The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 442

URBAN, the name of eight popes: URBAN I., Pope from 223 to 230; URBAN II., Pope from 1088 to 1099, warm promoter of the first Crusade; URBAN III., pope from 1185 to 1187; URBAN IV., Pope from 1261 to 1264; URBAN V., Pope from 1362 to 1370, man of an ascetic temper; URBAN VI., Pope from 1378 to 1389, in his reign the schism in the papacy began which lasted 40 years; URBAN VII., Pope in 1590; and URBAN VIII., Pope from 1623 to 1644, founded the College de Propaganda Fide.

URBINO, an ancient town of Central Italy, 20 m. SW. of Pesaro; was once the capital of a duchy; is the seat of an archbishop, and was the birthplace of Raphael.

URI (17), a Swiss canton N. of Unterwalden; is almost entirely pastoral; is overlooked by Mount St. Gothard; Altdorf is the capital.

URIM AND THUMMIM, two ornaments attached to the breastplate of the Jewish high-priest which, when consulted by him, at times gave mysteriously oracular responses.

URQUHART, SIR THOMAS, of Cromarty, a cavalier and supporter of Charles I., and a great enemy of the Covenanters in Scotland; travelled much, and acquired a ma.s.s of miscellaneous knowledge, which he was fain to display and did display in a most pedantic style; posed as a philologist and a mathematician, but executed one cla.s.sical work, a translation of Rabelais; is said to have died in a fit of laughter at the news of the restoration of Charles II. (1605-1660).

URSA MAJOR, the Greater Bear, a well-known constellation in the northern hemisphere, called also the Plough, the Wagon, or Charles's Wain, consists of seven bright stars, among others three of which are known as the "handle" of the Plough, and two as the pointers, so called as pointing to the pole-star.

URSA MINOR, the Lesser Bear, an inconspicuous constellation, the pole-star forming the tip of the tail.

URSULA, ST., virgin saint and martyr, daughter of a British king; sought in marriage by a heathen prince, whom she accepted on condition that he became a Christian and that he would wait three years till she and her 11,000 maidens accomplished a pilgrimage to Rome; this pilgrimage being accomplished, on their return to Cologne they were set upon and all save her slain by a horde of Huns, who reserved her as a bride to Etzel, their king, on the refusal of whose hand she was transfixed by an arrow, and thereby set free from all earthly bonds; is very often represented in art with arrows in her hands, and sometimes with a mantle and a group of small figures under it, her martyred sisters.

URSULINES, an order of nuns founded in 1537 by St. Angela Merici of Brescia in honour of St. Ursula, devoted to the nursing of the sick and the instruction of the young, and now established in homes in different cities of both Europe and North America.

URUGUAY (730), the smallest State in South America and a republic, formerly called Banda Oriental; lies between the Atlantic and the Uruguay River, and is bounded on the S. by the estuary of the Plata; it covers an area of over 70,000 sq. m., and is little more than one-third the size of France; the mineral wealth is abundant, but little has been done to exploit it; the cultivation of the soil is only begun, and the land is mostly given over to pasture, cattle-rearing and sheep-farming being the chief industries, and the chief products and exports being hides, wool, preserved meats, and similar articles of commerce. The people are mostly natives of mixed race, with some 30 per cent. of Europeans; primary education is compulsory; there are numerous schools, and a university, and though the established religion is Roman Catholic, all others are tolerated. Montevideo is the capital.

URUMIYA (32), a town in Persia, near a lake of the name, SW. of the Caspian Sea, the seat of a Nestorian bishop and the birthplace of Zoroaster.

USEDOM (33), island belonging to Prussia, at the mouth of the Oder, with Schwinemunde on the N.

USHANT, island off the W. coast of France, in department of Finisterre, where Howe gained a signal victory over the French in 1794.

USHER, JAMES, Irish episcopal prelate, born in Dublin of good parentage, educated at Trinity College, Dublin; took orders and devoted years to the study of the Fathers of the Church; was in 1607 appointed professor of Divinity in his Alma Mater, in 1620 bishop of Meath, and in 1621 archbishop of Armagh; in 1640 he went to England, and during the rebellion next year his house was broken into and plundered, after which he settled in London and was eight years preacher at Lincoln's Inn; adhered to the royal cause, but was favoured by Cromwell, and by him honoured with burial in Westminster; he was a most saintly man, evangelical in his teaching, and wrote a number of learned works (1581-1656).

