The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 338

PANDULF, CARDINAL, was the Pope's legate to King John of England, and to whom, on his submission, John paid homage at Dover; _d_. 1226.

PANGE LINGUA, a hymn in the Roman Breviary, service of Corpus Christi, part of which is incorporated in every Eucharistic service; was written in rhymed Latin by Thomas Aquinas.

PaNINI, a celebrated Sanskrit grammarian, whose work is of standard authority among Hindu scholars, and who lived some time between 600 and 300 B.C.

PANIPAT (29), a town in the Punjab, 53 m. N. of Delhi; was the scene of two decisive battles, one in 1526 to the establishment of the Mogul dynasty at Delhi, and another in 1701 to the extinction of the Mahratta supremacy in North-West India.

PANIZZI, ANTONIO, princ.i.p.al librarian of the British Museum from 1850 to 1866, born at Modena; took refuge in England in 1821 as implicated in a Piedmontese revolutionary movement that year; procured the favour of Lord Brougham and a post in the Museum, in which he rose to be one of the chiefs (1797-1879).

PANNONIA, a province of the Roman empire, conquered between 35 B.C.

and A.D. 8; occupied a square with the Danube on the N. and E. and the Save almost on the S. border; it pa.s.sed to the Eastern Empire in the 5th century, fell under Charlemagne's sway, and was conquered by the modern Hungarians shortly before A.D. 1000.

PANOPTICON, a prison so arranged that the warder can see every prisoner in charge without being seen by them.

PANSLAVISM, the name given to a movement for union of all the Slavonic races in one nationality, a project which lags heavily owing to the jealousy on the part of one section or another.

PANTAGRUEL, the princ.i.p.al character of one of the two great works of Rabelais, and named after him; he and his father Gargantua figured as two enormous giants, being personifications of royalty with its insatiable l.u.s.t of territory and power.

PANTHEISM, the doctrine or creed which affirms the immanency of G.o.d in nature, or that G.o.d is within nature, but ignores or denies His transcendency, or that He is above nature; distinguished from deism, which denies the former but affirms the latter, from theism, which affirms both, and from atheism, which denies both.

PANTHEON, a temple in Rome, first erected by Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, circular in form, 150 ft. in height, with niches all round for statues of the G.o.ds, to whom in general it was dedicated; it is now a church, and affords sepulture to ill.u.s.trious men. Also a building in Paris, originally intended to be a church in honour of the patron saint of Paris, but at the time of the Revolution converted into a receptacle for the ashes of the ill.u.s.trious dead, Mirabeau being its first occupant, and bearing this inscription, _Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissant_; it was subsequently appropriated to other uses, but under the third republic it became again a resting-place for the ashes of eminent men.

PANTOGRAPH, the name given to a contrivance for copying a drawing or a design on an enlarged or a reduced scale.

PANURGE, one of the princ.i.p.al characters in the "Pantagruel" of Rabelais, an exceedingly crafty knave, a libertine, and a coward.

PANZA, SANCHO, Don Quixote's squire, a squat, paunchy peasant endowed with rude common-sense, but incapable of imagination.

PAOLI, PASQUALE DE, a Corsican patriot; sought to achieve the independence of his country, but was defeated by the Genoese, aided by France, in 1769; took refuge in England, where he was well received and granted a pension; returned to Corsica and became lieutenant-general under the French republic, raised a fresh insurrection, had George III.

proclaimed king, but failed to receive the viceroyalty, and returned to England, where he died a disappointed man (1726-1807).

PAPAL STATES, a territory in the N. of Italy extending irregularly from Naples to the Po, at one time subject to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, originating in a gift to his Holiness of Pepin the Short, and taking shape as such about the 11th century, till in the 16th and 17th centuries the papal power began to a.s.sert itself in the general politics of Europe, and after being suppressed for a time by Napoleon it was formally abolished by annexation of the territory to the crown of Sardinia in 1870.

PAPHOS, the name of two ancient cities in the SW. of Cyprus; the older (now Kyklia) was a Phoenician settlement, in which afterwards stood a temple of Venus, who was fabled to have sprung from the sea-foam close by; the other, 8 m. westward, was the scene of Paul's interview with Sergius Paulus and encounter with Elymas.

PAPIAS, bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, who flourished in the middle of the 2nd century, and wrote a book ent.i.tled "Exposition of the Lord's Sayings," fragments of which have been preserved by Eusebius and others; he was, it is said, the companion of Polycarp.

PAPIER-MaCHE is a light, durable substance made from paper pulp or sheets of paper pasted together and variously treated with chemicals, heat, and pressure, largely used for ornamental trays, boxes, light furniture, &c., in which it is varnished and decorated to resemble lacquer-work, and for architectural decoration, in which it is made to imitate plaster moulding; the manufacture was learned from the Eastern nations. Persia, India, and j.a.pan having been long familiar with it; America has adapted it to use for railroad wheels, &c.

