The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 340

PARNELL, THOMAS, English minor poet of the Queen Anne period, born in Dublin, of a Ches.h.i.+re family; studied at Trinity College, took orders, and became archdeacon of Clogher; is best known as the author of "The Hermit," though his odes "The Night-Piece on Death" and the "Hymn to Contentment" are of more poetic worth; he was the friend of Swift and Pope, and a member of the Scriblerus Club (1679-1718).

PAROS (7), one of the Cyclades, lying between Naxos and Siphanto, exports wine, figs, and wool; in a quarry near the summit of Mount St.

Elias the famous Parian marble is still cut; the capital is Paroekia (2).

PARR, CATHERINE, sixth wife of Henry VIII., daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal, was a woman of learning and great discretion, acquired great power over the king, persuaded him to consent to the succession of his daughters, and surviving him, married her former suitor Sir Thomas Seymour, and died from the effects of childbirth the year after (1512-1548).

PARR, SAMUEL, a famous cla.s.sical scholar, born at Harrow; became head-master of first Colchester and then Norwich Grammar-School and a prebend of St. Paul's; he had an extraordinary memory and was a great talker; he was a good Latinist, but nothing he has left justifies the high repute in which he was held by his contemporaries (1747-1825).

PARR, THOMAS, called OLD PARR, a man notable for his long life, being said to have lived 152 years and 9 months, from 1483 to 1635.

PARRAMATTA (12), next to Sydney, from which it is 14 m. W., the oldest town in New South Wales; manufactures colonial tweeds and Parramatta cloths, and is in the centre of orange groves and fruit gardens.

PARRHASIUS, a gifted painter of ancient Greece, born at Ephesus; came to Athens and became the rival of Zeuxis; he was the contemporary of Socrates and a man of an arrogant temper; his works were characterised by the pains bestowed on them.

PARRY, SIR WILLIAM EDWARD, celebrated Arctic explorer, born at Bath; visited the Arctic Seas under Ross in 1818, conducted a second expedition himself in 1819-20, a third in 1821-23, a fourth in 1824-26 with unequal success, and a fifth in 1827 in quest of the North Pole _via_ Spitzbergen, in which he was baffled by an adverse current; received sundry honours for his achievements; died governor of Greenwich Hospital, and left several accounts of his voyages (1790-1855).

Pa.r.s.eES (i. e. inhabitants of Pars or Persia), a name given to the disciples of Zoroaster or their descendants in Persia and India, and sometimes called Guebres; in India they number some 90,000, are to be found chiefly in the Bombay Presidency, form a wealthy community, and are engaged mostly in commerce; in religion they incline to deism, and pay homage to the sun as the symbol of the deity; they neither bury their dead nor burn them, but expose them apart in the open air, where they are left till the flesh is eaten away and only the bones remain, to be removed afterwards for consignment to a subterranean cavern.

PARSIFAL, the hero of the legend of the HOLY GRAIL (q. v.), and identified with GALAHAD (q. v.) in the Arthurian legend.

PARSON ADAMS, a simple-minded 18th-century clergyman in Fielding's "Joseph Andrews."

PARSONS, ROBERT, English Jesuit, born in Somersets.h.i.+re, educated at Oxford and a Fellow of Balliol College; he became a convert to Roman Catholicism and entered the Society of Jesus in 1575; conceived the idea of reclaiming England from her Protestant apostasy, and embarked on the enterprise in 1580, but found it too hot for him, and had to escape to the Continent; after this he busied himself partly in intrigues to force England into submission and partly in organising seminaries abroad for English Roman Catholics, and became head of one at Rome, where he died; he appears to have been a Jesuit to the backbone, and to have served the cause of Jesuitry with his whole soul (1546-1610).

PARTHENOGENESIS, name given to as.e.xual reproduction, that is, to reproduction of plants or animals by means of unimpregnated germs or ova.

PARTHENON, a celebrated temple of the Doric order at Athens, dedicated to Athena, and constructed under Phidias of the marble of Pentelicus, and regarded as the finest specimen of Greek architecture that exists; it is 228 ft. in length and 64 ft. in height. Parthenon means the chamber of the maiden G.o.ddess, that is, Athena.

PARTHENOPE, in the Greek mythology one of the three SIRENS (q. v.), threw herself into the sea because her love for Ulysses was not returned, and was drowned; her body was washed ash.o.r.e at Naples, which was called Parthenope after her name.

