The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 451

WELLESLEY, a small province, part of Penang Territory, in the Straits Settlements; of great fertility, and yields tropical products in immense quant.i.ties, such as spices, tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, and tobacco.

WELLESLEY, RICHARD COWLEY, MARQUIS OF, statesman and administrator, born in Dublin, eldest son of the Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, and eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington, and his senior by nine years; educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he distinguished himself in cla.s.sics; in 1781 succeeded his father in the Irish House of Peers; entered Parliament in 1784; was a supporter of Pitt, and in 1797 appointed Governor-General of India in succession to Cornwallis, and raised to the English peerage as Baron Wellesley; in this capacity he proved himself a great administrator, and by clearing out the French and crus.h.i.+ng the power of Tippoo Saib, as well as increasing the revenue of the East India Company, laid the foundation of the British power in India, for which he was raised to the marquisate, and voted a pension of 5000; he afterwards became Foreign Secretary of State and Viceroy of Ireland (1760-1842).

WELLHAUSEN, JULIUS, Old Testament scholar, born at Hameln; held the post of professor of Theology at Greifswald, but resigned the post from conscientious scruples and became professor of Oriental Languages at Marburg in 1885; is best known among us as a biblical critic on the lines of the so-called higher criticism, the criticism which seeks to arrange the different parts of the Bible in their proper historical connection and order; _b_. 1844.

WELLINGBOROUGH (15), a market-town in Northamptons.h.i.+re, 10 m. NE. of Northampton; has some fine buildings; the manufacture of shoes a chief industry.

WELLINGTON (33), the capital of New Zealand, in the North Island, on Cook Strait; has a s.p.a.cious harbour, with excellent accommodation for s.h.i.+pping, a number of public buildings, including government offices, and two cathedrals, a Roman Catholic and an Anglican, and a considerable trade; in 1865 it superseded Auckland as the capital of the whole of New Zealand.

WELLINGTON, ARTHUR WELLESLEY (or WESLEY), DUKE OF, born probably in Dublin, third son of the Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, educated first at Chelsea, then at Eton, and then at a military school at Angers, in France; entered the army in 1787 as an ensign in the 73rd, and stepped gradually upwards in connection with different regiments, till in 1793 he became lieutenant-colonel of the 33rd; sat for a time in the Irish Parliament as a member for Trim, and went in 1794 to the Netherlands, and served in a campaign there which had disastrous issues such as disgusted him with military life, and was about to leave the army when he was sent to India, where he distinguished himself in the storming of Seringapatam, and in the command of the war against the Mahrattas, which he brought to a successful issue in 1803, returning home in 1805; next year he entered the Imperial Parliament, and in 1807 was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland; in 1808 he left for Portugal, where he was successful against the French in several engagements, and in 1809 was appointed commander-in-chief of the Peninsular army; in this capacity his generals.h.i.+p became conspicuous in a succession of victories, in which he drove the French first out of Portugal and then out of Spain, defeating them finally at Toulouse on the 12th April 1814, and so ending the Peninsular War; on his return home he was loaded with honours, and had voted to him from the public treasury a grant of 400,000; on the return of Napoleon from Elba he was appointed general of the allies against him in the Netherlands and on 18th June 1815 defeated him in the ever-memorable battle of Waterloo; this was the crowning feat in Wellington's military life, and the nation showed its grat.i.tude to him for his services by presenting him with the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in Hamps.h.i.+re, worth 263,000, the price paid for it to Lord Rivers, the proprietor; in 1827 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, and in 1828 was Prime Minister of the State; as a statesman he was opposed to Parliamentary reform, but he voted for the emanc.i.p.ation of the Catholics and the abolition of the Corn Laws; he died in Walmer Castle on 1st September 1852, aged 84, and was buried beside Nelson in a crypt of St.

Paul's (1769-1852).

WELLINGTON COLLEGE, a college founded in 1853 at Wokingham, Berks, in memory of the Duke of Wellington, primarily for the education of the sons of deceased military officers; there is a cla.s.sical school to prepare for the university, and a modern side to prepare for the army, &c.

WELLS, a small episcopal city in Somersets.h.i.+re, 20 m. SW. of Bath; it derives its name from hot springs near it, and is possessed of a beautiful cruciform cathedral in the Early English style, adorned with some 600 statues of saints, 151 of which are life-size, and some of them colossal.

