The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 353

PITT, WILLIAM, English statesman, second son of Lord Chatham, born near Bromley, Kent, grew up a delicate child in a highly-charged political atmosphere, and studied with such diligence under the direction of his father and a tutor that he entered Cambridge at 14; called to the bar in 1780, he speedily threw himself into politics, and contested Cambridge University in the election of 1781; though defeated, he took his seat for the pocket burgh of Appleby, joined the Shelburne Tories in opposition to North's ministry, and was soon a leader in the House; he supported, but refused to join, the Rockingham Ministry of 1782, contracted his long friendship with Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville, and became an advocate of parliamentary reform; his first office was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Shelburne; his reputation steadily rose, but on Shelburne's resignation he refused the Premiership, and went into opposition against the Portland, Fox, and North coalition; that minority being defeated (1783) on their Indian policy by the direct and unconst.i.tutional interference of the king, he courageously formed a government with a majority of 100 against him; refusing to yield to adverse votes, he gradually won over the House and the country, and the dissolution of 1784 gave a majority of 120 in his favour, and put him in office, one of England's strongest ministers; during his long administration, broken only for one month in 20 years, he greatly raised the importance of the Commons, stamped out direct corruption in the House, and abolished many sinecures; he revised taxation, improved the collection of revenue and the issue of loans, and set the finances in a flourishing condition; he reorganised the government of India, and aimed strenuously to keep England at peace; but his abandonment of parliamentary reform and the abolition of the slave-trade suggests that he loved power rather than principles; his Poor-Law schemes and Sinking Fund were unsound; he failed to appreciate the problems presented by the growth of the factory system, or to manage Ireland with any success; on the outbreak of the French Revolution he failed to understand its significance, did not antic.i.p.ate a long war, and made bad preparations and bad schemes; his vacillation in Irish policy induced the rebellion of 1798; by corrupt measures he carried the legislative union of 1801, but the king refused to allow the Catholic emanc.i.p.ation he promised as a condition; Viscount Melville was driven from the Admiralty on a charge of malversation, his own health broke down, and the victory of Trafalgar scarcely served to brighten his closing days; given to deep drinking, and culpably careless of his private moneys, he yet lived a pure, simple, amiable life; with an overcharged dignity, he was yet an attractive man and a warm friend; England has had few statesmen equal to him in the handling of financial and commercial problems, and few orators more fluent and persuasive than the great peace minister.

PITT DIAMOND, a diamond brought from Golconda by the grandfather of the elder Pitt, who sold it to the king of France; it figured at length in the hilt of the State sword of Napoleon, and was carried off by the Prussians at Waterloo.

PITTACUS, one of the seven sages of Greece, born at Mitylene, in Lesbos, in the 7th century B.C.; celebrated as a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher, and a poet; expelled the tyrants from Mitylene, and held the supreme power for 10 years after by popular vote, and resigned on the establishment of social order; two proverbs are connected with his name: "It is difficult to be good," "Know the fit time."

PITTSBURG (321), second city of Pennsylvania, is 350 m. by rail W.

of Philadelphia, where the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela Rivers forms the Ohio; the city extends for 10 miles along the rivers'

banks, and climbs up the surrounding hills; there are handsome public buildings and churches, efficient schools, a Roman Catholic college, and a Carnegie library; domestic lighting and heating and much manufacture is done by natural gas, which issues at high pressure from shallow borings in isolated districts 20 m. from the city; standing in the centre of an extraordinary coal-field--the edges of the horizontal seams protrude on the hillsides--it is the largest coal-market in the States; manufactures include all iron goods, steel and copper, gla.s.sware, and earthenware; its position at the eastern limit of the Mississippi basin, its facilities of transport by river and rail--six trunk railroads meet here--give it enormous trade advantages; its transcontinental business is second in volume only to Chicago; in early times the British colonists had many struggles with the French for this vantage point; a fort built by the British Government in 1759, and called after the elder Pitt, was the nucleus of the city.

PITYRIASIS, a skin eruption attended with branlike desquamation.

PIUS, the name of nine Popes, of which only six call for particular mention: P. II., Pope from 1458 to 1464, was of the family of the Piccolomini, and is known to history as aeneas Sylvius, and under which name he did diplomatic work in Britain and Germany; as Pope he succeeded Callistus III.; he was a wily potentate, and is distinguished for organising a crusade against the Turks as well as his scholarship; the works which survive him are of a historical character, and his letters are of great value. P. IV., from 1559 to 1563, was of humble birth; during his popehood the deliberations of the Council of Trent were brought to a close, and the Tridentine Creed was named after him. P.

