1591, and edited in 1885 for the Utrecht Historical Society; and for its exactitude and minute detail it has proved of inestimable service to later historians.

With the middle of the 14th century the chivalric spirit came once more into fashion. A certain revival of the forms of feudal life made its appearance under William III. and his successors. Knightly romances came once more into vogue, but the newborn didactic poetry contended vigorously against the supremacy of what was lyrical and epical. It will be seen that from the very first the literary spirit in Holland began to assert itself in a homely and utilitarian spirit. Jan van Heelu, a Brabanter, was the author of an epic poem on the battle of Woeronc (1288), dedicated to Princess Margaret of England, and to him has been attributed the still finer romance of the War of Grimbergen. Still more thoroughly aristocratic in feeling was Hein van Aken, a priest of Louvain, who lived about 1255-1330, and who combined to a very curious extent the romantic and didactic elements. As early as 1280 he had completed his translation of the Roman de la rose, which he must have commenced in the lifetime of Jean de Meung. More remarkable than any of his translated works, however, is his original romance, completed in 1318, Heinric en Margriete van Limborch, upon which he was at work for twenty-seven years. During the Bavarian period (1349-1433) very little original writing of much value was produced in Holland. Buodewijn van der Loren wrote one excellent piece on the Maid of Ghent, in 1389. Augustijnken van Dordt was a peripatetic minstrel of North Holland, who composed for the sheriff Aelbrecht and for the count of Blois from 1350 to 1370. Such of his verses as have been handed down to us are allegorical and moral. Willem van Hildegaersberch (1350-1408) was another northern poet, of a more strictly political cast. Many of his writings exist still unpublished, and are very rough in style and wanting in form. Towards the end of the 14th century an erotic poet of considerable power arose in the person of the lord of Waddinxsveen and Hubrechtsambacht, Dirk Potter van der Loo (c. 1365-1428), who was secretary at the court of the counts of Holland. During an embassy in Rome (1411-1412) this eminent diplomatist made himself acquainted with the writings of Boccaccio, and commenced a vast poem on the course of love, Der Minnen Loep, which is a wonderful mixture of classical and Biblical instances of amorous adventures set in a framework of didactic philosophy. In Dirk Potter the last traces of the chivalric element died out of Dutch literature, and left poetry entirely in the hands of the school of Maerlant. Many early songs, with some of later date, are preserved in a Liedekens-Boeck printed by Jan Roulans (Antwerp, 1544). The unique copy in the Wolfenbüttel library was edited by Hoffmann von Fallersleben in Horae Belgicae (vol. xi., 1855).

It is now time to consider the growth of prose literature in the Low Countries. The oldest pieces of Dutch prose now in existence are charters of the towns of Flanders and Zealand, dated 1249, 1251 and 1254. A prose translation of the Old Testament was made about 1300, and there exists a Life of Jesus about the same date. Of the mystical preachers whose religious writings have reached us, the Brussels friar, Jan van Ruysbroec (1294-1381), is the most important. But the most interesting relics of medieval Dutch prose, as far as the formation of the language is concerned, are the popular romances in which the romantic stories of the trouvères and minstrels were translated for the benefit of the unlettered public into simple language. As in most European nations, the religious drama takes a prominent place in every survey of medieval literature in Holland. Unfortunately the text of all the earliest mysteries, the language of which would have an extraordinary interest for us, has been lost. We possess records of dramas having been played at various places—Our Lord’s Resurrection, at the Hague, in 1400; Our Lady the Virgin, at Arnheim, in 1452; and The Three Kings, at Delft, in 1498. The earliest existing fragment, however, is part of a Limburg-Maastricht Passover Play of about 1360. The latest Dutch miracle play was the Mystery of the Holy Sacrament, composed by a certain Smeken, at Breda, and performed on St John’s day, 1500. This play was printed in 1867. With these purely theological dramas there were acted mundane farces, performed outside the churches by semi-religious companies; these curious moralities were known as “Abelespelen” and “Sotternieën.” In these pieces we discover the first traces of that genius for low comedy which was afterwards to take perfect form in the dramas of Brederôo and the paintings of Teniers.

