The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 428

TENa.s.sERIM (972), the southernmost division of Burma, forms a long coastal strip facing the Bay of Bengal and backed by the mountain barrier of Siam; acquired by the British in 1825.

TENBY (5), a popular little watering-place of Pembrokeshire, has a rocky site on Carmarthen Bay coast; ruins of its old wall and of a castle still remain; has a fine 13th-century Gothic church, marble statue of the Prince Consort, &c., while its extensive sands and splendid bathing facilities attract crowds of summer visitors.

TENCIN, MADAME DE, a French writer of romances, a woman of clever wit and of personal charms, who abandoned a religious life and, coming to Paris in 1714, immersed herself in the political and fashionable life of the city; was not too careful of her morals, and ranked among her lovers the Regent, Fontenelle, and Cardinal Dubois; used her influence against the Jansenists; more circ.u.mspect in later life she presided over a fashionable salon; was the mother of D'Alembert (1681-1749).

TENDON ACHILLES, name given to the tendon of the leg above the heel, so called as being the tendon by which Thetis held Achilles when she dipped him in the Styx, and where alone he was in consequence vulnerable.

TENEDOS, a rocky but fertile little island belonging to Turkey, in the aegean, 3 m. off the mainland of Turkey in Asia, and 12 m. S. of the entrance to the Dardanelles; it was the place the Greeks made a feint they had returned to during the Trojan War.

TENERIFE (108), the largest of the Canary Islands (q. v.), of volcanic formation, with cliff-bound coast; richly fruit-bearing; chief exports, cochineal, tobacco, and wine; capital, SANTA CRUZ (q. v.); most notable natural feature is the famous Peak of Tenerife, a conical-shaped dormant volcano, 12,000 ft. in height, at the summit of which there is a crater 300 ft. in circuit; last eruption took place in 1798.

TENIERS, DAVID, the elder (1582-1649), and DAVID TENIERS, the younger (1610-1690), father and son, both famous masters of the Flemish school of painting, and natives of Antwerp; the greater genius belonged to the younger, who carried his father's gift of depicting rural and homely life to a higher pitch of perfection.

TENNANT, WILLIAM, a minor Scottish poet, born at Anstruther, Fife; was educated at St. Andrews, and after a short experience of business life betook himself to teaching in 1813, filling posts at Dunino, La.s.swade, and Dollar; his most notable poem, "Anster Fair" (1812), was warmly received, and in 1835 his knowledge of Eastern languages won him the chair of Oriental Languages in St. Andrews (1784-1848).

TENNEMANN, W. GOTTLIEB, German historian of philosophy; was professor at Marburg; wrote both a history and a manual of philosophy (1761-1819).

TENNESSEE (1,768, of which 434 are coloured), one of the central States of the American Union, lies S. of Kentucky, and stretches from the Mississippi (W.) to North Carolina (E.); is one-third larger than Ireland; politically it is divided into three districts with characteristic natural features; East Tennessee, mountainous, with ridges of the Appalachians, possessing inexhaustible stores of coal, iron, and copper; Middle Tennessee, an undulating, wheat, corn, and tobacco-growing country; and West Tennessee, with lower-lying plains growing cotton, and traversed by the Tennessee River, the largest affluent of the Ohio; Nashville is the capital and largest city; became a State in 1796.

TENNIEL, JOHN, a celebrated cartoonist who, since 1864, has week by week drawn the chief political cartoon in _Punch_, the merits of which are too well known to need comment; ill.u.s.trations to "aesop's Fables,"

"Ingoldsby Legends," "Alice in Wonderland," and other works, reveal the grace and delicacy of his workmanship; born in London, and practically a self-taught artist; joined the staff of _Punch_ in 1851; was knighted in 1893; _b_. 1820.

TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD, poet-laureate, born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, son of a clergyman, and of aristocratic descent; was educated at the grammar school of Louth and at Trinity College, Cambridge, which latter he left without taking a degree; having already devoted himself to the "Ars Poetica," an art which he cultivated more and more all his life long; entered the university in 1828, and issued his first volume of poems in 1830, though he had four years previously contributed to a small volume conjointly with a brother; to the poems of 1830 he added others, and published them in 1833 and 1842, after which, endowed by a pension from the Civil List of 200, he produced the "Princess" in 1847, and "In Memoriam" in 1850; was in 1851 appointed to the laureateship, and next in that capacity wrote his "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington"; in 1855 appeared his "Maud," in 1859 the first four of his "Idylls of the King," which were followed by "Enoch Arden" and the "Northern Farmer" in 1864, and by a succession of other pieces too numerous to mention here; he was raised to the peerage in 1884 on the recommendation of Mr. Gladstone; he was a poet of the ideal, and was distinguished for the exquisite purity of his style and the harmony of his rhythm; had a loving veneration for the past, and an adoring regard for everything pure and n.o.ble, and if he indulged in a vein of sadness at all, as he sometimes did, it was when he saw, as he could not help seeing, the feebler hold regard for such things had on the men and women of his generation than the worship of Mammon; Carlyle thought affectionately but plaintively of him, "One of the finest-looking men in the world," he writes to Emerson; "never had such company over a pipe!...

a truly interesting son of earth and son of heaven ... wanted a _task_, with which that of spinning rhymes, and naming it 'art' and 'high art' in a time like ours, would never furnish him" (1809-1892).