V., Pope 1566 to 1572, also of humble birth, was severe in his civil and ecclesiastical capacity, both in his internal administration and foreign relationships, and thought to browbeat the world back into the bosom of Mother Church; issued a bull releasing Queen Elizabeth's subjects from their allegiance; but the great event of his reign, and to which he contributed, was the naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. P. VI., Pope from 1775 to 1799; the commencement of his popehood was signalised by beneficent measures for the benefit of the Roman city, but he was soon in trouble in consequence of encroachments on Church privileges in Austria and the confiscation of all Church property in France, which ended, on his resisting, to still further outrages, in his capture by the French under Bonaparte and his expatriation from Rome.

P. VII., Pope from 1800 to 1823, concluded a concordat with France, crowned Napoleon emperor at Paris, who thereafter annexed the papal territories to the French empire, which were in part restored to him only after Napoleon's fall; he was a meek-spirited man, and was much tossed about in his day. P. IX., or Pio Nono, from 1846 to 1878, was a "reforming" Pope, and by his concessions awoke in 1848 a spirit of revolution, under the force of which he was compelled to flee from Rome, to return again under the protection of French bayonets against his own subjects, to devote himself to purely ecclesiastical affairs; in 1854 he promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and in 1869 the Infallibility of the Pope; upon the outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1871 the French troops were withdrawn and Victor Emmanuel's troops entered the city; Pius retired into the Vatican, where he lived in seclusion till his death.

PIX, the name of a little chest in which the consecrated host is kept in the Roman Catholic Church. See PYX.

PIXIES, Devonshire Robin Goodfellows, said to be the spirits of infants who died unbaptized.

PIZARRO, FRANCISCO, the conqueror of Peru, born at Truxillo, in Spain, the son of a soldier of distinction; received no education, but was of an adventurous spirit, and entered the army; embarked with other adventurers to America, and having distinguished himself in Panama, set out by way of the Pacific on a voyage of discovery along with another soldier named Almagra; landed on the island of Gallo, on the coast of Peru, and afterwards returned with his companion to Spain for authority to conquer the country; when in 1529 he obtained the royal sanction he set sail from Spain with three ships in 1531, and on his arrival at Peru found a civil war raging between the two sons of the emperor, who had just died; Pizarro saw his opportunity; approached Atahualpa, the victorious one, now become the reigning Inca, with overtures of peace, was admitted into the interior of the country; invited him to a banquet, had him imprisoned, and commenced a wholesale butchery of his subjects, upon which he forced Atahualpa to disclose his treasures, and then put him perfidiously to death; his power, by virtue of the mere terror he inspired, was now established, and he might have continued to maintain it, but a contest having arisen between him and his old comrade Almagro, whom after defeating he put to death, the sons and friends of the latter rose against him, seized him in his palace at Lima, and took away his life (1476-1541).

PLAGUE, THE, is a very malignant kind of highly contagious fever, marked by swellings of the lymphatic glands. From the development of purple patches due to subcutaneous haemorrhages the European epidemic of 1348-50 was called the Black Death. A quarter of the European population perished on that occasion. Other visitations devastated London in 1665, Northern Europe 1707-14, Ma.r.s.eilles and Provence 1720-22, and South-East Russia 1878-79. The home of the Plague was formerly Lower Egypt, Turkey, and the sh.o.r.es of the Levant. From these it has been absent since 1844.

Its home since then has been in India, where it has a.s.sumed epidemic form 1836-38 and 1896-99.

PLAIN, THE, the name given to the Girondists or Moderate party in the French National Convention, in contrast with THE MOUNTAIN (q. v.) or JACOBIN PARTY.

PLANCHe, JAMES ROBINSON, antiquary and dramatist, born in London, of French descent; author of a number of burlesques; an authority on heraldry and costumes; he produced over 200 pieces for the stage, and held office in the Heralds' Court (1796-1880).

PLANETOIDS, the name given to a number of very small planets revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, originally called Asteroids, all of recent discovery, and the list, amounting to some 400, as yet made of them understood to be incomplete. They are very difficult of discovery, many of them from the smallness of their size and their erratic movements.

PLANETS, bodies resembling the earth and of different sizes, which revolve in elliptical orbits round the sun, and at different distances, the chief of them eight in number, two of them, viz., Mercury and Venus, revolving in orbits _interior_ to that of the earth, and five of them, viz., Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ura.n.u.s, and Neptune, _exterior_, the whole with the PLANETOIDS (q. v.) and comets const.i.tuting the solar system.

PLANTAGENETS, the name attached to a dynasty of kings of England, who reigned from the extinction of the Norman line to the accession of the Tudor, that is, from the beginning of Henry II.'s reign in 1154 to the end of Richard III.'s on Bosworth Field in 1458. The name was adopted by Geoffrey of Anjou, the husband of Matilda, the daughter of Henry I., whose badge was a sprig of broom (which the name denotes), and which he wore in his bonnet as descended from the Earl of Anjou, who was by way of penance scourged with twigs of it at Jerusalem.

