The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 159

DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS, an eminent Athenian orator, statesman, and historian, born at Phalerus, a seaport of Athens; was held in high honour in Athens for a time as its political head, but fell into dishonour, after which he lived retired and gave himself up to literary pursuits; died from the bite of an asp; left a number of works (345-283 B.C.).

DEMIDOFF, a Russian family distinguished for their wealth, descended from a serf of Peter the Great, and who ama.s.sed a large fortune by manufacturing firearms for him, and were raised by him to the rank of n.o.bility; they were distinguished in the arts, in arms, and even literature; ANATOL in particular, who travelled over the SE. of Europe, and wrote an account of his travels, a work magnificently ill.u.s.trated.

DEMIG.o.d, a hero elevated in the imagination to the rank of a divinity in consequence of the display of virtues and the achievement of feats superior to those of ordinary men.

DEMI-MONDE, a cla.s.s in Parisian society dressing in a fashionable style, but of questionable morals.

DEMIURGUS, a name employed by Plato to denote the world-soul, the medium by which the idea is made real, the spiritual made material, the many made one, and it was adopted by the Gnostics to denote the world-maker as a being derived from G.o.d, but estranged from G.o.d, being environed in matter, which they regarded as evil, and so incapable as such of redeeming the soul from matter, from evil, such as the G.o.d of the Jews, and the Son of that G.o.d, conceived of as manifest in flesh.

DEMOCRACY has been defined to be government of the people by the people and for the people, or as a State in which the government rests directly with the majority of the citizens, but this under the protest of some that it is not an end but a means "to the attainment of a truer and truer aristocracy, or government again by the Best."

DEMOCRATS, a political party in the United States that contends for the rights of the several States to self-government as against undue centralisation.

DEMOCRITUS, a Greek philosopher, born in Abdera, Thrace, of wealthy parents; spent his patrimony in travel, gathered knowledge from far and near, and gave the fruits of it in a series of writings to his contemporary compatriots, only fragments of which remain, though they must have come down comparatively entire to Cicero's time, who compares them for splendour and music of eloquence to Plato's; his philosophy was called the _Atomic_, as he traced the universe to its ultimate roots in combinations of atoms, in quality the same but in quant.i.ty different, and referred all life and sensation to movements in them, while he regarded quiescence as the _summum bonum_; he has been called the Laughing Philosopher from, it is alleged, his habit of laughing at the follies of mankind; _b_. 460 B.C.

DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR, a pseudonym under which Burton published his "Anatomy of Melancholy."

DEMOGEOT, French litterateur, born at Paris; wrote a history of literature, chiefly French (1808-1894).

DEMOGORGON, a terrible deity, the tyrant of the elves and fairies, who must all appear before him once every five years to give an account of their doings.

DEMOIVRE, ABRAHAM, a mathematician, born in Champagne; lived most of his life in England to escape, as a Protestant, from persecution in France; became a friend of Newton, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was of such eminence as a mathematician that he was asked to arbitrate between the claims of Newton and Leibnitz to the invention of fluxions (1667-1754).

DEMON, or DAIMON, a name which Socrates gave to an inner divine instinct which corresponds to one's destiny, and guides him in the way he should go to fulfil it, and is more or less potent in a man according to his purity of soul.

DE MORGAN, AUGUSTUS, an eminent mathematician, born in Madura, S.

India; was professor of Mathematics in London University from 1828 till his death, though he resigned the appointment for a time in consequence of the rejection of a candidate, James Martineau, for the chair of logic, on account of his religious opinions; wrote treatises on almost every department of mathematics, on arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, the last p.r.o.nounced to be "the most complete treatise on the subject ever produced in England"; wrote also "Formal Logic" (1806-1871).

DEMOSTHENES, the great Athenian orator, born in Athens; had many impediments to overcome to succeed in the profession, but by ingenious methods and indomitable perseverance he subdued them all, and became the first orator not of Greece only, but of all antiquity; a stammer in his speech he overcame by practising with pebbles in his mouth, and a natural diffidence by declaiming on the sea-beach amid the noise of the waves; while he acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek language by binding himself down to copy five times over in succession Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War"; he employed 15 years of his life in denunciation of Philip of Macedon, who was bent on subjugating his country; p.r.o.nounced against him his immortal "Philippics" and "Olynthiacs"; took part in the battle of Cheronea, and continued the struggle even after Philip's death; on the death of Alexander he gave his services as an orator to the confederated Greeks, and in the end made away with himself by poison so as not to fall into the hands of Autipater (385-322 B.C.). See CTESIPHON.

