The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 136

of the State. The climate resembles that of northern England, but is in some parts very rainy. The chief industries are lumbering--the forests are among the finest in the world, fis.h.i.+ng--the rivers abound in salmon and sturgeon, and mining--rich deposits of gold, silver, iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and many other valuable minerals are found; there are great coal-fields in Vancouver. In Vancouver and in the river valleys of the mainland are extensive tracts of arable and grazing land; but neither agriculture nor manufactures are much developed. Made a Crown colony in 1858, it joined the Dominion as a province in 1871. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 joined it to the eastern provinces. The capital is Victoria (17), in the S. of Vancouver.

COLUMBUS (125), capital of Ohio, U.S., a manufacturing town.

COLUMBUS, BARTHOLOMEW, cosmographer, brother of Christopher Columbus; accompanied him to St. Domingo, and became governor; _d_. 1514.

COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER, discoverer of America, on Oct. 12, 1492, after two months of great peril and, in the end, mutiny of his men, born in Genoa; went to sea at 14; cherished, if he did not conceive, the idea of reaching India by sailing westward; applied in many quarters for furtherance; after seven years of waiting, was provided with three small vessels and a crew of 120 men; first touched land at the Bahamas, visited Cuba and Hayti, and returned home with spoils of the land; was hailed and honoured as King of the Sea; he made three subsequent visits, and on the third had the satisfaction of landing on the mainland, which Sebastian Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci had reached before him; he became at last the victim of jealousy, and charges were made against him, which so cut him to the heart that he never rallied from the attack, and he died at Valladolid, broken in body and in soul; Carlyle, in a famous pa.s.sage, salutes him across the centuries: "Brave sea-captain, Norse sea-king, Columbus my hero, royalist sea-king of all" (1438-1506).

COLUMELLA, JUNIUS, a Latin writer of the 1st century, born at Cadiz; author of "De Re Rustica," in 12 books, on the same theme as Virgil's "Georgics," viz., agriculture and gardening; he wrote also "De Arboribus," on trees.

COLU'THUS, a Greek epic poet of 6th century, born in Egypt; wrote the "Rape of Helen."

COLVIN, SIDNEY, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge, born at Norwood; contributor to the journals on art and literature; has written Lives of Keats and Landor; friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, and his literary executor; _b_. 1845.

COMACCHIO (10), a walled town, 30 m. SE. of Ferrara; famous for fish, specially eel-culture in a large lagoon adjoining, 90 in. in circ.u.mference.

COMBE, ANDREW, M.D., a physician and physiologist, born in Edinburgh; studied under Spurzheim in Edinburgh and Paris, but on his return to his native city was seized with pulmonary consumption, which rendered him a confirmed invalid, so that he had to spend his winters abroad; was eminent as a physician; was a believer in phrenology; produced three excellent popular works on Physiology, Digestion, and the Management of Infancy (1797-1847).

COMBE, GEORGE, brother of the preceding, born in Edinburgh; trained to the legal profession; like his brother, he became, under Spurzheim, a stanch phrenologist and advocate of phrenology; but his ablest and best-known work was "The Const.i.tution of Man," to the advocacy of the principles of which and their application, especially to education, he devoted his life; he married a daughter of the celebrated Mrs. Siddons (1788-1858).

COMBE, WILLIAM, born in Bristol; author of the "Three Tours of Dr.

Syntax"; inherited a small fortune, which he squandered by an irregular life; wrote some 86 works (1741-1823).

COMBERMERE, VISCOUNT, a British field-marshal, born in Denbighs.h.i.+re; served in Flanders, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in India; was present at the siege of Seringapatam; was sent to Spain in 1808; distinguished himself in the Peninsula, and particularly at Talavera; received a peerage in 1827; was made commander-in-chief in India, and Constable of the Tower in succession to Wellington in 1832 (1773-1865).

COMENIUS, JOHN AMOS, a Moravian educational reformer, particularly as regards the acquisition of languages in their connection with the things they denote; his two most famous books are his "Janua Linguarum"

and his "Orbis Sensualium Pictus"; his principle at bottom was, words must answer to and be a.s.sociated with things and ideas of things, a principle still only very partially adopted in education, and that only at the most elementary stages.

COMET, a member of the solar system under control of the sun, consisting of a bright nucleus within a nebulous envelope, generally extended into a tail on the rear of its...o...b..t, which is extremely eccentric, pursuing its course with a velocity which increases as it approaches the sun, and which diminishes as it withdraws from it; these bodies are very numerous, have their respective periods of revolution, which have been in many cases determined by observation.

COMINES, a French town in the dep. of Nord, France, 15 m. SW. of Courtrai.

COMINES, PHILIPPE DE, a French chronicler, born at Comines; was of Flemish origin; served under Charles the Bold, then under Louis XI. and Charles VIII.; author of "Memoires," in seven vols., of the reigns of these two monarchs, which give a clear and faithful picture of the time and the chief actors in it, but with the coolest indifference as to the moral elements at work, with him the end justifying the means, and success the measure of morality (1443-1509).

COMITIA, const.i.tutional a.s.semblies of the Roman citizens for electing magistrates, putting some question to the vote of the people, the declaration of war, &c.

COMITY OF NATIONS, the name given for the effect given in one country to the laws and inst.i.tutions of another in dealing with a native of it.

COMMANDITE, SOCIeTe EN, partners.h.i.+p in a business by a supply of funds, but without a share in the management or incurring further liability.

COMMELIN, ISAAC, Dutch historian; wrote the "Lives of the Stadtholders William I. and Maurice" (1598-1676).

COMMENTARIES OF JULIUS CaeSAR, his memoirs of the Gallic and Civil Wars, reckoned the most perfect model of narration that in such circ.u.mstances was ever written, and a masterpiece.

COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY, a committee of nine created by the French Convention, April 6, 1793, to concentrate the power of the executive, "the conscience of Marat, who could see salvation in one thing only, in the fall of 260,000 aristocrats' heads"; notable, therefore, for its excesses in that line; was not suppressed till Oct. 19, 1796, on the advent of the Directory to power.

COM'MODUS, LUCIUS AURELIUS, Roman emperor, son and successor of Marcus Aurelius; carefully trained, but on his father's death threw up the reins and gave himself over to every form of licentiousness; poison administered by his mistress Marcia being slow in operating, he was strangled to death by a hired athlete in 162.

COMMON LAW is law established by usage and confirmed by judicial decision.

COMMON-SENSE, PHILOSOPHY OF, the philosophy which rests on the principle that the perceptions of the senses reflect things as they actually are irrespectively of them.

COMMUNE, THE, a revolutionary power installed in Paris after the "admonitory" insurrection of March 18, 1871, and overthrown in the end of May.

COMMUNISM, community of property in a State.

COMNE'NUS, name of a dynasty of six emperors of Constantinople.

COMO, LAKE OF, one of the chief lakes of Lombardy and the third in size, at the foot of the Pennine Alps, 80 m. long and 2 at greatest breadth; is traversed by the Adda, and is famed for the beauty and rich variety of its scenery.

COMORIN, CAPE, a low sandy point, the most southerly of India, from which the seaman is beckoned off by a peak 18 m. inland.

COMORO ISLES (63), an archipelago of four volcanic islands at the N.

of the channel of Mozambique; under the protectorate of France since 1886; the people are Mohammedans, and speak Arabic.

COMPARETTI, an Italian philologist; his writings are numerous; _b_.

1835.