The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 257

IRON HAND, GOETZ VON BERLICHINGEN (q. v.).

IRON MASK, MAN WITH THE, a prisoner who in the reign of Louis XIV.

wore, when he was transferred from prison to prison, what seemed an iron mask to prevent any one discovering and revealing his ident.i.ty, over which to this day there hangs an impenetrable veil; he is reported to have been young and of n.o.ble form, and the conclusion is that he was a man of distinction.

IRONCLADS were originally wooden vessels protected by iron plates; they were used at the siege of Gibraltar in 1782; the French had them in the Crimean War, and in 1858 built four iron-plated line-of-battle s.h.i.+ps; in 1860 England built the _Warrior_, an iron steam battles.h.i.+p with 4-inch plates; since then new types have succeeded each other very quickly; the modern ironclad is built of steel and armed with steel plates sometimes 2 feet thick; the term is now loosely applied to all armoured vessels, whether battles.h.i.+ps, or cruisers, or gunboats, and whether of iron or steel.

IRONSIDES, Cromwell's troopers, a thousand strong, and raised by him in the Eastern counties of England, so called at first from the invincibility displayed by them at Marston Moor; were selected by Cromwell "as men," he says, "that had the fear of G.o.d before them, and made conscience of what they did.... They were never beaten," he adds, "and wherever they were engaged against the enemy, they beat continually."

IRONY is a subtle figure of speech in which, while one thing is said, some indication serves to show that quite the opposite is meant; thus apparent praise becomes severe condemnation or ridicule; practical irony is evinced in ostensibly furthering some one's hopes and wishes while really leading him to his overthrow. Life and history are full of irony in the contrast between ambitions and their realisation.

IRONY, SOCRATIC, the name given to a practice of Socrates with pretentious people; "affecting ignorance and pretending to solicit information, he was in the habit of turning round upon the sciolist and confounding his presumption, both by the unlooked-for consequences he educed by his incessant questions and by the glaring contradictions the other was in the end landed by his admissions."

IROQUOIS, one of the most intelligent branches of the North American Indians, comprised a confederation of five, afterwards six, tribes, among whom the leading place was taken by the Mohawks; their territory lay inland in what is now New York State and the basin of the St. Lawrence.

Numbering some 25,000, they maintained their own against the hereditary foes by whom they were surrounded; they took kindly to English and Dutch settlers, but were hostile to the French, and in the wars of the 18th century were allies of England against the French; their descendants, about 12,000, in reservations in Canada and New York are a peaceful people, have accepted English religion and culture, and have proved themselves skilful and industrious agriculturists.

IRREDUCIBLE CASE, name given to a cubic equation which cannot be solved by the rule of CARDAN (q. v.).

IRTISH, an enormous river of Western Siberia and chief tributary of the Obi; its course from the Altai Mountains runs NW. through the Siberian plains for 1200 m.; it is navigable almost all the way in summer, and in winter it is a highway for sledge traffic; on its banks stand Semipalatinsk, Omsk, and Tobolsk.

IRVING, EDWARD, a great pulpit orator, born in Annan, Dumfriess.h.i.+re; bred for the Scotch Church, became in 1819 a.s.sistant to Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, and removed in 1822 to the Caledonian Church, London, where he attracted to his preaching the world of fas.h.i.+on as well as intellect in the city, who soon grew tired of him and left him, after which he took to extravagances which did not draw them back, and drew around him instead a set of people more fanatical than himself, and whose influence over him, to which he weakly yielded, infatuated him still more; the result was that he was deposed from the ministry of the Church that sent him forth, and became for a time the centre of an organisation which still exists, in a modified form, and bears his name; he was the bosom friend in his early days of Thomas Carlyle, and no one mourned more over his aberration than he, for he loved him to the end. "But for Irving," he says, "I had never known what the communion of man with man means. His was the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with; I call him on the whole the best man I have ever, after trial enough, found in this world, or now hope to find. Scotland sent him forth," he says, "a herculean man, but our mad Babylon wore him and wasted him with all her engines, and it took her 12 years"; he died in Glasgow, aged 42, "h.o.a.ry as with extreme age," and lies buried in a crypt of the cathedral there (1792-1834).

IRVING, SIR HENRY (John Henry Brodribb), born near Glas...o...b..ry; was at first a clerk in London, appeared on the Sunderland stage in 1856, spent three years in Edinburgh, and gradually worked his way at Glasgow and Manchester, till he was invited to London ten years afterwards; his performance of Hamlet at the Lyceum in 1874 established his reputation as a tragedian; since then he has remained at the head of his profession, and both in this country and in America secured many triumphs in Macbeth, Shylock, and other Shakespearian characters, and in roles like those of Matthias in "The Bells," "Mephistopheles in Faust," &c.; he has contributed to the literature of Acting, and received knighthood in 1895: _b_. 1838.

IRVING, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, popular American essayist and historian, born of British parentage in New York, was delicate in early life; his education suffered accordingly, and he travelled in Europe, 1804-6, visiting Italy, France, and England; returning to New York he was called to the bar, put he devoted himself to a literary career, only interrupted by one period of commercial life, and occasional short terms of diplomatic service; he first won fame by his "History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,"

1809, a good-natured satire on the Dutch settlers; the years 1815-32 he spent in Europe studying and writing; his "Sketch-Book," 1819-20, was very successful, as were "Bracebridge Hall," "Tales of a Traveller," and other volumes which followed it; going to Spain in 1826 he began his researches in Spanish history which resulted in "The Life of Columbus,"

"The Conquest of Granada," and other works which introduced English readers to the Spain of the 15th and 16th centuries; on his return to America he was treated with great respect by his countrymen; declining the honours they would have given him had he turned aside to politics, he continued to write; among his latest works were "Mahomet and his Successors" and a "Life of Was.h.i.+ngton"; much courted in society, he was kind and generous in disposition; his writings are marked by humour, observation, and descriptive power; these qualities with an excellent style place him in the foremost rank of American authors; he died, unmarried, at Tarrytown, New York (1783-1859).

