The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 448

VOLTAIRE, FRANcOIS MARIE AROUET DE, great French "persifleur" and "Coryphaeus of Deism," born in Paris, son of a lawyer; trained to scoff at religion from his boyhood, and began his literary career as a satirist and in the production of lampoons which cost him twice over imprisonment in the Bastille, on his release from which he left France in 1726 and went to England, where he stayed three years, and got acquainted with the free-thinking cla.s.s there; on his return to Paris he engaged in some profitable commercial speculations and published his "Charles XII.,"

which he had written in England, and retired to the chateau of Cirey, where he lived five years with Madame du Chatelet, engaged in study and diligent with his pen, with whom he left France and went to Poland, after her death paying his famous visit to Frederick the Great, with whom before three years were out he quarrelled, and from whom he was glad to escape, making his head-quarters eventually within the borders of France at Ferney, from which he now and again visited Paris, where on his last visit he was received with such raptures of adulation that he was quite overcome, and had to be conveyed home to die, giving up the ghost exactly two months after. He was a man of superlative adroitness of faculty and s.h.i.+ftiness, without aught that can be called great, but more than any other the incarnation of the spirit of his time; said the word which all were waiting to hear and who replied yea to it--a poor word indeed yet a potent, for it gave the death-blow to superst.i.tion, but left religion out in the cold. The general, the great offence Carlyle charges Voltaire with is, that "he intermeddled in religion without being himself in any measure religious; that he entered the Temple and continued there with a levity which, in any temple where men wors.h.i.+p, can beseem no brother man; that, in a word, he ardently, and with long-continued effort, warred against Christianity, without understanding, beyond the mere superficies, what Christianity was" (1694-1778).

VOLUNTARYISM, the doctrine that the Church should not depend on the State, but should be supported exclusively by the voluntary contributions of its members.

VOODOO, name given to a system of magic and superst.i.tious rites prevalent among certain negro races.

VORTIGERN, a British prince of the 5th century, who, on the withdrawal of the Romans, invited the Saxons to aid him against the incursions of the Picts, to, as it proved, their own installation into sovereign power in South Britain.

VOSGES, a range of mountains in the NE. of France, since 1871 forming the Franco-German frontier by the inclusion of Alsace in German territory; they separate the basin of the Moselle from that of the Rhine.

VOSS, JOHANN HEINRICH, German poet and scholar, born in Mecklenburg; spent most of his life in Heidelberg; his fame rests chiefly on his idyllic poem "Luise" and his translations, particularly of Homer (1751-1826).

VOSSIUS, GERARD, Dutch philologist, born near Heidelberg; wrote a history of Pelagianism, which brought him disfavour with the orthodox; was made a prebendary of Canterbury through the influence of Laud; was, on some apology to orthodoxy in 1633, called to the chair of History in the Gymnasium of Amsterdam; he was a friend of Grotius; he fell from a ladder in his library, and was found dead (1577-1649).

VULCAN, the Roman G.o.d of fire and an artificer In metals, identified with the Greek HEPHaeSTUS (q. v.); had a temple to his honour in early Rome; was fabled to have had a forge under Mount Etna, where he manufactured thunderbolts for Jupiter, the Cyclops being his workmen.

VULGATE, a version of the Bible in Latin executed by ST.

JEROME (q. v.), and was in two centuries after its execution universally adopted in the Western Christian Church as authoritative for both faith and practice, and from the circ.u.mstance of its general reception it became known as the Vulgate (i. e. the commonly-accepted Bible of the Church), and it is the version accepted as authentic to-day by the Roman Catholic Church, under sanction of the Council of Trent.

"With the publication of it," says Ruskin, "the great deed of fixing, in their ever since undisturbed harmony and majesty, the canon of Mosaic and Apostolic Scripture, was virtually accomplished, and the series of historic and didactic books which form our present Bible (including the Apocrypha) were established in and above the nascent thought of the n.o.blest races of men living on the terrestrial globe, as a direct message to them from its Maker, containing whatever it was necessary for them to learn of His purposes towards them, and commanding, or advising, with divine authority and infallible wisdom, all that it was best for them to do and happiest to desire. Thus, partly as a scholar's exercise and partly as an old man's recreation, the severity of the Latin language was softened, like Venetian crystal, by the variable fire of Hebrew thought, and the 'Book of Books' took the abiding form of which all the future art of the Western nations was to be an hourly expanding interpretation."

VYASA, the mythical author of the Hindu Mahabharata and the Puranas; was the illegitimate child of a Brahman and a girl of impure caste of the fisher cla.s.s.

W

WAAL, a S. branch of the Rhine, in Holland.

WACE, Anglo-Norman poet, born in Guernsey; author of two metrical chronicles, "Geste des Bretons" and "Roman de Rou," the latter recording the fortunes of the dukes of Normandy down to 1106 (1120-1183).

WACE, HENRY, Princ.i.p.al of King's College, London; has lectured ably on Christian apologetics, and written valuable works in defence of Christianity; _b_. 1836.

WADE, GEORGE, English general; commanded in Scotland during the rebellion of 1715, has the credit of the construction in 1725-35 of the military roads into the Highlands, to frustrate any further attempts at rebellion in the north (1668-1748).

WADMAN, WIDOW, a lady in "Tristram Shandy" who pays court to Uncle Toby.

WADY, an Arabic name for the channel of a stream which is flooded in rainy weather and at other seasons dry.