UTAH (207), a territory on the western plateau of the United States, W. of Colorado, traversed by the Wahsatch range, at the foot of which lies the Great Salt Lake, is in extent nearly three times as large as Scotland, and occupied by a population four-fifths of which are Mormons, a territory rich in mines of the precious and useful metals as well as coal; originally wholly a desert waste, but now transformed where the soil has admitted of it, into a fruit-bearing region. SALT LAKE CITY (q. v.) is the capital.

UTAKAMAND, the summer capital of the Presidency of Madras, India, on the Nilgherries, 7000 ft. above the sea-level, and where the temperature in summer is as low as 60.

UTGARD (out-yard), in the Norse mythology a place or circle of rocks on the extreme borders of the world, the abode of the giants, the same as Jotunheim.

UTICA, an ancient city of North Africa, founded by the Phoenicians on a site 20 m. NW. of Carthage; was in alliance with Carthage during the first and second Punic Wars, but took part with the Romans in the third, and became afterwards the capital of the Roman province.

UTICA (56), a city in New York State, U.S., 232 m. NW. of New York City; is on the Erie Ca.n.a.l, in the heart of a dairy-farming district; has a noted market for cheese, and has various manufactures.

UTILITARIANISM, the theory which makes happiness the end of life and the test of virtue, and maintains that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse," a theory characterised by Carlyle, who is never weary of denouncing it, as "reducing the infinite celestial soul of man to a kind of hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on."

The great apostle of this theory was John Stuart Mill, and the great father of it Jeremy Bentham.

UTOPIA (Nowhere), an imaginary island described by Sir Thomas More, and represented as possessing a perfect political organisation, and which has given name to all schemes which aim at the like impossible perfection, though often applied to such as are not so much impossible in themselves as impracticable for want of the due individual virtue and courage to realise them.

UTRAQUISTS (i. e. both kinders), followers of Huss who maintained that the Eucharist should be administered to the people in both kinds, both bread and wine.

UTRECHT (60), an old town, the capital of a province of the name (224), in Holland, on the Old Rhine, 23 m. SE. of Amsterdam; it is fortified by strong forts, and the old walls have been levelled into beautiful promenades; has a number of fine buildings, a Gothic cathedral, St. Martin's, a famous university with 700 students, and a library of 160,000 volumes, besides a town-hall and the "Pope's house" (Pope Adrian VI., who was born here), &c.; manufactures iron goods, textiles, machinery, &c., and trades in b.u.t.ter and cheese; here in 1713 the treaty was signed which closed the Spanish Succession War. Is the name also of a S. province of the Transvaal.

UTTOXETER, market-town of Staffords.h.i.+re, 14 m. NE. of Stafford; has sundry manufactures and brewing; here Dr. Johnson did public penance, with head uncovered, as a man, for want of filial duty when, as a boy, he refused to keep his father's bookstall in the market-place when he was ill.

UXBRIDGE, town of Middles.e.x, 16 m. W. of London; has two fine churches, and a large corn-market.

UZBEGS, a race of Tartar descent and Mohammedan creed, dominant in Turkestan, the governing cla.s.s in Khiva, Bokhara, and Khokand especially; territory now annexed to Russia.

V

VAAL, a river of South Africa, which rises in the Drakenberg Mountains, separates the Free State from the Transvaal, and after a course of 500 m. in a SW. direction joins the Nu Gariep to form the Orange River.

VACCINATION. Inoculation with the matter of cowpox as a protection against smallpox, was introduced 1796-98 by EDWARD JENNER (q. v.), and at length adopted by the faculty after much opposition on the part of both medical men and the public.

VAIGATZ, an island in the Arctic Ocean, 67 m. long by 26 m. broad, the "Holy Island" of the SAMOYEDES (q. v.), an abode of furred animals, seals, &c.

VAISHNAVAS, in India, name given to the wors.h.i.+ppers of Vishnu.

VAISYAS. See CASTE.