IRVINGITES, the name given to the Catholic Apostolic Church as founded by Edward Irving, which is repudiated by them, as disclaiming all earthly leaders.h.i.+p; their ministry is after the Apostolic order, includes prophets, evangelists, and pastors, and they employ material symbols in their wors.h.i.+p besides those of water in baptism and wine in communion, such as incense; the Eucharist they regard as a sacrifice, and they believe in the permanency of the spiritual gifts of the primitive Church.

ISAAC, a Hebrew patriarch, son of Abraham, born to him when he was old; a mild man with no great force of character, and a contrast to Ishmael, his half-brother; lived to a great age.

ISSAC I., COMNENUS, Emperor of the East from 1057 to 1059; raised to the throne by the army; ruled well, but falling ill and fearing he had not long to live. He retired and spent his two remaining years in a monastery; he was a student and annotator of Homer.

ISSAC II., ANGELUS, Emperor of the East; a good man, but weak; became emperor in 1185, was dethroned by his brother Alexis in 1195; reinstated by the Crusaders in 1203, but overthrown six months after in 1204.

ISAC OF YORK, the father of Rebecca in "Ivanhoe."

ISABELLA, queen of Castile; her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon led to the union under one sceptre of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, which was followed 10 years after by their united occupancy of the throne of all Spain; she was an able woman, and a.s.sociated with her husband in every affair of State (1451-1504). See FERDINAND V.

ISABELLA II., ex-queen of Spain, daughter of Ferdinand VII.; succeeded him in 1833; was forced to leave the country in 1868; took refuge in France, and in 1870 abdicated in favour of her son.

ISABEY JEAN BAPTISTE, French portrait-painter, born at Nancy; painted many of the notabilities of France in his day (1767-1855).

ISaeUS, an Attic orator, and the teacher of Demosthenes; wrote 64 orations, of which only 10 are extant, and these not on political issues but forensic, and particularly the law of inheritance.

ISAIAH, one of the great Hebrew prophets, the son of one Amoz; was a citizen of Jerusalem, evidently of some standing, and who flourished between 750 and 700 B.C.; like AMOS (q. v.), he foresaw the judgment that was coming on the nation for its unfaithfulness, but felt a.s.sured that G.o.d would not altogether forsake His people, and that "a remnant," G.o.d's elect among them, would be saved--that though the casket would be shattered in pieces, the jewel it contained would be preserved.

See HEBREW PROPHECY.

ISAIAH, THE ASCENSION OF, an apocryphal book giving an incoherent account of the martyrdom of Isaiah, and a vision he had under the reign of Hezekiah, apparently the origin of the tradition in Heb. xi. 37, about the prophet having been "sawn asunder."

ISAIAH, THE PROPHECIES OF, consist of two divisions, the first extending from chap. i. to chap. x.x.xix., and the second from chap. xl. to the end; these two divisions were for long believed to be throughout the work of Isaiah the son of Amoz, but modern criticism a.s.signs them in the main to different authors, the one living 150 years after the other; and the reasons for this conclusion are that the author of the latter belonged to a different period of Jewish history from that of the former, is not of the same temper, and has much deeper spiritual insight, while his hopes and expectations are built on a more spiritual view of the method of salvation, the Messiah of the former, for instance, being a conquering king, and that of the latter a suffering Redeemer, who to save the nation has to bear the burden of its sins, and the brunt of them, and so bearing, bear them away.

ISAMBERT, FRANcOIS ANDRe, a noteworthy French lawyer, politician, and historian, born at Aunay; began to practise in Paris at the age of twenty-six; becoming known in politics, he gained considerable renown by certain works on French law and by his advocacy of the claims of the liberated slaves in the French West Indies; entering the Chamber of Deputies after the Revolution of July 1830, he set himself to oppose the Jesuits and to further freedom; "The Religious Conditions of France and Europe" and a "History of Jerusalem" were among his later works; he died at Paris (1792-1857).

ISANDULA, place 110 m. NW. of Durban, where a force of British troops was encamped in January 22, 1879, and was set upon and almost annihilated by a body of Zulus.

ISAURIA, in ancient times this name was given to the northern slopes of the Taurus in Asia Minor, what is now Karamania; the Isaurians were a wild, savage people; from the 1st to the 4th centuries they were the terror of neighbouring States, and gave Rome herself considerable trouble; but from the 5th century they disappear from history.

ISCHIA (22), a beautiful volcanic island 6 m. off the Bay of Naples; its scenery, climate, and mineral springs make it a health resort; it produces excellent fruits and wines; it is liable to severe earthquakes; in the last (1883), 4000 persons perished. The chief town (3) bears the same name.

ISCHL, a town in Upper Austria, picturesquely situated on the river Traun, 33 m. SE. of Salzburg; famous for its saline baths; has salt-works, where 8000 tons of salt are annually manufactured.

ISENGRIN, the wolf, typifying the feudal baron in the epic tale of Reynard the Fox, as the fox does the Church. See REYNARD.

ISER, a German river, which rises in the Tyrol N. of Innsbruck, pa.s.ses through Munich, and falls into the Danube after a course of 180 m.

ISeRE, a river in the SE. of France, which gives name to a dep.

(572), and which, after a course of 180 m. falls into the Rhone near Valence.