The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 158

DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS, mountains covered with sheep in the "Pilgrim's Progress," from which the pilgrim obtains a view of the Celestial City.

DELESCLUZE, a French Communist, born at Dreux; was imprisoned and transported for his extreme opinions; started a journal, the _Reveil_, in 1868, to advocate the doctrines of the International; was mainly answerable for the atrocities of the Paris Commune; was killed in the barricades (1809-1871).

DELFT (27), a Dutch town, S m. NW. of Rotterdam, once famous for its pottery; is intersected by ca.n.a.ls; has an important polytechnic school.

DELGADO, a cape of E. Africa, on the border between Zanzibar and Mozambique.

DELHI (192), on the right bank of the Jumna, once the capital of the Mogul empire and the centre of the Mohammedan power in India; it is a great centre of trade, and is situated in the heart of India; it contains the famous palace of Shah Jahan, and the Jama Masjid, which occupies the heart of the city, and is the largest and finest mosque in India, which owes its origin to Shah Jahan; it is walled, is 51 m. in circ.u.mference, and divided into Hindu, Mohammedan, and European quarters; it was captured by Lord Lake in 1803, and during the Mutiny by the Sepoys, but after a siege of seven days retaken in 1857.

DELIGHT OF MANKIND, the Roman Emperor Trajan.

DELILAH, the Philistine woman who beguiled and betrayed Samson.

DELILLE, JACQUES, a French poet, born at Aigues Perse, in Auvergne; translator of the "Georgics" of Virgil into verse, afterwards the "aeneid"

and "Paradise Lost," besides producing also certain didactic and descriptive works; was a good versifier, but properly no poet, and much overrated; died blind (1738-1813).

DELITZSCH, FRANZ, a learned biblical scholar and exegete, born at Leipzig; his commentaries, which are numerous, were of a conservative tendency; he wrote on Jewish antiquities, biblical psychology, and Christian apologetics; was professor at Erlangen and Leipzig successively, where his influence on the students was distinctly marked (1813-1899).

DELIUS, NICOLAUS, a German philologist, born at Bremen; distinguished especially as a student of Shakespeare and for his edition of Shakespeare's works, which is of transcendent merit (1813-1888).

DELIA CRUSCANS, a set of English sentimental poetasters, the leaders of them hailing from Florence, that appeared in England towards the close of the 18th century, and that for a time imposed on many by their extravagant panegyrics of one another, the founder of the set being one Robert Merry, who signed himself _Della Crusca_; he first announced himself by a sonnet to Love, in praise of which Anne Matilda wrote an incomparable piece of nonsense; "this epidemic spread for a term from fool to fool," but was soon exposed and laughed out of existence.

DELLYS (3), a seaport in Algeria, 49 m. E. of Algiers.

DELOLME, JOHN LOUIS, a writer on State polity, born at Geneva, bred to the legal profession; spent some six years in England as a refugee; wrote a book on the "Const.i.tution of England," and in praise of it, which was received for a time with high favour in the country, but is now no longer regarded as an authority; wrote a "History of the Flagellants,"

and on "The Union of Scotland with England" (1740-1806).

DELORME, a French architect, born at Lyons; studied in Rome; was patronised by Catherine de Medici; built the palace of the Tuileries, and contributed to the art of building (1518-1577).

DELORME, MARION, a Frenchwoman celebrated for her wit and fascination, born at Chalons-sur-Marne; came to Paris in the reign of Louis XIII., where her drawing-room became the rendezvous of all the celebrities of the time, many of whom were bewitched by her charms; she gave harbour to the chiefs of the Fronde, and was about to be arrested when she died; the story that her death was a feint, and that she had subsequent adventures, is distrusted; she is the subject of a drama by Victor Hugo (1612-1650).

DELOS, the smallest and central island of the Cyclades, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and where the former had a famous oracle; it was, according to the Greek mythology, a floating island, and was first fixed to the spot by Zeus to provide Leda with a place, denied her elsewhere by Hera, in which to bring forth her twin offspring; it was at one time a centre of Apollo wors.h.i.+p, but is now uninhabited, and only frequented at times by shepherds with their flocks.

DELPHI, a town of ancient Greece in Phocis, at the foot of Parna.s.sus, where Apollo had a temple, and whence he was wont to issue his oracles by the mouth of his priestess the Pythia, who when receiving the oracle used to sit on a tripod over an opening in the ground through which an intoxicating vapour exhaled, deemed the breath of the G.o.d, and that proved the vehicle of her inspiration; the Pythian games were celebrated here.

DELPHIN CLa.s.sICS, an edition of the Greek and Roman cla.s.sics, edited by Bossuet and Huet, a.s.sisted by thirty-nine scholars, for the use of the dauphin of Louis XIV.; of little use now.

DELPHINE, a novel by Mme. de Stael; presumed to be an idealised picture of herself.

DELTA, the signature of D. Macbeth Moir in _Blackwood's Magazine_.

DELUC, JEAN ANDRe, geologist, born in Geneva; lived in England; was reader to Queen Charlotte, and author of several works (1727-1817).

DELUGE, name given to the tradition, common to several races, of a flood of such universality as to sweep the land, if not the earth, of all its inhabitants, except the pair by whom the land of the earth was repeopled.

DEM'ADES, an Athenian orator, a bitter enemy of Demosthenes, in the interest of Philip of Macedon; put to death for treason by Antipater, 318 B.C.; was a man of no principle, but a great orator.

DEMARA'TUS, king of Sparta from 510 to 491 B.C.; dispossessed of his crown, fled to Persia and accompanied Xerxes into Greece.

DEMAVEND, MOUNT, an extinct volcano, the highest peak (18,600 ft.) of the Elburz chain, in Persia.

DEMBEA, a lake, the largest in Abyssinia, being 60 m. long and 6000 ft. above the sea-level, from which the Blue Nile issues.

DEMBINSKI, HENRY, a Polish general, born near Cracow; served under Napoleon against Russia, under Kossuth against Austria; fled to Turkey on the resignation of Kossuth; died in Paris (1791-1864).

DEMERARA, a division of British Guiana; takes its name from the river, which is 200 m. long, and falls into the Atlantic at Georgetown.

DEMETER (lit. Earth-mother), the great Greek G.o.ddess of the earth, daughter of Kronos and Rhea and sister of Zeus, and ranks with him as one of the twelve great G.o.ds of Olympus; is specially the G.o.ddess of agriculture, and the giver of all the earth's fruits; the Latins call her Ceres.

DEMETRIUS, the name of two kings of Macedonia who ruled over the country, the first from 290 to 289 B.C., and the second from 240 to 229 B.C.

DEMETRIUS, or DIMITRI, the name of several sovereigns of Russia, and of four adventurers called the four false Dimitri.

DEMETRIUS I., Soter (i. e. saviour), king of Syria from 162 to 150 B.C.; was grandson of Antiochus the Great. D. II., Nicator (i. e.

conqueror), king of Syria from 143 to 125 B.C. D. III., Eucaeros (i. e. the happy), king of Syria in 95, died in 84 B.C.