The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 449

WALLENSTEIN, general of the Imperial army in the Thirty Years' War, born in Bohemia, of a Protestant family, but on the death of his parents was, in his childhood, adopted and educated by the Jesuits, and bred up in the Catholic faith; bent on a military life, he served first in one campaign and then another; rose in imperial favour, and became a prince of the empire, but the jealousy of the n.o.bles procured his disgrace, till the success of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War and the death of Tully led to his recall, when he was placed at the head of the imperial army as commander-in-chief; drove the Saxons out of Bohemia, and marched against the Swedes, but was defeated, and fell again into disfavour; was deprived of his command, charged with treason, and afterwards murdered in the castle of Egra; he was a remarkable man, great in war and great in statesmans.h.i.+p, but of unbounded ambition; is the subject of a drama by Schiller, in three parts (1583-1634).

WALLER, EDMUND, poet, born in Hertfords.h.i.+re to great wealth, and educated at Eton and Cambridge; early gave evidence of his genius for poetry, which, however, was limited in practice to the production of merely occasional pieces; he was in great favour at court; was a member of the Long Parliament; leant to the Royalist side, though he wrote a panegyric on Cromwell, which, too, is considered his best poem; he revived, or rather "remodelled," the heroic couplet form of verse, which continued in vogue for over a hundred years after (1605-1687).

WALLOONS, name given to the descendants of the ancient Belgae, a race of a mixed Celtic and Romanic stock, inhabiting Belgium chiefly, and speaking a language called Walloon, a kind of Old French; in Belgium they number to-day two and a quarter millions.

WALPOLE, HORACE, Earl of Orford, born in London, educated at Eton and Cambridge; travelled on the Continent with Gray, the poet, who had been a school-fellow, but quarrelled with him, and came home alone; entered Parliament in 1741, and continued a member till 1768, but took little part in the debates; succeeded to the earldom in 1791; his tastes were literary; wrote "Anecdotes of Painting in England," and inaugurated a new era in novel-writing with his "Castle of Otranto," but it is by his "Letters" he will live in English literature, which, "malicious, light as froth, but amusing, retail," as Stopford Brooke remarks, "with liveliness all the gossip of the time"; he is characterised by Carlyle as "one of the clearest-sighted men of his century; a determined despiser and merciless dissector of cant" (1717-1797).

WALPOLE, SIR ROBERT, Earl of Orford, Whig statesman, born at Houghton, Norfolk, educated at Eton and Cambridge; entered Parliament in 1701, and became member for King's Lynn in 1702; was favoured by the Whig leaders, and promoted to office in the Cabinet; was accused of corruption by the opposite party when in power, and committed to the Tower; on his release after acquittal was re-elected for King's Lynn; in 1715 became First Lord of the Treasury, and in 1721 became Prime Minister, which he continued to be for twenty-one years, but not without opposition on account of his pacific policy; on being driven against his will into a war with Spain, which proved unsuccessful, he retired into private life; he stood high in repute for his financial policy; it was he who established the first Sinking Fund, and who succeeded as a financier in restoring confidence after the bursting of the SOUTH SEA BUBBLE (q. v.); it is to his policy in defeating the plans of the Jacobites that the Hanoverian dynasty in great part owe their permanent occupancy of the British throne; it was a favourite maxim of his. "Every man has his price," and he was mortified to find that Pitt could not be bought by any bribe of his (1677-1745).

WALPURGIS NIGHT, the eve of the 1st May, when the witches hold high revel and offer sacrifices to the devil their chief, the scene of their festival in Germany being the BROCKEN (q. v.). This annual festival was in the popular belief conceded to them in recompense for the loss they sustained when by St. Walpurga the Saxons were persuaded to renounce paganism with its rites for Christianity.

WALSINGHAM, SIR FRANCIS, English statesman, born at Chiselhurst; was amba.s.sador at Paris, and was there during the St. Bartholomew ma.s.sacre, and was afterwards appointed one of Queen Elizabeth's Secretaries of State; he was an insidious inquisitor, and had numerous spies in his pay, whom he employed to ferret out evidence to her ruin against Mary, Queen of Scots, and he had the audacity to sit as one of the Commissioners at her trial (1536-1590).

WALSTON, ST., patron saint of husbandmen, of British birth; gave up wealth for agriculture, and died at the plough; is represented with a scythe in his hand and cattle near him.

WALTER, JOHN, London printer; the founder proper, though his father was the projector, of the _Times_ newspaper, and forty years in the management of it, under which it became the "leading journal" of the day, a success due to his discernment and selection of the men with the ability to conduct it and contribute to it (1773-1847).

WALTER THE PENNILESS, a famous mob leader, adjutant of Peter the HERMIT (q. v.) in the first Crusade.

WALTON, IZAAK, the angler, born in Stafford; settled as a linen-draper, first in Fleet Street and then in Chancery Lane, London; married a lady, a grand-niece of Cranmer, and on her death a sister of Bishop Ken, by whom he had several children; he a.s.sociated with some of the best clergymen of the Church of England, among the number Dr. Donne, and was much beloved by them; on the death of his second wife he went to Winchester and stayed with his friend Dr. Morley, the bishop; his princ.i.p.al work was the "Complete Angler; or, the Contemplative Man's Recreation," which was extended by his friend Charles Cotton, and is a cla.s.sic to this day; he wrote in addition Lives of Hooker, Dr. Donne, Bishop Sanderson, Sir Henry Wotton, and George Herbert, all done, like the "Angler," in a uniquely charming, simple style (1593-1683).

WANDERING JEW. See JEW, WANDERING.

WAPENSHAW, originally gatherings of the people of a district in ancient times in Scotland, at which every man was bound to appear duly armed according to his rank, and make exhibition of his skill in the use of his weapons, against a time of war.

