The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 153

DANAe, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, confined by her father in an inaccessible tower of bra.s.s to prevent the fulfilment of an oracle that she should be the mother of a son who would kill him, but Zeus found access to her in the form of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, by whose hand Acrisius met his fate. See PERSEUS.

DANA'IDES, daughters of Danaus, who, for murdering their husbands on the night after marriage, were doomed in the nether world to the impossible task of filling with water a vessel pierced with holes. See DANAuS.

DANAuS, son of Belus, and twin-brother of aegyptus, whom fearing, he fled from with his fifty daughters to Argos, where he was chosen king; by-and-by the fifty sons of aegyptus, his brother, came to Argos to woo, and were wedded to, their cousins, whom their father provided each with a dagger to murder her husband, which they did, all except Hypermnestra, whose husband, Lynceus, escaping, succeeded her father as king, to the defeat of the old man's purpose in the crime.

DANBY, FRANCIS, painter, born near Wexford; settled for a time in Bristol, then in Switzerland, and finally at Exmouth; his works are mostly landscape, instinct with feeling, but some of them are historical, the subjects being taken from Scripture, as the "Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea,"

or from pagan sources, as "Marius among the Ruins of Carthage"

(1793-1861).

DANCE, GEORGE, English architect; was architect to the City of London, and designed the Mansion House, his chief work (1700-1768).

GEORGE, his son, built Newgate Prison (1740-1825).

DANCE OF DEATH, an allegorical representation in a dramatic or pictorial form of Death, figuring, originally as a skeleton, and performing his part as a chief actor all through the drama of life, and often amid the gayest scenes of it; a succession of woodcuts by Holbein in representation of this dance is well known.

DANCING MANIA, an epidemic of frequent occurrence, especially in German towns, during the Middle Ages, of the nature of hysteria, showing itself in convulsive movements beyond the control of the will, and in delirious acts, sometimes violently suicidal; the most signal occurrence of the mania was at Aix-la-Chapelle in July 1374.

DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON, French dramatist, a prolific author; a favourite of Louis XIV.; wrote comedies, chiefly on the follies of the middle cla.s.ses of the time (1661-1725).

DANDIE DINMONT, a humorous, jovial store-farmer in "Guy Mannering."

DANDIN, GEORGE, one of Moliere's comedies, ill.u.s.trative of the folly a man commits when he marries a woman of higher rank than his own, George being his impersonation of a husband who has patiently to endure all the extravagant whims and fancies of his dame of a wife.

DANDIN, PERRIN, a simple citizen in the "Pantagruel" of Rabelais, who seats himself judge-wise on the first stump that offers, and pa.s.ses offhand a sentence in any matter of litigation; a character who figures similarly in a comedy of Racine's, and in a fable of La Fontaine's.

DAN'DOLO, a Venetian family that furnished four Doges to the Republic, ENRICO being the most ill.u.s.trious; chosen Doge in his eighty-fourth year, a.s.sisted the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade with s.h.i.+ps; joined them, when blind and aged 90, in laying siege to Constantinople; led the attack by sea, and was the first to leap ash.o.r.e; was offered the imperial crown, but declined it; died instead "despot" of Roumania in 1205, at 97.

DANEGELT, originally a tax imposed on land to buy off the Danes from the sh.o.r.es of England, and subsequently for other objects, such as the defence of the coast; abolished by Henry II., though re-imposed subsequently under other names.

DANELAGH, a district in the E. of England, N. of the Thames; dominated at one time more or less by the Danes; of vague extent.

DANGEAU, MARQUIS, author of "Memoirs" affecting the court of Louis XIV. and its manners (1638-1720).

D'ANGOULeME, d.u.c.h.eSSE, daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; was released from restraint after the execution of her parents in exchange for prisoners in the Royalist's hands; fled to Vienna, where she was driven forth; married her cousin, to whom she was early betrothed; could find no place of safe refuge but in England; returned to France on Napoleon's exile to Elba, and headed a body of troops against him on his return; after Waterloo, returned to France and stayed till July 1830, and lived to see Louis Philippe, in 1848, driven from the throne; Napoleon called her "the only man of her family"; left "Memoirs" (1778-1851).

DANGS, THE, a forest district in the N. of the Presidency of Bombay, occupied by fifteen wild tribes, each under a chief.

DANIEL, a Hebrew of fine physique and rare endowment, who was, while but a youth, carried captive to Babylon, and trained for office in the court of the king; was found, after three years' discipline, to excel "in wisdom and understanding" all the magicians and enchanters of the realm, of which he gave such proof that he rose step by step to the highest official positions, first in the Babylonian and then in the Persian empire. He was a Hebrew prophet of a new type, for whereas the old prophet had, for the most part, more regard to the immediate present and its outlooks, his eye reached forth into the future and foresaw in vision, as his book has foretold in symbol, the fulfilment of the hope for which the fathers of his race had lived and died.

DANIEL, SAMUEL, English poet, born near Taunton; wrote dramas and sonnets; his princ.i.p.al production a "History of the Civil Wars" of York and Lancaster, a poem in seven books; is called the "Well-Englished Daniel," and is much admired for his style; in prose he wrote a "History of England," and a "Defence of Rhyme," which Swinburne p.r.o.nounces to be "one of the most perfect examples of sound sense, of pure style, and of just judgment in the literature of criticism"; he is a.s.sociated with Warner and Drayton as having given birth to "a poetry which has devoted itself to extol the glory of England" (1562-1619).