PAPIN, DENIS, French physicist, born at Blois, practised medicine at Angers; came to England and a.s.sisted Boyle in his experiments, made a special study of the expansive power of steam and its motive power, invented a steam-digester with a safety-valve, since called after him, for cooking purposes at a high temperature; became professor of Mathematics at Marburg (1647-1712).

PAPINIa.n.u.s, aeMILIUS, a celebrated Roman jurist; was put to death by Caracalla for refusing, it is said, when requested, to vindicate his conduct in murdering his brother (142-212).

PAPIRIUS, a Roman pontiff to whom is ascribed a collection of laws const.i.tuting the Roman code under the kings.

PAPPENHEIM, COUNT VON, imperial general, born in Bavaria; played a prominent part in the Thirty Years' War; was distinguished for his zeal as well as his successes on the Catholic side; was mortally wounded at Lutzen, expressed his grat.i.tude to G.o.d when he learned that Gustavas Adolphus, who fell in the same battle, had died before him (1594-1632).

PAPPUS OF ALEXANDRIA, a Greek geometer of the third or fourth century, author of "Mathematical Collections," in eight books, of which the first and second have been lost.

PAPUANS, the name of the members of the negro race inhabiting certain islands of Oceania, including New Guinea, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Fiji Islands, &c.

PAPY'RUS, the Greek name of the Egyptian _papu_, is a kind of sedge growing 10 ft. high, with a soft triangular stem, the pith of which is easily split into ribbons, found still in Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, &c.; the pith ribbons were the paper of the ancient Egyptians, of the Greeks after Alexander, and of the later Romans; they were used by the Arabs of the 8th century, and in Europe till the 12th; at first long strips were rolled up, but later rectangular pages were cut and bound together book fashion; though age has rendered the soft white pages brown and brittle, much ancient literature is still preserved on papyrus; the use of papyrus was superseded by that of parchment and rag-made paper.

PARa (40), a Brazilian port at the mouth of the Guama, on the E.

sh.o.r.e of the Para estuary, is a compact, regularly-built, thriving town, with whitewashed buildings, blue and white tiled roofs, tree-shaded streets, tram-cars, telephones, theatre, and cathedral; it is the emporium of the Amazon trade, exporting india-rubber and cacao, and sending foreign goods into the interior; though hot, it is healthy.

PARABLE, a short allegorical narrative intended to ill.u.s.trate and convey some spiritual instruction.

PARABOLA, a conic section formed by the intersection of a cone by a plane parallel to one of its sides.

PARACELSUS, a Swiss physician, alchemist, and mystic, whose real name was Theophrastus Bombastus, born at Einsiedeln, in Schwyz; was a violent revolutionary in the medical art, and provoked much hostility, so that he was driven to lead a wandering and unsettled life; notwithstanding, he contributed not a little, by his knowledge and practice, to inaugurate a more scientific study of nature than till his time prevailed (1493-1541).

PARAFFIN, name given by Baron Reichenbach to a transparent crystalline substance obtained by distillation from wood, bituminous coal, shale, &c., and so called because it resists the action of the strongest acids and alkalies.

PARAGUAY (400), except Uruguay the smallest State in South America, is an inland Republic whose territories lie in the fork between the Pilcomayo and Paraguay and the Parana Rivers, with Argentina on the W.

and S., Bolivia on the N., and Brazil on the N. and E.; it is less than half the size of Spain, consists of rich undulating plains, and, in the S., of some of the most fertile land on the continent; the climate is temperate for the lat.i.tude; the population, Spanish, Indian, and half-caste, is Roman Catholic; education is free and compulsory; the country is rich in natural products, but without minerals; timber, dye-woods, rubber, Paraguay tea (a kind of holly), gums, fruits, wax, honey, cochineal, and many medicinal herbs are gathered for export; maize, rice, cotton, and tobacco are cultivated; the industries include some tanning, brick-works, and lace-making; founded by Spain in 1535, Paraguay was the scene of an interesting experiment in the 17th century, when the country was governed wholly by the Jesuits, who, excluding all European settlers, built up a fabric of Christian civilisation; they were expelled in 1768; in 1810 the country joined the revolt against Spain, and was the first to establish its independence; for 26 years it was under the government of Dr. Francia; from 1865 to 1870 it maintained a heroic but disastrous war against the Argentine, Brazil, and Uruguay, as a consequence of which the population fell from a million and a half to a quarter of a million; it is again prosperous and progressing. The capital is Asuncion (18), at the confluence of the Pilcomayo and Paraguay.