PLANTIN, CHRISTOPHE, a printer of Antwerp, born near Tours, in France; celebrated for the beauty and accuracy of the work that issued from his press, the most notable being the "Antwerp Polyglot"; he had printing establishments in Leyden and Paris, as well as Antwerp, all these conducted by sons-in-law (1514-1589).

PLa.s.sEY, a great battlefield in Bengal, now swept away by changes in the course of the river, scarcely 100 m. N. of Calcutta; was the scene of Clive's victory in 1757 with 800 Europeans and 2200 unreliable native troops over Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the ruler of Bengal, which laid that province at the feet of Britain, and led to the foundation of the British Empire in India.

PLASTER OF PARIS, a compound of lime, sand, and water used for coating walls, taking casts, and forming moulds.

PLATaeA, a city of ancient Greece, in western Boeotia, neighbour and ally of Athens, suffered greatly in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.

It was destroyed by the Persians 480 B.C., by the Peloponnesian forces 429 B.C., and again by the Thebans 387 B.C. Philip of Macedon restored the exiles to their homes in 338 B.C.

PLATO, the great philosopher, born in Athens, of n.o.ble birth, the year Pericles died, and the second of the Peloponnesian War; at 20 became a disciple of Socrates, and pa.s.sed eight years in his society; at 30, after the death of Socrates, quitted Athens, and took up his abode at Megara; from Megara he travelled to Cyrene, Egypt, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, prolonging his stay in Magna Graecia, and studying under Pythagoras, whose philosophy was then at its prime, and which exercised a profound influence over him; after ten years' wandering in this way he, at the age of 40, returned to Athens, and founded his Academy, a gymnasium outside the city with a garden, which belonged to his father, and where he gathered around him a body of disciples, and had Aristotle for one of his pupils, lecturing there with undiminished mental power till he reached the advanced age of 81; of his philosophy one can give no account here, or indeed anywhere, it was so unsectarian; he was by pre-eminence the world-thinker, and though he was never married and left no son, he has all the thinking men and schools of philosophy in the world as his offspring; enough to say that his philosophy was philosophy, as it took up in its embrace both the ideal and the real, at once the sensible and the super-sensible world (429-347 B.C.).

PLATOFF, MATVEI IVANOVICH, COUNT, hetman of Cossacks, and Russian commander in the Napoleonic wars; took part in the campaigns of 1805-7, and scourged the French during their retreat from Moscow in 1812, and again after their defeat at Leipzig 1813; he commanded at the victory of Altenburg 1813, and for his services obtained the t.i.tle of count (1757-1818).

PLATONIC LOVE, love between persons of different s.e.xes, in which as being love of soul for soul no s.e.xual pa.s.sion intermingles; is so named agreeably to the doctrine of Plato, that a man finds his highest happiness when he falls in with another who is his soul's counterpart or complement.

PLATONIC YEAR, a period of 26,000 years, denoting the time of a complete revolution of the equinox.

PLATT-DEUTSCH or LOW GERMAN, a dialect spoken by the peasantry in North Germany from the Rhine to Pomerania, and derived from Old Saxon.

PLATTE, the largest affluent of the Missouri, which joins it at Plattsmouth after an easterly course of 900 m.

PLATTEN-SEE. See BALATON, LAKE.

PLAUEN (46), a town in Saxony, on the Elster, 78 m. S. of Leipzig, with extensive textile and other manufactures.

PLAUTUS, a Latin comic poet, born in Umbria; came when young to Rome, as is evident from his mastery of the Latin language and his knowledge of Greek; began to write plays for the stage at 30, shortly before the outbreak of the second Punic War, and continued to do so for 40 years; he wrote about 130 comedies, but only 20 have survived, the plots mostly borrowed from Greek models; they were much esteemed by his contemporaries; they have supplied material for dramatic treatment in modern times (227-184 B.C.).

PLAYFAIR, JOHN, Scotch mathematician, born at Benvie; bred for the Church, became professor first of Mathematics and then of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University; wrote on geometry and geology, in the latter supported the Huttonian theory of the earth (1748-1819).

PLEIADES, in the Greek mythology seven sisters, daughters of Atlas, transformed into stars, six of them visible and one invisible, and forming the group on the shoulders of Taurus in the zodiac; in the last week of May they rise and set with the sun till August, after which they follow the sun and are seen more or less at night till their conjunction with it again in May.

PLEIADES, THE, the name given to the promoters of a movement in the middle of the 16th century that aimed at the reform of the French language and literature on cla.s.sical models, and led on by a group of seven men, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, Baf, Daurat, Jodelle, and Pontus de Tyard. The name "Pleiad" was originally applied to seven contemporary poets in ancient Greece, and afterwards to seven learned men in the time of Charlemagne.