The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 432

THRACE, in ancient Greece, was a region, ill defined, stretching N.

of Macedonia to the Danube, and W. of the Euxine (Black Sea); appears never to have been consolidated into one kingdom, but was inhabited by various Thracian tribes akin to the Greeks, but regarded by them as barbarians; since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks the northern portion of Thrace has been annexed to Eastern Roumelia, while the remainder has continued a portion of the Turkish empire.

THRASYBULUS, famous Athenian general and democratic statesman; came to the front during the later part of the Peloponnesian War; took an active share in overturning the oligarchy of the Four Hundred, and in recalling Alcibiades (411 B.C.); was exiled by the Thirty Tyrants, and withdrew to Thebes, but subsequently was permitted to return, and later was engaged in commanding Athenian armies against Lesbos and in support of Rhodes; was murdered (389 B.C.) by natives of Pamphylia.

THREE HOURS' AGONY, a service held on Good Friday from 12 noon till 3 o'clock to commemorate the Pa.s.sion of Christ.

THREE RIVERS (9), capital of St. Maurice Co., Quebec, 95 m. NE. of Montreal; does a considerable trade in lumber, iron-ware, &c.; is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop.

THRING, EDWARD, a celebrated educationist, born at Alford Rectory, Somersets.h.i.+re; educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he obtained a Fellows.h.i.+p; entered the Church, and served in various curacies till in 1853 he began his true lifework by an appointment to the head-masters.h.i.+p of Uppingham School, which he raised to a high state of efficiency, and stamped with the qualities of his own strong personality, as did Arnold at Rugby; published various educational works, "The Theory and Practice of Teaching," "Addresses," "Poems and Translations," &c. (1821-1887).

THROGMORTON, SIR NICHOLAS, English diplomatist; was amba.s.sador in Paris under Elizabeth, and afterwards to Scotland; fell into disgrace as involved in an intrigue for the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, with the Duke of Norfolk (1513-1571).

THUCYDIDES, historian of the Peloponnesian War, born in Athens nine years after the battle of Salamis, of a wealthy family; was in Athens during the plague of 430 B.C.; was seized, but recovered; served as naval commander in 424 in the Peloponnesian War, but from neglect of duty was banished; returned from exile 20 years after; his great achievement is his history, all derived from personal observation and oral communication, the materials of which were collected during the war, and the whole executed in a style to ent.i.tle it to rank among the n.o.blest literary monuments of antiquity; it is not known how or when he died, but he died before his history was finished.

THUGS, a fraternity of professed wors.h.i.+ppers of the G.o.ddess Kali, the wife of Siva, who, professedly to propitiate her, practised murder, and lived on the spoils of the victims. THUGGEE, a name for the practice, originally by strangling and at times by poisoning.

THULE, ULTIMA, name given by the ancients to the farthest N. part of Europe, which they conceived as an island.

THUN (6), a quaint old town of Switzerland, on the Aar, 17 m. SE. of Bern, and barely 1 m. distant from Lake of Thun (12 m. by 2 m.); has a 12th-century castle, &c.

THUNDERER, name given to the _Times_, from certain powerful articles in it ascribed to the editor, Captain Edward Stirling.

THURGAU (105), a canton of Switzerland, on the NE. frontier, where Lake Constance for a considerable distance forms its boundary; inhabitants are mainly Protestant; country is hilly but not mountainous, fertile, and traversed by the river Thur, a tributary of the Rhine; capital Frauenfeld.

THURIBLE, a censer suspended by chains and held in the hand by a priest during ma.s.s and other offices of the Romish Church.

THuRINGIA, originally the territory of the Thuringians (an ancient German tribe), now an integral portion of the German empire, occupies a central position, with Saxony on its N. and E., and Bavaria on the S.; a considerable portion of it is covered by the Thuringian Forest.

THURLES (5), a town of Tipperary, on the Suir, 87 m. SW. of Dublin; is the seat of a Catholic archbishop, college, and cathedral; in the vicinity are the fine ruins of Holy Cross Abbey.

THURLOW, EDWARD, BARON, a noted lawyer and politician of George III.'s reign, born, a clergyman's son, at Bracon-Ash, Norfolk; quitted Cambridge without a degree, and with a reputation for insubordination and braggadocio rather than for scholars.h.i.+p; called to the bar in 1754, he soon made his way, aided by an imposing presence, which led Fox to remark, "No man ever was so wise as Thurlow looked"; raised his reputation by his speeches in the great Douglas case, and through influence of the Douglas family was made a King's counsel; entered Parliament in 1768; became a favourite of the king, and rose through the offices of Solicitor-General and Attorney-General to the Lord Chancellors.h.i.+p in 1778, being raised to the peerage as Baron; lost his position during the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North, but was restored by Pitt, who, however, got rid of him in 1792, after which his appearances in public life were few; not a man of fine character, but possessed a certain rough vigour of intellect which appears to have made considerable impression on his contemporaries (1732-1806).

THURSDAY, fifth day of the week, dedicated to THOR (q. v.).

THURSDAY ISLAND, a small island in Normanby Sound, Torres Strait, belonging to Queensland, and used as a Government station; has a fine harbour, Port Kennedy, largely used for the Australian transit trade; also the centre of valuable pearl fisheries.

