The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 461

YOUNG, CHARLES MAYNE, tragedian, born in London, made his _debut_ in 1798; married in 1805 a gifted young actress, Julia Anne Grimani, with whom he had often played in lover's parts, and whom, after a brilliant partnership of 16 months on the stage together, he the year after lost in giving birth to a son; he survived her 50 years, but the love with which he loved her never faded from his heart; appeared in the Haymarket, London, in 1807 in the character of Hamlet; played afterwards other Shakespearian characters, such as Iago, Macbeth, and Falstaff in Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and took leave of the stage in 1832 in the same character in which he first appeared on it in London, and died at Brighton (1777-1856).

YOUNG, EDWARD, poet, born in Hampshire, educated at Westminster School; studied at Corpus Christi, Oxford, and obtained a Fellowship at All-Souls' College; wrote plays and satires, but is best known to fame as the author of "Night Thoughts," which has been p.r.o.nounced "his best work and his last good work," a poem which was once in high repute, and is less, if at all, in favour to-day, being written in a mood which is a strain upon the reader; it is "a little too declamatory," says Professor Saintsbury, "a little too suggestive of soliloquies in an inky cloak, with footlights in front"; his "Revenge," acted in 1721, is p.r.o.nounced by the professor to be "perhaps the very last example of an acting tragedy of real literary merit"; his satires in the "Love of Fame; or, The Universal Pa.s.sion," almost equalled those of Pope, and brought him both fame and fortune; he took holy orders in 1727, and became in 1730 rector of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire; his flattery of his patrons was fulsome, and too suggestive of the toady (1681-1765).

YOUNG, JAMES, practical chemist, born in Glasgow; discovered cheap methods of producing certain substances of value in the chemical arts, and made experiments which led to the manufacture of paraffin (1811-1889).

YOUNG, ROBERT, a notorious impostor; forged certificates, and obtained deacons' orders and curacies, and could by no penalty be persuaded to an honest life, and was hanged in the end for coining in 1700.

YOUNG, THOMAS, physicist, born in Somersetshire, of Quaker parents; studied medicine at home and abroad; renounced Quakerism, and began practice in London in 1800; was next year appointed professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Inst.i.tution, 1802; made Secretary of the Royal Society, and was afterwards nominated for other important appointments; his princ.i.p.al work is a "Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts," published in 1807, in which he propounded the undulatory theory of light, and the principle of the interference of rays; the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt occupied much of his attention, and he is credited with having antic.i.p.ated Champollion in discovering the key to them (1773-1829).

YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN a.s.sOCIATION, an a.s.sociation founded in London in 1844, for the benefit of young men connected with various dry-goods houses in the city, and which extended itself over the other particularly large cities throughout the country, so that now it is located in 1249 centres, and numbers in London alone some 14,000 members; its object is the welfare of young men at once spiritually, morally, socially, and physically.

YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR, a society established in 1881 by Dr. F. E. Clark, Portland, Maine, U.S., in 1898; has a membership of three and a quarter million; it is undenominational, but evangelical apparently, and its professed object is "to promote an earnest Christian life among its members, to increase their mutual acquaintanceship, and to make them more useful in the service of G.o.d."

YOUNGSTOWN (45), a town in Ohio, U.S., with large iron factories; is in the heart of a district rich in iron and coal.

YPRES (16), an old Belgian town in West Flanders, 30 m. SW. of Bruges; was at one time a great weaving centre, and famous for its diaper linen; has much fallen off, though it retains a town-hall and a cathedral, both of Gothic architecture in evidence of what it once was; it was strongly fortified once, and has been subjected to many sieges; the manufacture of thread and lace is now the most important industry.

YRIARTE, CHARLES, French litterateur, born in Paris, of Spanish ancestry; has written works dealing with Spain, Paris, the Franco-German War, Venice, &c.; _b_. 1832.

YRIARTE, THOMAS DE, Spanish poet; studied at Madrid; was editor of the _Madrid Mercury_; his princ.i.p.al works "Musica," a poem, and "Literary Fables" (1750-1790).

YSTAD, a seaport in the extreme S. of Sweden, with a commodious harbour, and a trade chiefly in corn.

YSTRADYFODWG (88), a township in Glamorgan, in a rich mining district.

