The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 343

PEELE, GEORGE, dramatist, of the Elizabethan period, born in London; author of "Arraignment of Paris" and "David and Bathsabe," full of pa.s.sages of poetic beauty; has been charged with having led the life of a debauchee and to have died of a disease brought on by his profligacy, but it is now believed he has been maligned (1548-1597).

PEEPING TOM OF COVENTRY. See G.o.dIVA.

PEERS, THE TWELVE, the famous warriors or paladins at the court of Charlemagne, so called from their equality in prowess and honour.

PEGASUS, the winged horse, begotten of Poseidon, who sprung from the body of Medusa when Perseus swooped off her head, and who with a stroke of his hoof broke open the spring of Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, and mounted on whom Bellerophon slew the Chimera, and by means of which he hoped, if he had not been thrown, to ascend to heaven, as Pegasus did alone, becoming thereafter a constellation in the sky; this is the winged horse upon whose back poets, to the like disappointment, hope to scale the empyrean, who have not, like Bellerophon, first distinguished themselves by slaying Chimeras.

PEGU (6), a town of Lower Burma, in the province and on the river of the same name, 46 m. NE. of Rangoon, is a very ancient city; the province (1,162) is a rice-growing country, with great teak forests on the mountain slopes.

PEI-HO, a river of North China, 350 miles long; formed by the junction of four other rivers, on the chief of which stands Pekin; has a short navigable course south-eastward to the Gulf of Pechili, where it is defended by the forts of Taku.

PEIRCE, BENJAMIN, American mathematician and astronomer, born in Ma.s.sachusetts, U.S.; wrote on the discovery of Neptune and Saturn's rings, as well as a number of mathematical text-books (1809-1880).

PEISHWAH, the name of the overlord or chief minister of Mahratta chiefs in their wars with the Mohammedans, who had his head-quarters at Poonah, the last to hold office putting himself under British protection, and surrendering his territory; nominated as his successor Nana Sahib, who became the chief instigator of the Mutiny of 1857, on account, it is believed, of the refusal of the British Government to continue to him the pension of his predecessor who had adopted him.

PEKIN (1,000), the capital of China, on a sandy plain in the basin of the Pei-ho, is divided into two portions, each separately walled, the northern or Manchu city and the southern or Chinese. The former contains the Purple Forbidden city, in which are the Imperial palaces; surrounding it is the August city, in which are a colossal copper Buddha and the Temple of Great Happiness. Outside this are the government offices, foreign legations, the temple of Confucius, a great Buddhist monastery, a Roman Catholic cathedral, and Christian mission stations. The Chinese city has many temples, mission stations, schools, and hospitals; but it is spa.r.s.ely populated, houses are poor, and streets unpaved. Pekin has railway communication with Hankow, and is connected with other cities and with Russia by telegraph. Its trade and industry are inconsiderable. It is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was Kubla Khan's capital, and has been the metropolis of the empire since 1421.

PELAGIUS, a celebrated heresiarch of the 5th century, born in Britain or Brittany; denied original sin and the orthodox doctrine of divine grace as the originating and sustaining power in redemption, a heresy for which he suffered banishment from Rome in 418 at the hands of the Church. A modification of this theory went under the name of Semi-Pelagianism, which ascribes only the first step in conversion to free-will, and the subsequent sanctification of the soul to G.o.d's grace.

PELASGI, a people who in prehistoric times occupied Greece, the Archipelago, the sh.o.r.es of Asia Minor, and great part of Italy, and who were subdued, and more or less reduced to servitude, by the h.e.l.lenes, and supplanted by them. They appear to have been, so far as we find them, an agricultural people, settled and not roving about, and to have had strongholds enclosed in cyclopean walls, that is, walls consisting of huge boulders unconnected with cement.

PELEUS, the son of aeacus, the husband of Thetis, the father of Achilles, and one of the Argonauts, after whom Achilles is named Pelides, i. e. Peleus' boy.

PELEW ISLANDS (10), twenty-six in number, of coral formation, and surrounded by reefs; are in the extreme W. of the Caroline Archipelago in the North Pacific, and SE. of the Philippines. They belong to Spain; are small but fertile, and have a healthy climate. The natives are Malays, and though gentle lead a savage life.

PELHAM, a fas.h.i.+onable novel by Bulwer Lytton, severely satirised by Carlyle in "Sartor" in the chapter on "Dandies" as the elect of books of this cla.s.s.

PELIAS, king of Iolchus, and son of Poseidon, was cut to pieces by his own daughters, which were thrown by them into a boiling caldron in the faith of the promise of Medea, that he might thereby be restored to them young again. It was he who, to get rid of Jason, sent him in quest of the golden fleece in the hope that he might perish in the attempt.