WELLS, CHARLES JEREMIAH, English poet, born in London; author of a dramatic poem ent.i.tled "Joseph and his Brethren," published in 1824, a poem which failed to attract attention at the time, and the singular merits of which were first recognised by Swinburne in 1875, the author having meantime given up literature for the law, to which he had been bred (1800-1879).

WELSH, DAVID, a Scottish divine, a gentlemanly scholarly man, professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh; was Moderator of the General a.s.sembly on the occasion of the Disruption of the Scottish Church (1843), and headed the secession on the day of the exodus (1793-1845).

WELSH, or WELCH, JOHN, a Scottish divine, a Nithsdale man; became Presbyterian minister of Ayr, and was distinguished both as a preacher and for his st.u.r.dy opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of James VI., for which latter he suffered imprisonment and exile; he was an ancestor of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and was married to a daughter of John Knox, who, when the king thought to win her over by offering her husband a bishopric, held out her ap.r.o.n before sovereign majesty, and threatened she would rather kep (catch) his head there than that he should live and be a bishop; she figures in the chapter in "Sartor" on Ap.r.o.ns, as one of Carlyle's ap.r.o.n-worthies (1570-1625).

WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISTS, the largest Nonconformist body in Wales, of native growth, and that originated in the middle of the 18th century in connection with a great religious awakening; has an ecclesiastical const.i.tution on Presbyterian lines, and is in alliance with the Presbyterian Church of England; it consists of 1330 churches, and has a members.h.i.+p of over 150,000, that is, on their communion roll, and two theological seminaries, one at Trevecca and one at Bala.

WELSHPOOL (6), town in Montgomerys.h.i.+re, North Wales, on the left bank of the Severn, 19 m. W. of Shrewsbury, the manufacture of flannels and woollen goods being the chief industry.

WENDS, a horde of savage Slavs who, about the 6th century, invaded and took possession of vacant lands on the southern sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, and extended their inroads as far as Hamburg and the ocean, south also far over the Elbe in some quarters, and were a source of great trouble to the Germans in Henry the Fowler's time, and after; they burst in upon Brandenburg once, in "never-imagined fury," and stamped out, as they thought, the Christian religion there by wholesale butchery of its priests, setting up for wors.h.i.+p their own G.o.d "Triglaph, ugliest and stupidest of all false G.o.ds," described as "something like three whales'

cubs combined by boiling, or a triple porpoise dead-drunk." They were at length "fairly beaten to powder" by Albert the Bear, "and either swept away or else damped down into Christianity and keeping of the peace,"

though remnants of them, with their language and customs, exist in Lusatia to this day.

WENDT, HANS, German theologian, born in Hamburg, professor at Kiel and at Heidelberg; has written an excellent "Leben Jesu" among other able works; _b_. 1853.

WENEGELD, among the old Saxons and other Teutonic races a fine, the price of homicide, of varying amount, paid in part to the relatives of the person killed and in part to the king or chief.

WENER, LAKE, the largest lake in Sweden, in the SW., 150 ft. above the sea-level and 100 m. long by 50 m. of utmost breadth, contains several islands, and abounds in fish.

WENTWORTH. See STRAFFORD.

WEREWOLF, a person transformed into a wolf, or a being with a literally wolfish appet.i.te, under the presumed influence of a charm or some demoniac possession.

WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS, a dramatist of a mystic stamp, born at Konigsberg; is the subject of an essay by Carlyle, and described by him as a man of a very _dissolute_ spiritual texture; wrote the "Templars of Cyprus," the "Story of the Fallen Master," &c. (1768-1823).

WERTHER, the hero of Goethe's sentimental romance, "THE SORROWS OF WERTHER" (q. v.).

WESLEY, CHARLES, hymn-writer, born at Epworth, educated at Eton and Oxford; was a.s.sociated with his more ill.u.s.trious brother in the establishment of Methodism; his hymns are highly devotional, and are to be found in all the hymnologies of the Church (1708-1788).