WARBECK, PERKIN, an impostor who affected to be Richard, Duke of York, second son of Edward IV., alleged to have been murdered in the Tower, and laid claim to the crown of England in preference to Henry VII.

In an attempt to make good this claim he was taken prisoner, and hanged at Tyburn in 1499.

WARBURTON, WILLIAM, an English divine, born at Newark; was bishop of Gloucester; was author of the famous "Divine Legation of Moses,"

characterised by Gibbon as a "monument of the vigour and weakness of the human mind"; is a distracted waste of misapplied logic and learning; a singular friends.h.i.+p subsisted between the author and Pope (1698-1779).

WARD, ARTEMUS, the pseudonym of C. F. BROWNE (q. v.).

WARD, MRS. HUMPHRY, English auth.o.r.ess, born at Hobart Town; is a niece of Matthew Arnold; translated Amiel's "Journal," a suggestive record, but is best known by her romance of "Robert Elsmere," published in 1888, a work which was a help to some weak people and an offence to others of the same cla.s.s; _b_. 1851.

WARD, WILLIAM GEORGE, English theologian; was a zealous promoter of the Tractarian Movement, and led the way in carrying out its principles to their logical issue by joining the Church of Rome; he was a broad-minded man withal, and won the regard of men of every school; became editor of the _Dublin Review_ (1812-1882).

WARRINGTON (55), a parliamentary borough in Lancas.h.i.+re, on the Mersey, 20 m. E. of Liverpool; an old town, but with few relics of its antiquity; manufactures iron-ware, gla.s.s, soap, &c.; sends one member to Parliament.

WARS OF THE ROSES, name given to a civil war in England from 1452 to 1486, between the Houses of York and Lancaster, so called from the badge of the former being a _white_ rose and that of the latter being a _red_; it terminated with the accession of Henry VII., who united in his person the rival claims.

WARSAW (465), formerly the capital of Poland, now of the province of Russian Poland; stands on the left bank of the Vistula, 700 m. SW. of St.

Petersburg; is almost in the heart of Europe, and in a position with many natural advantages; is about as large as Birmingham, and the third largest city in the Russian empire; it has a university with 75 professors and 1000 students, and has a large trade and numerous manufactures.

WARTBURG, an old grim castle overhanging EISENACH (q. v.), where Luther was confined by his friends when it was too hot for him outside, and where, not forgetful of what he owed his country, he kept translating the Bible into the German vernacular, and where they still show the oaken table at which he did it, and the oaken ink-holder which he threw at the devil's head, as well as the ink-spot it left on the wall.

WARTON, THOMAS, English poet, born at Basingstoke; was professor of Poetry at Oxford, and Poet-Laureate; wrote a "History of English Poetry"

of great merit, and a few poetic pieces in faint echo of others by Pope and Swift for most part (1728-1790).

WARWICK (11), the county town of Warwicks.h.i.+re, on the Avon, 21 m.

SE. of Birmingham; it dates from Saxon times, and possesses a great baronial castle, the residence of the earls of Warwick, erected in 1394 on an eminence by the river grandly overlooking the town; it is the seat of several industries, and has a considerable trade in agricultural produce.

WARWICK, RICHARD NEVILLE, EARL OF, eldest son of the Earl of Salisbury, THE KING-MAKER (q. v.); fought in the "Wars of the Roses," and was in the end defeated by Edward IV. and slain (1428-1471).

WARWICKs.h.i.+RE (805), central county of England; is traversed by the Avon, a tributary of the Severn; the north portion, which was at one time covered by the forest of Arden, is now, from its mineral wealth, one of the busiest industrial centres of England; it contains the birthplace of Shakespeare; Birmingham is the largest town.

WASH, THE, an estuary of the E. coast of England, between the counties of Norfolk and Lincoln, too shallow for navigation.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON (278), capital of the United States, in the district of Columbia, on the left bank of the Potomac, 35 in. SW. of Baltimore; was founded in 1791, and made the seat of the Government in 1800; it is regularly laid out, possesses a number of n.o.ble buildings, many of them of marble, the chief being the Capitol, an imposing structure, where the Senate and Congress sit; near it, 1 m. distant, is the White House, the residence of the President, standing in grounds beautifully laid out and adorned with fountains and shrubbery.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON (340), a NW. State of the American Union, twice the size of Ireland; lies N. of Oregon; is traversed by the Cascade Mountains, the highest 8138 ft., and has a rugged surface of hill and valley, but is a great wheat-growing and grazing territory, covered on the W. by forests of pine and cedar; Olympia is the capital. Was.h.i.+ngton is the name of hundreds of places in the States.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, GEORGE, one of the founders and first President of the United States, born at Bidges Creek, Westmoreland Co., Virginia, of a family from the North of England, who emigrated in the middle of the 17th century; commenced his public life in defending the colony against the encroachments of the French, and served as a captain in a campaign against them under General Braddock; In the contest between the colony and the mother-country he warmly espoused that of the colony, and was in 1775 appointed commander-in-chief; his first important operation in that capacity was to drive the English out of Boston, but the British rallying he was defeated at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777; next year, in alliance with the French, he drove the British out of Philadelphia, and in 1781 compelled Cornwallis to capitulate in an attack he made on Yorktown, and on the evacuation of New York by the British the independence of America was achieved, upon which he resigned the command; in 1789 he was elected to the Presidency of the Republic, and in 1793 was re-elected, at the end of which he retired into private life after paying a dignified farewell (1732-1799).

WATERBURY (46), a city of Connecticut, U.S., 88 m. NE. of New York, with manufactures of metallic wares; world-famous for its cheap watches.