THURSO (4), a seaport in Caithness, at the mouth of the Thurso River, 21 m. NW. of Wick; does a brisk trade in agricultural produce, cattle, and paving stones.

THYRSUS, an attribute of Dionysus, being a staff or spear entwined with ivy leaves and a cone at the top; carried by the devotees of the G.o.d on festive occasions; the cone was presumed to cover the spear point, a wound from which was said to cause madness.

TIAN-SHAN ("Celestial Mountains"), a great mountain range of Central Asia, separating Turkestan from Eastern and Chinese Turkestan; highest summit Kaufmann Peak, 22,500 ft.

TIBER, a river of Italy celebrated in ancient Roman history, rises in the Apennines, in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany; rapid and turbid in its upper course, but navigable 100 m. upwards from its mouth; flows generally in a S. direction, and after a course of about 260 m. enters the Mediterranean about 15 m. below Rome.

TIBERIUS, second Roman emperor, born at Rome; was of the Claudian family; became the step-son of Augustus, who, when he was five years old, had married his mother; was himself married to Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa, but was compelled to divorce her and marry Augustus's daughter Julia, by whom he had two sons, on the death of whom he was adopted as the emperor's successor, whom, after various military services in various parts of the empire, he succeeded A.D. 14; his reign was distinguished by acts of cruelty, specially at the instance of the minister Seja.n.u.s, whom out of jealousy he put to death; given up to debauchery, he was suffocated in a fainting fit by the captain of the Praetorian Guards in A.D. 37, and succeeded by Caligula; it was during his reign Christ was crucified.

TIBERT, SIR, the cat in "Reynard the Fox."

TIBET (6,000), a country of Central Asia, and dependency of China since 1720, called by the natives themselves Bod or Bodyul, comprises a wide expanse of tableland, "three times the size of France, almost as cold as Siberia, most of it higher than Mount Blanc, and all of it, except a few valleys, dest.i.tute of population"; enclosed by the lofty ranges of the Himalaya and Kuen-lun Mountains, it has been left practically unexplored; possesses great mineral wealth, and a large foreign trade is carried on in woollen cloth (chief article of manufacture); polyandry and polygamy are prevailing customs among the people, who are a Mongolic race of fine physique, fond of music and dancing, jealous of intrusion and wrapt up in their own ways and customs; the government, civil and religious, is in the hands of the clergy, the lower orders of which are numerous throughout the country; a variation of Mongol Shamanism is the native religion, but Lamaism is the official religion of the country, and the supreme authority is vested in the Dalai Lama, the sovereign pontiff, who resides at Lha.s.sa, the capital.

TIBULLUS, ALBIUS, Roman elegiac poet, a contemporary of Virgil and Horace, the latter of whom was warmly attached to him; he accompanied Messala his patron in his campaigns to Gaul and the East, but had no liking for war, and preferred in peace to cultivate the tender sentiments, and to attune his harp to his emotions.

TICHBORNE, a village and property of Hamps.h.i.+re, which became notorious in the "seventies" through a butcher, from Wagga Wagga, in Australia, named Thomas Castro, otherwise Thomas Orton, laying claim to it in 1866 on the death of Sir Alfred Joseph Tichborne; the "Claimant"

represented himself as an elder brother of the deceased baronet, supposed (and rightly) to have perished at sea; the imposture was exposed after a lengthy trial, and a subsequent trial for perjury resulted in a sentence of 14 years' penal servitude. Orton, after his release, confessed his imposture in 1895.

TICINO (127), the most southerly canton of Switzerland, lies on the Italian frontier; slopes down from the Lepontine Alps in the N. to fertile cultivated plains in the S., which grow olives, vines, figs, &c.; the inhabitants speak Italian, and the canton, from the mildness of its climate and richness of its soil, has been called the "Italian Switzerland," embraces most of Lakes Lugano and Maggiore, and is traversed by the St. Gothard Railway.

TICINO, a river of Switzerland and North Italy; springs from the S.

side of Mount St. Gothard, flows southwards through Lake Maggiore and SE.

through North Italy, joining the Po 4 m. below Pavia, after a course of 120 m.

TICKELL, THOMAS, a minor English poet, born at Bridekirk, c.u.mberland; enjoyed the friends.h.i.+p and favour of Addison, who praised him in the _Spectator_, and held till his death the appointment of secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland; his poetry does not count for much in the history of English literature, but he was happy in the composition of occasional poems, e. g. "The Prospect of Peace," "The Royal Progress,"

and in ballads, such as "Colin and Lucy," &c., and his translation of the first book of the "Iliad" was so good as to rouse the jealousy of Pope (1686-1740).

TICKNOR, GEORGE, American man of letters, born in Boston; studied in various European cities, where he was received in the best literary circles, and of which he has left in his journal interesting impressions; held the professors.h.i.+p of French and Spanish in Harvard University for a number of years; published in 1849 his "History of Spanish Literature,"

the standard work on the subject; also wrote lives of Lafayette and Prescott, &c. (1791-1871).

TICONDEROGA (3), a towns.h.i.+p of New York, on Lake Champlain, 100 m.