WESLEY, JOHN, the founder of Methodism, born at Epworth, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, son of the rector; was educated at the Charterhouse and at Lincoln College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow; while there he and his brother, with others, were distinguished for their religious earnestness, and were nicknamed Methodists; in 1735 he went on a mission to Georgia, U.S., and had for fellow-voyagers some members of the Moravian body, whose simple piety made a deep impression on him; and on his return in two years after he made acquaintance with a Moravian missionary in London, and was persuaded to a kindred faith; up to this time he had been a High Churchman, but from this time he ceased from all sacerdotalism and became a believer in and a preacher of the immediate connection of the soul with, and its direct dependence upon, G.o.d's grace in Christ alone; this gospel accordingly he went forth and preached in disregard of all mere ecclesiastical authority, he riding about from place to place on horseback, and finding wherever he went the people in thousands, in the open air generally, eagerly expectant of his approach, all open-eared to listen to his word; to the working-cla.s.ses his visits were specially welcome, and it was among them they bore most fruit; "the keynote of his ministry he himself gave utterance to when he exclaimed, 'Church or no Church, the people must be saved.'" Saved or Lost? was with him the one question, and it is the one question of all genuine Methodism to this hour (1703-1791).

WESSEL, JOHANN, a Reformer before the Reformation, born at Groningen; was a man of powerful intellect; taught in the schools, and was called by his disciples _Lux Mundi_ (1420-1489).

WESs.e.x, a territory in the SW. of England, inhabited by Saxons who landed at Southampton in 514, known as the West Saxons, and who gradually extended their dominion over territory beyond it till, under Egbert, their king, they became supreme over the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

WEST, BENJAMIN, painter, born near Springfield, Pennsylvania, of Quaker parentage; was self-taught, painted portraits at the age of 16, went to Italy in 1760, and produced such work there that he was elected member of several of the Italian academies; visited England on his way back to America in 1763, where he attracted the attention of George III., who patronised him, for whom he painted a goodly number of pictures to adorn Windsor Castle; he remained in England 40 years, painting hundreds of pictures, and was in 1792 elected President of the Royal Academy in succession to Sir Joshua Reynolds; among his paintings were "The Death of General Wolfe," "Edward III. at Crecy," and "The Black Prince at Poitiers" (1738-1817).

WEST AFRICA, name given to the region SW. of the Sahara, consisting of low lands with high lands behind, and through the valleys of which rivers flow down, and including Senegambia, Upper Guinea, and Lower Guinea, the coast of which is occupied by trading stations belonging to the French, the English, the Germans, the Belgians, and the Portuguese, and who are severally forcing their way into the inland territory connected with their several stations.

WEST AUSTRALIA (161), the largest of the Australian colonies, though least populous, formerly called the Swan River Settlement, 1500 m. long and 1000 m. broad, and embracing an area nearly equal to one-third of the whole Australian continent; great part of it, particularly in the centre, is desert, and the best soil is in the W. and NE.; emigration to it proceeded slowly at first, but for the last 20 years it has been steadily increasing, especially since the discovery of gold, and it is now opening up; in 1890 it received a const.i.tution and became self-governing like the other possessions of Great Britain in Australia; Perth, on the Swan River, is the capital, and the chief exports are wool and gold.

WEST BROMWICH (59), a manufacturing town of the "Black Country," in Staffords.h.i.+re, 5 m. NW. of Birmingham; has important industries connected with the manufacture of iron ware; is of modern growth, and has developed rapidly.

WEST INDIES (3,000), an archipelago of islands extending in a curve between North and South America from Florida on the one side to the delta of the Orinoco on the other, in sight of each other almost all the way, and const.i.tuting the summits of a sunken range of mountains which run in a line parallel to the ranges of North America; they are divided into the Great Antilles (including Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico), the Lesser Antilles (including the Leeward and the Windward Isles), and the Bahamas; lie all, except the last, within the Torrid Zone, and embrace unitedly an area larger than that of Great Britain; they yield all manner of tropical produce, and export sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton, spices, &c.; except Cuba, HAYTI (q. v.), and Porto Rico, they belong to the Powers of Europe--Great Britain, France, Holland, and Denmark, and till lately Spain. The name Indies was applied to them because when Columbus first discovered them he believed he was close upon India, as he calculated he would find he was by sailing west.

WEST POINT, an old fortress, the seat of the United States Military Academy, on the right bank of the Hudson River, 12 m. N. of New York; the Academy is on a plateau 188 ft. above the road; it was established in 1802 for training in the science and practice of military engineering, and the cadets are organised into a battalion of four companies officered from among themselves, all under strictest discipline.

WEST VIRGINIA. See VIRGINIA.

WESTCOTT, BROOK FOSS, biblical scholar, born near Birmingham; studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and obtained a Fellows.h.i.+p; took orders in 1851, and became Bishop of Durham in 1890; edited along with Dr. Hort an edition of the Greek New Testament, the labour of years, and published a number of works bearing on the New Testament and its structure and teachings; _b_. 1825.