The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 365

from N. to S. and 800 m. from E. to W., two-thirds of it within the tropics, and occupying an area three times as large as that of France.

Mountains stretch away N. parallel to the coast, and much of the centre is tableland; one-half of it is covered with forests, and it is fairly well watered, the rivers being numerous, and the chief the Fitzroy and the Burdekin. The population is only half a million, and the chief towns are Brisbane, the capital, Gympie, Maryborough, Rockhampton, and Townsville. The pastoral industry is very large, and there is considerable mining for gold. The mineral resources are great, and a coal-field still to be worked exists in it as large as the whole of Scotland. Maize and sugar are the princ.i.p.al products of the soil, and wool, gold, and sugar are the princ.i.p.al exports; the colony is capable of immense developments. Until 1859 the territory was administered by New South Wales, but in that year it became an independent colony, with a government of its own under a Governor appointed by the Crown; the Parliament consists of two Houses, a Legislative Council of 41 members, nominated by the Governor, and the Legislative a.s.sembly of 72 members, elected for three years by manhood suffrage.

QUEENSTOWN, a seaport, formerly called the Cove of Cork, on the S.

sh.o.r.e of Great Island, and 14 m. SE. of Cork; a port of call for the Atlantic line of steamers, specially important for the receipt and landing of the mails.

QUELPART (10), an island 52 m. S. of the Corea, 40 m. long by 17 broad, surrounded with small islets in situation to the Corea as Sicily to Italy.

QUERCITRON, a yellow dye obtained from the bark of a North American oak.

QUEReTARO (36), a high-lying Mexican town in a province of the same name, 150 m. NW. of Mexico; has large cotton-spinning mills; here the Emperor Maximilian was shot by order of court-martial in 1867.

QUERN, a handmill of stone for grinding corn, of primitive contrivance, and still used in remote parts of Ireland and Scotland.

QUESNAY, FRANcOIS, a great French economist, born at Merez (Seine-et-Oise), bred to the medical profession, and eminent as a medical pract.i.tioner, was consulting physician to Louis XV., but distinguished for his articles in the "Encyclopedie" on political economy, and as the founder of the PHYSIOCRATIC SCHOOL (q. v.), the school which attaches special importance in State economy to agriculture (1694-1774).

QUESNEL, PASQUIER, a French Jansenist theologian, born in Paris; was the author of a great many works, but the most celebrated is his "Reflexions Morales"; was educated at the Sorbonne, and became head of the congregation of the Oratory in Paris, but was obliged to seek refuge in Holland with Arnauld on embracing Jansenism; his views exposed him to severe persecution at the hands of the Jesuits, and his "Reflexions" were condemned in 101 propositions by the celebrated bull _Unigenitus_; spent his last years at Amsterdam, and died there (1634-1719).

QUeTELET, ADOLPHE, Belgian astronomer and statistician, born at Ghent; wrote on meteorology and anthropology, in the light especially of statistics (1796-1874).

QUETTA, a strongly fortified town in the N. of Beluchistan, commanding the Bolan Pa.s.s, and occupied by a British garrison. It is also a health resort from the temperate climate it enjoys.

QUEUES, BAKERS', "long strings of purchasers arranged _in tail_ at the bakers' shop doors in Paris during the Revolution period, so that first come be first served, were the shops once open," and that came to be a Parisian inst.i.tution.

QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS, Francisco Gomez de, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid, of an old ill.u.s.trious family; left an orphan at an early age, and educated at Alcala, the university of which he left with a great name for scholars.h.i.+p; served as diplomatist and administrator in Sicily under the Duke of Ossuna, the viceroy, and returned to the Court of Philip IV. in Spain at his death; struggled hard to purify the corrupt system of appointments to office in the State then prevailing but was seized and thrown into confinement, from which, after four years, he was released, broken in health; he wrote much in verse, but only for his own solace and in communication with his friends, and still more in prose on a variety of themes, he being a writer of the most versatile ability, of great range and attainment (1580-1645).

QUIBeRON, a small fis.h.i.+ng village on a peninsula of the name, stretching southward from Morbihan, France, near which Hawke defeated a French fleet in 1759, and where a body of French emigrants attempted to land in 1795 in order to raise an insurrection, but were defeated by General Hoche.

QUICHUAS, a civilised people who flourished at one time in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and spoke a highly-cultivated language called Quichua after them.

QUICK, ROBERT HEBERT, English educationist; wrote "Essays on Educational Reformers"; was in holy orders (1832-1891).

QUICKSAND, sandbank so saturated with water that it gives way under pressure; found near the mouths of rivers.