TENTERDEN, a market-town in Kent, once a Cinque Port; the steeple of the church of which is reported to have been the cause of the Goodwin Sands, the stones intended for the d.y.k.e which kept the sea off having been used instead to repair the church.

TENTERDEN, LORD, English judge, born at Canterbury; wrote a "Treatise on the Law relative to Merchant Ships and Seamen"; was raised to the peerage; an obstinate enemy of Reform (1762-1832).

TEOCALLI, among the ancient Mexicans a spirally-terraced pyramidal structure surmounted by a temple containing images of the G.o.ds.

TEPLITZ (15), a popular health resort in N. Bohemia, finely situated in a valley between the Erzgebirge and Mittelgebirge, 20 m. NW. of Leitmeritz; its thermal springs are celebrated for the cure of gout, rheumatism, &c.

TERAPHIM, small images, a sort of household G.o.ds among the Hebrews, consulted as oracles, and endowed with some magic virtue.

TERATOLOGY, the branch of biology which treats of malformations or departures from the normal type.

TERBURG, GERHARD, a noted Dutch painter, whose portraits and _genre_ pictures are to be found in most of the great European galleries; born at Zwolle; after travelling in Germany, Italy, England, and Spain, settled at Deventer, where he became burgomaster; his most famous pictures are a portrait of William of Orange, "Father's Advice," and his "Congress of Munster, 1648," which last was bought for 7280 and presented to the National Gallery, London (16081681).

TERCEIRA (45), the second largest of the Azores; rears cattle, and yields grain, oranges, &c.; chief town Angra, capital of the group.

TERENCE, Roman comic poet, born at Carthage; brought thence as a slave; educated by his master, a Roman senator, and set free; composed plays, adaptations of others in Greek by Menander and Apollodorus; they depict Greek manners for Roman imitation in a pure and perfect Latin style, and with great dramatic skill (185-159 B.C.).

TEREUS. See PHILOMELA.

TERMINUS, in Roman mythology a deity who presided over boundaries, the worship of whom was inst.i.tuted by _Numa_ (q. v.).

TERPSICh.o.r.e, the Muse of choral song and dancing.

TERRA-COTTA, a composition of fine clay and fine colourless sand moulded into shapes and baked to hardness.

TERRAY, ABBe, "dissolute financier" of Louis XV.; "paying eightpence in the shilling, so that wits exclaim in some press at the play-house, 'Where is Abbe Terray that he might reduce it to two-thirds!'"; lived a scandalous life, and ingratiated himself with Madame Pompadour; he held his post till the accession of Louis XVI., and fell with his iniquitous colleagues (1715-1778).

TERRE-HAUTE (37), capital of Vigo County, Indiana, stands on a plateau overlooking the Wabash, 178 m. S. of Chicago; is situated in a rich coal district, and has numerous foundries and various factories; is well equipped with schools and other public inst.i.tutions.

TERRY, ELLEN (Mrs. Charles Kelly), the most celebrated of living English actresses, born at Coventry; made her _debut_ at the early age of eight, appearing as Mamilius in "The Winter's Tale," at the Princess Theatre, then under the management of Charles Kean; during 1864--74 she lived in retirement, but returning to the stage in 1875 achieved her first great success in the character of Portia; played for some time with the Bancrofts and at the Court Theatre; in December 1878 made her first appearance at the Lyceum Theatre, then under the management of HENRY IRVING (q. v.), with whose subsequent successful career her own is inseparably a.s.sociated, sharing with him the honours of a long list of memorable Shakespearian and other performances; _b_. 1848.

TERSANCTUS, the ascription of praise, Holy, Holy, Holy, preliminary to the consecrating prayer in Holy Communion.

TERTULLIAN, QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS, one of the Latin Fathers, born at Carthage, the son of a Roman centurion; was well educated; bred a rhetorician; was converted to Christianity, became presbyter of Carthage, and embraced MONTANIST VIEWS (q. v.); wrote numerous works, apologetical, polemical, doctrinal, and practical, the last of an ascetic tendency (150-230).

TEST ACT, act of date 1673, now repealed, requiring all officials under the crown to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy, &c.; directed equally against Dissenters, Roman Catholics, &c.

TESTUDO (tortoise-sh.e.l.l), in ancient Roman warfare a covering of the shields of the soldiers held over their heads as protection against missiles thrown from the walls when besieging a city.

TETa.n.u.s or LOCK-JAW, a nervous affection of a most painful and fatal character, which usually begins with intensely painful and persistent cramp of the muscles of the throat and jaws, spreading down to the larger muscles of the body. As the disease progresses the muscles become more and more rigid, while the paroxysms of pain increase in violence and frequency. Death as a rule results from either sheer exhaustion or failure of breath through the spasmodic closure of the glottis. The cause of the disease is now ascertained to be due to the action of a microbe, which may find an entrance through any wound or abrasion of the skin, not necessarily of the thumb as is the popular belief.