DEMPSTER, THOMAS, a learned Scotchman, born in Aberdeenshire; held several professorships on the Continent; was the author of "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum," a work of great learning, but of questionable veracity; has been reprinted by the Bannatyne Club; his last days were embittered by the infidelity of his wife (1579-1625).

DENARIUS, a silver coin among the Romans, first coined in 269 B.C., and worth 8 d.

DENBIGH (6), the county town of Denbighshire, in the Vale of the Clwyd, 30 m. W. of Chester; manufactures shoes and leather.

DENBIGHSHIRE (117), a county in North Wales, of rugged hills and fertile vales, 40 m. long and 17 m. on an average broad, with a coal-field in the NE., and with mines of iron, lead, and slate.

DENDERA, a village in Upper Egypt, on the left bank of the Nile, 28 m. N. of Thebes, on the site of ancient Tentyra, with the ruins of a temple in almost perfect preservation; on the ceiling of a portico of which there was found a zodiac, now in the museum of the Louvre in Paris, and dates from the period of Cleopatra and the early Roman emperors, and has sculptured portraits of that queen and her son Caesarion.

DENGUE, a disease peculiar to the tropics, occurs in hot weather, and attacks one suddenly with high fever and violent pains, and after a relapse returns in a milder form and leaves the patient very weak.

DENHAM, DIXON, an English traveller, companion of Clapperton; visited Bornu and Lake Tchad (1785-1828).

DENHAM, SIR JOHN, an English poet, born at Dublin, the son of an Irish judge; took to gambling and squandered his patrimony; was unhappy in his marriage, and his mind gave way; is best known as the author of "Cooper's Hill," a descriptive poem, interspersed with reflections, and written in smooth flowing verse (1615-1669).

DENINA, CARLO, an Italian historian, born in Piedmont; banished from Italy for a cynical remark injurious to the monks; paid court to Frederick the Great in Berlin, where he lived a good while, and became eventually imperial librarian in Paris under Napoleon (1731-1813).

DENIS, a king of Portugal from 1279 to 1325; the founder of the University of Coimbra and the Order of Christ.

DENIS, ST., the apostle of the Gauls, the first bishop of Paris, and the patron saint of France; suffered martyrdom in 270.

DENIS, ST., a town 6 m. N. of Paris, within the line of the fortifications, with an abbey which contains the remains of St. Denis, and became the mausoleum of the kings of France.

DENISON, EDWARD, philanthropist; distinguished by his self-denying benevolent labours in the East End of London (1840-1870).

DENISON, GEORGE ANTHONY, archdeacon of Taunton, born in Notts; was charged with holding views on the eucharist inconsistent with the teaching of the Church of England, first condemned and then acquitted on appeal; a stanch High Churchman, and equally opposed to Broad Church and Low; _b_. 1805.

DENISON, JOHN EVELYN, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1858 to 1872, brother of the above (1800-1873).

DENMAN, LORD, Lord Chief-Justice of England from 1832 to 1850, born in London; was along with Brougham counsel for Queen Caroline (1779-1854).

DENMARK (2,182), the smallest of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, consisting of Jutland and an archipelago of islands in the Baltic Sea, divided into 18 counties, and is less than half the size of Scotland; is a low-lying country, no place in it more above the sea-level than 500 ft., and as a consequence has no river to speak of, only meres or lakes; the land is laid out in cornfields and grazing pastures; there are as good as no minerals, but abundance of clay for porcelain; while the exports consist chiefly of horses, cattle, swine, hams, and b.u.t.ter; it has 1407 m. of railway, and 8686 of telegraph wires; the government is const.i.tutional, and the established religion Lutheran.

DENNEWITZ, a village in Brandenburg, 40 m. SW. of Berlin, where Marshal Ney with 70,000 was defeated by Marshal Bulow with 50,000.