QUIETISM, the name given to a mystical religious turn of mind which seeks to attain spiritual illumination and perfection by maintaining a purely pa.s.sive and susceptive att.i.tude to Divine communication and revelation, shutting out all consciousness of self and all sense of external things, and independently of the observance of the practical virtues. The high-priest of Quietism was the Spanish priest MOLINOS (q. v.), and his chief disciple in France was Madame de Guyon, who infected the mind of the saintly Fenelon. The appearance of it in France, and especially Fenelon's partiality to it, awoke the hostility of Bossuet, who roused the Church against it, as calculated to have an injurious effect on the interests of practical morality; indeed the hostility became so p.r.o.nounced that Fenelon was forced to retract, to the gradual dying out of the fanaticism.

QUILIMANE (6), a seaport of East Africa, on the Mozambique Channel, in a district subject to Portugal; stands 15 m. from the mouth of a river of the name.

QUILON, a trading town on the W. coast of Travancore, 85 m. N. of Comorin.

QUIMPER (17), a French town 63 m. SE. of Brest, with a much admired cathedral; has sundry manufactures, and a fis.h.i.+ng industry.

QUIN, JAMES, a celebrated actor, born in London; was celebrated for his representation of Falstaff, and was the first actor of the day till the appearance of Garrick in 1741 (1693-1766).

QUINAULT, French poet; his first performances procured for him the censure of Boileau, but his operas, for which Luini composed the music, earned for him a good standing among lyric poets (1635-1688).

QUINCEY, DE. See DE QUINCEY.

QUINCY (31), a city in Illinois, U.S., on the Mississippi, 160 m.

above St. Louis; a handsome city, with a large trade and extensive factories; is a great railway centre.

QUINCY, JOSIAH, American statesman, born at Boston; was bred to the bar, and entered Congress in 1804, where he distinguished himself by his oratory as leader of the Federal party, as the sworn foe of slave-holding, and as an opponent of the admission of the Western States into the Union; in 1812 he retired from Congress, gave himself for a time to purely local affairs in Ma.s.sachusetts, and at length to literary labours, editing his speeches for one thing, without ceasing to interest himself in the anti-slavery movement (1772-1864).

QUINET, EDGAR, a French man of letters, born at Bourg, in the department of Ain; was educated at Bourg and Lyons, went to Paris in 1820, and in 1823 produced a satire called "Les Tablettes du Juif-Errant," at which time he came under the influence of HERDER (q. v.) and executed in French a translation of his "Philosophy of Humanity," prefaced with an introduction which procured him the friends.h.i.+p of Michelet, a friends.h.i.+p which lasted with life; appointed to a post in Greece, he collected materials for a work on Modern Greece, and this, the first fruit of his own view of things as a speculative Radical, he published in 1830; he now entered the service of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and in the pages of it his prose poem "Ahasuerus" appeared, which was afterwards published in a book form and soon found a place in the "Index Expurgatorius" of the Church; this was followed by other democratic poems, "Napoleon" in 1835 and "Prometheus" in 1838; from 1838 to 1842 he occupied the chair of Foreign Literature in Lyons, and pa.s.sed from it to that of the Literature of Southern Europe in the College of France; here, along with Michelet, he commenced a vehement crusade against the clerical party, which was brought to a head by his attack on the Jesuits, and which led to his suspension from the duties of the chair in 1846; he distrusted Louis Napoleon, and was exiled in 1852, taking up his abode at Brussels, to return to Paris again only after the Emperor's fall; through all these troubles he was busy with his pen, in 1838 published his "Examen de la Vie de Jesus," his "Du Genie des Religions,"

"La Revolution Religieuse au xix^{e} Siecle," and other works; he was a disciple of Herder to the last; he believed in humanity, and religion as the soul of it (1803-1875).

QUININE, an alkaloid obtained from the bark of several species of the cinchona tree and others, and which is employed in medicine specially as a ferbrifuge and a tonic.

QUINIs.e.xT, an ecclesiastical council held at Constantinople in 692, composed chiefly of Eastern bishops, and not reckoned among the councils of the Western Church.

QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY, the Sunday before the beginning of Lent.

QUINSY, inflammation of the tonsils of the throat.

QUINTANA, MANUEL JOSe, a Spanish lyric and dramatic poet, born in Madrid; was for a time the champion of liberal ideas in politics, which he ceased to advocate before he died; is celebrated as the author of a cla.s.sic work, being "Lives of Celebrated Spaniards" (1772-1857).

QUINTETTE, a musical composition in obligato parts for five voices or five instruments.