The theatrical companies just alluded to, “Gesellen van den Spele,” formed the germ out of which developed the famous “Chambers of Rhetoric” which united within themselves all the literary movements that occupied the Low Countries during the 15th and 16th centuries. The poets of Holland had already discovered in late medieval times the value of gilds in promoting the arts and industrial handicrafts. The term “collèges de rhétorique” is supposed to have been introduced about 1440 to the courtiers of the Burgundian dynasty, but the institutions themselves existed long before. These literary gilds lasted till the end of the 16th century, and during the greater part of that time preserved a completely medieval character, even when the influences of the Renaissance and the Reformation obliged them to modify in some degree their outward forms. They were in almost all cases absolutely middle-class in tone, and opposed to aristocratic ideas and tendencies in thought. Of these remarkable bodies the earliest were almost entirely engaged in preparing mysteries and miracle-plays for the populace. Each chamber, and in process of time every town in the Low Countries, possessed one, and took as its title some fanciful or heraldic sign. At Diest “The Eyes of Christ,” dated from 1302, and an earlier one, the “Lily,” is mentioned. “The Alpha and Omega,” at Ypres, was founded about 1398; that of the “Violet,” at Antwerp, followed in 1400; the “Book,” at Brussels, in 1401; the “Berberry,” at Courtrai, in 1427; the “Holy Ghost,” at Bruges, in 1428; the “Floweret Jesse,” at Middelburg, in 1430; the “Oak Tree,” at Vlaardingen, in 1433; and the “Marigold,” at Gouda, in 1437. The most celebrated of all the chambers, that of the “Eglantine” at Amsterdam, with its motto In Liefde Bloeyende (Blossoming in Love), was not instituted until 1496. Among the most influential chambers not above mentioned should be included the “Fountain” at Dort, the “Corn Flower” at the Hague, the “White Columbine” at Leiden, the “Blue Columbine” at Rotterdam, the “Red Rose” at Schiedam, the “Thistle” at Zierikzee, “Jesus with the Balsam” at Ghent, and the “Garland of Mary” at Brussels. And not in these important places only, but in almost every little town, the rhetoricians exerted their influence, mainly in what we may call a social direction. Their wealth was in most cases considerable, and it very soon became evident that no festival or procession could take place in a town unless the “Kamer” patronized it. Towards the end of the 15th century the Ghent chamber of “Jesus with the Balsam” began to exercise a sovereign power over the other Flemish chambers, which was emulated later on in Holland by the “Eglantine” at Amsterdam. But this official recognition proved of no consequence in literature, and it was not in Ghent, but in Antwerp, that intellectual life first began to stir. In Holland the burghers only formed the chambers, while in Flanders the representatives of the noble families were honorary members, and assisted with their money at the arrangement of ecclesiastical or political pageants. Their pompous landjuweelen, or tournaments of rhetoric, at which rich prizes were contended for, were the great occasions upon which the members of the chambers distinguished themselves. Between 1426 and 1620 at least 66 of these festivals were held. There was a specially splendid landjuweel at Antwerp in 1496, in which 28 chambers took part, but the gayest of all was that celebrated at Antwerp on the 3rd of August 1561. To this the “Book” at Brussels sent 340 members, all on horseback, and clad in crimson mantles. The town of Antwerp gave a ton of gold to be given in prizes, which were shared among 1893 rhetoricians. This was the zenith of the splendour of the “Kamers van Rhetorica,” and after this time they soon fell into disfavour. We can trace the progress of literary composition under the chambers, although none of their official productions has descended to us. Their dramatic pieces were certainly of a didactic cast, with a strong farcical flavour, and continued the tradition of Maerlant and his school. They very rarely dealt with historical or even Biblical personages, but entirely with allegorical and moral abstractions, until the age of humanism introduced upon the stage the names without much of the spirit of mythology. Of the pure farces of the rhetorical chambers we can speak with still more confidence, for some of them have come down to us, and among the authors famed for their skill in this sort of writing are named Cornelis Everaert of Bruges and Laurens Janssen of Haarlem. The material of these farces is extremely raw, consisting of rough jests at the expense of priests and foolish husbands, silly old men and their light wives. Laurens Janssen is also deserving of remembrance for a satire against the clergy, written in 1583. The chambers also encouraged the composition of songs, but with very little success; they produced no lyrical genius more considerable than Matthijs de Casteleyn (1488-1550), the founder of the Flemish chamber of “Pax Vobiscum” at Oudenarde, and author of De Conste van Rhetorijcken (Ghent, 1573), a personage whose influence as a fashioner of language would have been more healthy if his astounding metrical feats and harlequin tours de force had not been performed in a dialect debased with all the worst bastard phrases of the Burgundian period.

In the middle of the 16th century a group of rhetoricians in Brabant and Flanders attempted to put a little new life into the stereotyped forms of the preceding age by introducing in original composition the new-found branches of Latin and Greek poetry. The leader of these men was Jean Baptista Houwaert (1533-1599), a personage of considerable political influence in his generation. Houwaert held the title of “Counsellor and Master in Ordinary of the Exchequer to the Dukedom of Brabant”; he played a prominent part in the revolution of the Low Countries against Spain; and when the prince of Orange entered Brussels victoriously (Sept. 23rd, 1577), Houwaert met him in pomp at the head of the two chambers of rhetoric—the “Book” and the “Garland of Mary.” He did not remain faithful to his convictions, for he composed in 1593 a poem in honour of the cardinal-archduke Ernest of Austria, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands. He considered himself a devout disciple of Matthijs de Casteleyn, but his great characteristic was his unbounded love of classical and mythological fancy. His didactic poems are composed in a wonderfully rococo style, and swarm with misplaced Latinities. In his bastard Burgundian tongue he boasted of having “poëtelijck geïnventeert ende rhetorijckelijck ghecomponeert” for the Brussels chamber such dramas as Aeneas and Dido, Mars and Venus, Narcissus and Echo, or Leander and Hero—named together the Commerce of Amorosity (1583). But of all his writings, Pegasides Pleyn (Antwerp, 1582-1583), or the Palace of Maidens, is the most remarkable; this is a didactic poem in sixteen books, dedicated to a discussion of the variety of earthly love. Houwaert’s contemporaries nicknamed him “the Homer of Brabant”; later criticism has preferred to see in him an important link in that chain of homely didactic Dutch which ends in Cats. His writings are composed in a Burgundian so base that they hardly belong to Flemish literature at all. Into the same miserable dialect Cornelis van Ghistele of Antwerp translated, between 1555 and 1583, parts of Terence, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, while the painter Karel van Mander (1547-1609) put a French version of the Iliad and of the Eclogues of Virgil into an equally ill-fitting Flemish dress. In no country of Europe did the humanism of the 16th century at first affect the national literature so slightly or to so little purpose.