WAGNER, WILHELM RICHARD, the great musical composer, born at Leipzig; showed early a faculty for music, and began the enthusiastic study of it under Beethoven; in 1835 became conductor of the orchestra of the theatre of Magdeburg, and held the same post afterwards at Riga and Konigsberg; his princ.i.p.al works were "Rienzi" (1840), "The Flying Dutchman" (1843), "Tannhauser" (1845), "Lohengrin" (1850), "Tristan and Isolde" (1859), "The Mastersingers of Nurnberg" (1859-60), and the "Ring of the Nibelungen," the composition of which occupied 25 years; this last was performed in 1876 at Bayreuth in a theatre erected for the purpose in presence of the emperor of Germany and the princ.i.p.al musical artists of the world; "Parsifal" was his last work; his musical ideas were revolutionary, and it was some time before his works made their way in England (1813-1883).

WAGRAM, a village, 10 m. NE. of Vienna, where Napoleon gained a great victory over the Austrians under the Archduke Charles, on July 5 and 6, 1809.

WAHABIS, a Mohammedan sect which arose among the Nedj tribe in Central Arabia, whose aims were puritanic and the restoration of Islamism to its primitive simplicity in creed, wors.h.i.+p, and conduct; in creed they were substantially the same as the SUNNITES (q. v.).

WAIKATO, the largest river in New Zealand, in the North Island, the outlet of the waters of Lake Taupo, the largest lake; has a course of 170 m.

WAKEFIELD (37), a borough of Yorks.h.i.+re, 9 m. S. of Leeds; has large woollen and other manufactures.

WALCHEREN, an island in the province of Zeeland, in the delta formed by the Maas and Scheldt; was the destination of an unfortunate expedition sent to the help of the Austrians against Napoleon in Antwerp, in which 7000 of the army composing it died of marsh fever, from which 10,000 were sent home sick and the rest recalled.

WALDECK-PYRMONT (57), two high-lying territories in North Germany forming one princ.i.p.ality and subject to imperial authority; consists of hill and valley.

WALDENSES, a Christian community founded in 1170 in the south of France, on the model of the primitive Church, by Peter Walden, a rich citizen of Lyons, and who were driven by persecution from country to country until they settled in Piedmont under the name of the VAUDOIS (q. v.), where they still exist.

WALES (1,519), one of three divisions of Great Britain; is 135 m. in length and from 37 to 95 m. in breadth, and bounded on the NW. and S. by the sea; it is divided into 12 counties, of which 6 form North Wales and 6 South Wales; is a mountainous country, intersected by beautiful valleys, which are traversed by a number of streams; it is largely agricultural; has mines of coal and iron, lead and copper, as well as large slate-quarries, which are extensively wrought; the Church of England is the church established, but the majority of the people are Nonconformists; it is represented in Parliament by 30 members; the natives are Celts, and the native language Celtic, which is still the language of a goodly number of the people.

WALES, PRINCE OF, t.i.tle borne by eldest son of the English monarch; first conferred in 1301 on eldest son of Edward I. after subjugation of Wales (1282); since 1901 borne by Prince George, formerly Duke of York; entered the navy in 1877, and attained the post of commander in 1890; became heir of the throne on death of his brother, Duke of Clarence (1892); married Princess Mary of Teck (1893), and has by this marriage four sons and a daughter; _b_. 1865.

WALFISH BAY, a dependency of Cape Colony, in the middle of the coast-line of German South-West Africa.

WALKER, GEORGE, defender of Londonderry against the army of James II., born in co. Tyrone, of English parents; was in holy orders, and by his sermons encouraged the town's-people during the siege, which lasted 105 days; he afterwards fought in command of his Derry men at the battle of the Boyne, where he lost his life.

WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL, English naturalist, born at Usk, in Monmouths.h.i.+re; was devoted to the study of natural history, in the interest of which he spent four years (1848-52) in the valley of the Amazon, and eight years after (1854-62) in the East India Archipelago, from the latter of which expedition especially he returned with thousands of specimens of natural objects, particularly insects and birds, and during his absence he wrought out a theory in the main coincident with Darwin's natural selection in corroboration thereof; he has since devoted much of his time to the study of spiritualism, and in spite of himself has come to be convinced of its claims to scientific regard; he has written on his travels, "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," &c.; _b_. 1823.

WALLACE, SIR WILLIAM, the champion of Scottish independence, born in Renfrews.h.i.+re, second son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie; was early seized with a desire to free his country from foreign oppressors, and ere long began to figure as chief of a band of outlaws combined to defy the authority of Edward I., who had declared himself Lord of Scotland, till at length the sense of the oppression became wide-spread, and he was appointed to lead in a general revolt, while many of the n.o.bles held aloof or succ.u.mbed to the usurper; he drove the English from one stronghold after another, finis.h.i.+ng with the battle of Stirling, and was installed thereafter guardian of the kingdom; such a reverse was more than the "proud usurper" could brook; he accordingly mustered a large army, and at Falkirk literally crushed Wallace and his followers with an overwhelming force, the craven n.o.bles still standing aloof, one of them in the end proving traitor, and handing Wallace over to the enemy, who carried him off to London, and had him hanged, beheaded, and quartered.

WALLACE COLLECTION, a collection of works of art bequeathed to the nation by Lady Wallace, and now being housed in Hertford House, Manchester Square, London.