YTTRIUM, a rare metal always found in combination with others, and is a blackish-gray powder; the oxide of it, yttria, is a soft whitish powder, and when ignited glows with a pure white light.

YUCATAN, a peninsula in Central America dividing the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, and one of the few peninsulas of the world that extend northwards; is a flat expanse; has a good climate and a fertile soil, yielding maize, rice, tobacco, indigo, &c.; abounds in forests of valuable wood; forms one of the States of the Mexican Republic; it bears traces of early civilisation in the ruins of temples and other edifices.

YUGA, a name given by the Hindus to the four ages of the world, and, according to M. Barth, of the gradual triumph of evil, as well as of the successive creations and destructions of the universe, following each other in the lapse of immense periods of time.

YUKON, a great river of Alaska, rises in British territory, and after a course of 2000 m. falls, by a number of mouths forming a delta, into the Behring Sea; it is navigable nearly throughout, and its waters swarm with salmon three months in the year, some of them from 80 to 120 lbs. weight, and from 5 to 6 ft. long.

YULE, the old name for the festival of Christmas, originally a heathen one, observed at the winter solstice in joyous recognition of the return northward of the sun at that period, being a relic in the N.

of the old sun worship.

YULE, SIR HENRY, Orientalist, born at Inveresk, Mid-Lothian; was an officer in Bengal Engineers, and engaged in surveys in the East; was president of the Royal Asiatic Society; wrote numerous articles for Asiatic societies; his two great works, "The Book of Marco Polo the Venetian" and the "Anglo-Indian Glossary," known by its other t.i.tle as "Hobson Jobson" (1820-1889).

YUMBOES, fairies in African mythology, represented as about two feet in height, and of a white colour.

YUNG-LING, a mountain range running N. and S., which forms the eastern b.u.t.tress of the tableland of Central Asia.

YUNNAN (4,000), the extreme south-western province of the Chinese Empire; is fertile particularly in the S.; yields large quant.i.ties of maize, rice, tobacco, sugar, and especially opium, and abounds in mineral wealth, including gold, silver, mercury, as well as iron, copper, and lead; the country was long a prey to revolt against the Chinese rule, but it is now, after a war of extermination against the rebels, the Panthays, the Burmese, reduced to order.

YUSTE, ST., called also St. Just, a village in Estremadura, Spain, the seat of a monastery where Charles V., Emperor of Germany, spent the last 18 years of his life, and where he died.

YVES, the patron-saint of lawyers; was a lawyer himself, and used his knowledge of the law to defend the oppressed; is called in Brittany "the poor man's advocate."

YVETOT (7), an old town in the dep. of Seine-Inferieure, 24 m. NW.

of Rouen, with manufactures of textile fabrics, and a trade in agricultural produce, the seigneurs of which long bore the t.i.tle of king, "Roi d'Yvetot," a t.i.tle satirically applied by Beranger to Napoleon, and often employed to denote an insignificant potentate with large pretensions.

Z

ZAANDAM or SAARDAM (15), a town in North Holland, 5 m. NW. of Amsterdam; intersected with a network of ca.n.a.ls, with various manufactures, including shipbuilding, and a considerable trade; it was here Peter the Great wrought as a ship carpenter in 1699, and the house is still preserved in which he lived, with a stone tablet inscribed "Petro Magno Alexievitch."

ZABISM. See SABIANISM.

ZACATE'CAS (40), a town of Mexico, capital of an inland province of the same name (452), 440 m. NW. of Mexico City; a great silver-mining centre, an industry which employs over 10,000 of the inhabitants; it is in a valley over 6000 ft. above the sea-level, and has several fine churches, a college, a mint, &c.

ZACHARIAS, Pope from 741 to 752; succeeded Gregory III.; set aside the Merovingian dynasty and sanctioned the elevation of Pepin the Short to the throne of France, in return for which Pepin twice over saved Rome from the Lombards.

ZACOCCIA, a king of Mozambique who, according to the LUSIAD (q. v.), received Vasco da Gama with welcome, believing him to be a Mohammedan, but conceived feelings of bitterest hatred to him when he discovered he was a Christian, and tried, but all in vain, to allure him to his ruin; the agent he employed to compa.s.s it failing, in his despair he took away his own life.

ZADIG, name of a famous novel by Voltaire, of a philosophical cast, bearing upon life as in the hands of a destiny beyond our control.