PARTHIA, an ancient country corresponding to Northern Persia; was inhabited by a people of Scythian origin, who adopted the Aryan speech and manners, and subsequently yielded much to Greek influence; after being tributary successively to a.s.syria, Media, Persia, Alexander the Great, and Syria, they set up an independent kingdom in 250 B.C. In two great contests with Rome they made the empire respect their prowess; between 53 and 36 B.C. they defeated Cra.s.sus in Mesopotamia, conquered Syria and Palestine, and inflicted disaster on Mark Antony in Armenia; the renewal of hostilities by Trajan in A.D. 115 brought more varied fortunes, but they extorted a tribute of 50,000,000 denarii from the Emperor Macrinus in 218. Ctesiphon was their capital; the Euphrates lay between them and Rome; they were over thrown by Ardas.h.i.+r of Persia in 224. The Parthians were famous horse-archers, and in retreat shot their arrows backwards often with deadly effect on a pursuing enemy.

PARTICK (36), a western suburb of Glasgow, has numerous villas, and its working population is very largely engaged in s.h.i.+pbuilding.

PARTINGTON, MRS., an imaginary lady, the creation of the American humorist s.h.i.+llaber, distinguished for her misuse of learned words; also another celebrity who attempted to sweep back the Atlantic with her mop, the type of those who think to stave back the inevitable.

PASCAL, BLAISE, ill.u.s.trious French thinker and writer, born at Clermont, in Auvergne; was distinguished at once as a mathematician, a physicist, and a philosopher; at 16 wrote a treatise on conic sections, which astonished Descartes; at 18 invented a calculating machine; he afterwards made experiments in pneumatics and hydrostatics, by which his name became a.s.sociated with those of Torricelli and Boyle; an accident which befell him turned his thoughts to religious subjects, and in 1654 he retired to the convent of PORT ROYAL (q. v.), where he spent as an ascetic the rest of his days, and wrote his celebrated "Provincial Letters" in defence of the Jansenists against the Jesuits, and his no less famous "Pensees," which were published after his death; "his great weapon in polemics," says Prof. Saintsbury, "is polite irony, which he first brought to perfection, and in the use of which he has hardly been equalled, and has certainly not been surpa.s.sed since" (1623-1662).

PAS-DE-CALAIS, the French name for the Strait of Dover; also the name of the adjacent department of France.

PASHA, a Turkish t.i.tle, originally bestowed on princes of the blood, but now extended to governors of provinces and prominent officers in the army and navy.

PASIPHAe, the wife of MINOS (q. v.) and mother of the MINOTAUR (q. v.).

PASKIEVITCH, a Russian general, born at Poltava; took part in repelling the French in 1812, defeated the Persians in 1826-27 and the Turks in 1828-29; suppressed a Polish insurrection in 1831 and a Magyar revolution in 1849; was wounded at Silistria in 1854 and resigned (1782-1856).

PASQUINO, a cobbler or tailor who lived in Rome at the end of the 15th century, notable for his witty and sarcastic sayings, near whose shop after his death a fragment of a statue was dug up and named after him, on which, as representing him, the Roman populace claim to this day, it would seem, the privilege of placarding jibes against particularly the ecclesiastical authorities of the place, hence Pasquinade.

Pa.s.sAU (17), a Bavarian fortified town, situated at the confluence of the Inn and the Danube, 105 m. E. of Munich by rail; is a picturesque place, strategically important, with manufactures of leather, porcelain, and parquet, and trade in salt and corn.

Pa.s.sING-BELL, a bell tolled at the moment of the death of a person to invite his neighbours to pray for the safe pa.s.sing of his soul.

Pa.s.sION PLAY, a dramatic representation of the several stages in the pa.s.sion of Christ.

Pa.s.sION SUNDAY, the fifth Sunday in Lent, which is succeeded by what is called the Pa.s.sion Week.

Pa.s.sION WEEK is properly the week preceding Holy Week, but in common English usage the name is given to Holy Week itself, i. e. to the week immediately preceding Easter, commemorating Christ's pa.s.sion.

Pa.s.sIONISTS, an order of priests, called of the Holy Cross, founded in 1694 by Paul Francisco, of the Cross in Sardinia, whose mission it is to preach the Pa.s.sion of Christ and bear witness to its spirit and import, and who have recently established themselves in England and America; they are noted for their austerity.

Pa.s.sOVER, the chief festival of the Jews in commemoration of the pa.s.sing of the destroying angel over the houses of the Israelites on the night when he slew the first-born of the Egyptians; it was celebrated in April, lasted eight days, only unleavened bread was used in its observance, and a lamb roasted whole was eaten with bitter herbs, the partakers standing and road-ready as on their departure from the land of bondage.

Pa.s.sOW, FRANZ, German philologist, born in Mecklenburg, professor at Breslau; his chief work "Hand-Worterbuch der Griechischen Sprache"; an authority in subsequent Greek lexicography (1786-1833).

PASTA, JUDITH, a famous Italian operatic singer, born near Milan, of Jewish birth; her celebrity lasted from 1822 to 1835, after which she retired into private life; she had a voice of great compa.s.s (1798-1865).