DANIELL, JOHN FREDERICK, a distinguished chemist, born in London; professor of Chemistry in King's College, London; wrote "Meteorological Essays," and "Introduction to Chemical Philosophy"; invented a hygrometer and an electric battery (1790-1845).

DANIELL, WILLIAM, an eminent draughtsman; spent his early life in India; author of "Oriental Scenery," in six folio vols. (1769-1837).

DANITES, or Destroying Angels, a band of Mormons organised to prevent the entrance into Mormon territory of other than Mormon immigrants, but whose leader, for a ma.s.sacre they perpetrated, was in 1827 convicted and shot.

DANNECKER, JOHANN HEINRICH VON, a distinguished German sculptor, born near Stuttgart, and educated by the Duke of Wurtemberg, who had become his patron; became professor of Sculpture in the Academy at Stuttgart; his earlier subjects were from the Greek mythology, and his later Christian, the princ.i.p.al of the latter being a colossal "Christ,"

which he took eight years to complete; he executed besides busts of contemporaries, which are wonderful in expression, such as those of Schiller, Lavater, and Gluck; "Ariadne on the Panther" is regarded as his masterpiece (1758-1841).

DANTE ALIGHIERI, the great poet of Italy, "the voice of ten silent centuries," born in Florence; was of n.o.ble birth; showed early a great pa.s.sion for learning; learned all that the schools and universities of the time could teach him "better than most"; fought as a soldier; did service as a citizen; at thirty-five filled the office of chief magistrate of Florence; had, while but a boy of ten, "met a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful girl of his own age and rank, and had grown up in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her,"

who became to him the ideal of all that was pure and n.o.ble and good; "made a great figure in his poem and a great figure in his life"; she died in 1290; he married another, "not happily, far from happily; in some civic Guelf-Ghibelline strife he was expelled the city, and his property confiscated; tried hard to recover it, even 'with arms in his hand,' but could not, and was doomed, 'whenever caught, to be burned alive'; invited to confess his guilt and return, he sternly answered: 'If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will never return.'" From this moment he was without home in this world; and "the great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world ... over which, this time-world, with its Florences and banishments, flutters as an unreal shadow." Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into "mystic unfathomable song," and this, his "DIVINE COMEDY" (q. v.), the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. He died after finis.h.i.+ng it, not yet very old, at the age of 56. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna, "shutout from my native sh.o.r.es." The Florentines begged back his body in a century after; the Ravenna people would not give it (1265-1321). See CARLYLE'S "HEROES AND HERO-WORs.h.i.+P," and Dean Plumptre's "LIFE OF DANTE."

DANTON, GEORGES JACQUES, "The t.i.tan of the Forlorn Hope" of the French Revolution, born at Arcis-sur-Aube, "of good farmer people ... a huge, brawny, black-browed man, with a waste energy as of a Hercules"; an advocate by profession, "esurient, but with nothing to do; found Paris and his country in revolt, rose to the front of the strife; resolved to do or die"; the cause threatened, he threw himself again and again into the breach defiant, his motto "to dare, and to dare, and again to dare,"

so as to put and keep the enemy in fear; "Let my name be blighted," he said, "what am I? The cause alone is great, and will live and not perish"; but the "SEA-GREEN" (q. v.) viewed him with jealousy, held him suspect, had him arrested, brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the severity of whose proceedings under him he had condemned, and sentenced to the guillotine; a reflection of his in prison has been recorded: "Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with governing of men." "No weakness, Danton," he said to himself on the scaffold, as his heart began to sink within him as he thought of his wife. His last words were to Samson the headsman: "Thou wilt show my head to the people, it is worth showing"; words worthy of the brother of Mirabeau, who died saying, "I wish I could leave my head behind me, France needs it just now"; a man fiery-real, as has been said, genuine to the core, with many sins, yet lacking that greatest of sins, cant. "He was," says Mr. Belloc, "the most French, the most national, the nearest to the mother of all the Revolutionary group. He summed up France ...

when we study him, we see France" (1759-1794). See CARLYLE'S "FRENCH REVOLUTION."

DANTZIG (116), the capital of W. Prussia, once a Hanse town, on the Vistula, 4 m. from the mouth; one of the great ports and trading centres of Germany and in the N. of Europe; it is traversed by ca.n.a.ls, and many of the houses are built on piles of wood; exports grain brought down the river on timber rafts from the great grain country in the S.; it is one of the chief stations of the German navy.

DANUBE, THE, the great south-eastward-flowing river of Europe, 1750 m. in length, rises in the Black Forest, and is divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower; the Upper extends as far as Pressburg, begins to be navigable to Ulm, flows NE. as far as Ratisbon, and then bends SE. past Vienna; the Middle extends from Pressburg to the Iron Gate, enclosing between its gorges a series of rapids, below Orsova; and the Lower extends from the Iron Gate to the Black Sea. It receives numerous tributary rivers, 60 of them navigable, in its course; forms with them the great water highway of the SE. of Europe, and is of avail for traffic to all the races and nations whose territories it traverses; the navigation of the river is free indeed to all nations.

DANUBIAN PRINc.i.p.aLITIES, Moldavia and Wallachia.

DANVILLE, the name of several towns in the United States.

D'ANVILLE, geographer to the king of France; left numerous valuable maps and geographical works (1697-1782).

DAPHNE (lit. a laurel), a nymph chased by Apollo, transformed into a laurel as he attempts to seize her; henceforth sacred to the G.o.d.