PELICAN, a bird, the effigy of which was used in the Middle Ages to symbolise charity; generally represented as wounding its breast to feed its young with its own blood, and which became the image of the Christ who shed His blood for His people.

PELIDES, a patronymic of Achilles, as the son of Peleus.

PELION, a range, or the highest of a range, of mountains in the E.

of Thessaly, upon which, according to Greek fables, the t.i.tans hoisted up Mount Ossa in order to scale heaven and dethrone Zeus, a strenuous enterprise which did not succeed, and the symbol of all such.

PELISSIER, a French marshal, born near Rouen; was made Duc de Malakoff for storming the Malakoff tower, which led to the fall of Sebastopol in 1855; rose from the ranks to be Governor-General of Algeria, the office he held when he died (1794-1864).

PELLA, the capital of Macedonia, and the birthplace of Alexander the Great, stood on a hill amid the marches NW. of Thessalonica.

PELLEGRINI, CARLO, a caricaturist, born in Capua; came to London; was distinguished for the inimitable drollery of his cartoons (1838-1889).

PELLICO, SILVIO, Italian poet and patriot, born in Piedmont; suffered a fifteen years' imprisonment in the Spielberg at Brunn for his patriotism, from which he was liberated in 1830; he wrote an account of his life in prison, which commanded attention all over Europe, both for the subject-matter of it and the fascination of the style (1789-1854).

PELLISSON, PAUL, a man of letters and a wit of the age of Louis XIV.; spent some five years in the Bastille, but after his release was appointed historiographer-royal; in his captivity he made a companion of a spider, who was accustomed to eat out of his hand (1624-1693).

PELOPIDAS, a Theban general, and leader of the "sacred band"; the friend of Epaminondas; contributed to the expulsion (379 B.C.) of the Spartans from the citadel of Thebes, of which they had taken possession in 380, after which he was elected to the chief magistracy; gained a victory over Alexander of Pherae the tyrant of Thessaly, but lost his life in 362 while too eagerly pursuing the foe.

PELOPONNESIAN WAR, a war of thirty years' duration (431-404 B.C.) between Athens and Sparta, which ended in the supremacy of the latter, till the latter was overthrown at Leuctra by the Thebans under Epaminondas in 371 B.C. This war is the subject of the history of Thucydides.

PELOPONNESUS (lit. the Isle of Pelops), the ancient name of the Morea of Greece, the chief cities of which were Corinth, Argos, and Sparta; it was connected with the rest of Greece by the Isthmus of Corinth.

PELOPS, in the Greek mythology the grandson of Zeus and son of Tantalus, who was slain by his father and served up by him at a banquet he gave the G.o.ds to test their omniscience, but of the shoulder of which only Demeter in a fit of abstraction partook, whereupon the G.o.ds ordered the body to be thrown into a boiling caldron, from which Pelops was drawn out alive, with the shoulder replaced by one of ivory.

PEMBROKEs.h.i.+RE (89), a maritime county, the farthest W. in Wales; is washed by St. George's Channel except on the E., where it borders on Cardigan and Carmarthen. It is a county of low hills, with much indented coast-line. Milford Haven, in the S., is one of the best harbours in the world. The climate is humid; two-thirds of the soil is under pasture; coal, iron, lead, and slate are found. ST. DAVID'S is a cathedral city; the county town is PEMBROKE (18) on Milford Haven, and near it is the fortified dockyard and a.r.s.enal PEMBROKE DOCK (10).

PEMMICAN, a food for long voyages, particularly in Arctic expeditions, consisting of lean meat or beef without fat dried, pounded, and pressed into cakes. The use of it is now suppressed.

PENANCE, in the Roman Catholic Church an expression of penitence as well as the sacrament of absolution; also the suffering to which a penitent voluntarily subjects himself, according to the schoolmen, as an expression of his penitence, and in punishment of his sin; the three steps of penitence were contrition, confession, and satisfaction.

PENANG or PRINCE OF WALES ISLANDS (91), a small fertile island near the northern opening of the Straits of Malacca, off the Malay coast, and 360 m. NW. of Singapore; is one of the British Straits Settlements, of value strategically; it is hilly, and covered with vegetation; the population are half Chinese, a fourth of them Malays; figs, spices, and tobacco are exported. The capital is GEORGETOWN (25), on the island.

PROVINCE WELLESLEY (97), on the mainland, belongs to the same settlement; it exports tapioca and sugar. The DINDINGS (2), 80 m.

S., are another dependency.

PENATES, the name given by the Romans to their household deities, individually and unitedly, in honour of whom a fire, in charge of the vestal virgins, was kept permanently burning.