The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 453

WHITE, HENRY KIRKE, minor poet, born at Nottingham; published a book of poems in 1803, which procured him the patronage of Southey; got a sizars.h.i.+p in St. John's, Cambridge; through over-zeal in study undermined his const.i.tution and died of consumption, Southey editing his "Remains"

(1785-1806).

WHITE, JOSEPH BLANCO, man of letters of an unstable creed, born in Seville, of Irish parentage; first ordained a priest; left the Catholic Church, and took orders in the Church of England; left the English, became a Unitarian, and settled to miscellaneous literary work; left an autobiography which reveals an honest quest of light, but to the last in doubt; he lives in literature by a sonnet "Night and Death" (1775-1841).

WHITE HORSE, name given to the figure of a horse on a hill-side, formed by removing the turf, and showing the white chalk beneath; the most famous is one at Uffington, in Berks.h.i.+re, alleged to commemorate a victory of King Alfred.

WHITE HOUSE, name popularly given to the official residence of the President of the United States, being a building of freestone painted white.

WHITE LADY, a lady dressed in white fabled in popular mediaeval legend to appear by day as well as at night in a house before the death of some member of the family; was regarded as the ghost of some deceased ancestress.

WHITE MOUNTAINS, a range of mountains in Maine and New Hamps.h.i.+re, U.S., forming part of the Appalachian system; much frequented by tourists on account of the scenery, which has won for it the name of the "Switzerland of America"; Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, one of the hills, has a hotel on the summit approached by a railway.

WHITE NILE, one of the two streams forming the Nile, which flows out of the Albert Nyanza, and which unites with the Blue Nile from Abyssinia near Khartoum.

WHITE SEA, a large inlet of the Arctic Ocean, in the N. of Russia, which is entered by a long channel and branches inward into three bays; it is of little service for navigation, being blocked with ice all the year except in June, July, and August, and even when open enc.u.mbered with floating ice, and often enveloped in mists at the same time.

WHITEBOYS, a secret Irish organisation that at the beginning of George III.'s reign a.s.serted their grievances by perpetrating agrarian outrages; so called from the white smocks the members wore in their nightly raids.

WHITEFIELD, GEORGE, founder of Calvinistic Methodism, born at Gloucester; was an a.s.sociate of WESLEY (q. v.) at Oxford, and afterwards as preacher of Methodism both in this country and America, commanding crowded audiences wherever he went, and creating, in Scotland particularly, a deep religious awakening, but who separated from Wesley on the matter of election; died near Boston, U.S. (1714-1770).

WHITEHAVEN (18), a seaport of c.u.mberland, 38 m. SW. of Carlisle, with coal and hemat.i.te iron mines in the neighbourhood; has blast-furnaces, iron-works, and manufactures of various kinds, with a considerable coasting traffic.

WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE, a statesman of the Commonwealth, born in London; studied law at the Middle Temple: sat in the Long Parliament, and was moderate in his zeal for the popular side; at the Restoration his name was included in the Act of Oblivion, but he took no part afterwards in public affairs; left "Memorials" of historical value (1605-1675).

WHITGIFT, JOHN, archbishop of Canterbury, born at Great Grimsby; was educated at Cambridge, and became Fellow and Master of Pembroke College; escaped persecution under Queen Mary, and on the accession of Elizabeth was ordained a priest; after a succession of preferments, both as a theologian and an ecclesiastic, became archbishop in 1583; attended Queen Elizabeth on her deathbed, and crowned James I.; was an Anglican prelate to the backbone, and specially zealous against the Puritans; contemplated, with no small apprehension, the accession of James, "in terror of a Scotch mist coming down on him with this new Majesty from the land of Knox, or Nox, Chaos, and Company"; his last words were, with uplifted hands and eyes, a prayer for the Church, uttered in King James's hearing (1530-1604).

WHITHORN, a small town in Wigtowns.h.i.+re, 12 m. S. of Wigtown, celebrated as the spot where St. Ninian planted Christianity in Scotland, and founded a church to St. Martin in 397.

WHITMAN, WALT, the poet of "Democracy," born in Long Island, U.S., of parents of mingled English and Dutch blood; was a large-minded, warm-hearted man, who led a restless life, and had more in him than he had training to unfold either in speech or act; a man eager, had he known how, to do service in the cause of his much-loved mankind; wrote "Leaves of Gra.s.s," "Drum-Taps," and "Two Rivulets" (1819-1892).

WHITNEY, ELI, an American inventor, born in Ma.s.sachusetts; invented the cotton-gin, a machine for cleaning seed-cotton, and became a manufacturer of firearms, by which he realised a large fortune (1765-1825).

WHITNEY, WILLIAM DWIGHT, American philologist, born in Ma.s.sachusetts; studied at Yale College, where he became professor of Sanskrit, in which he was a proficient, and to the study of which he largely contributed; has done much for the science of language (1827-1894).

WHITSUNDAY, the seventh Sunday after Easter, a festival day of the Church kept in commemoration of the descent of the Holy Ghost.

WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF, the American "Quaker Poet," born at Haverhill, in Ma.s.sachusetts, the son of a poor farmer; wrought, like Burns, at field work, and acquired a loving sympathy with Nature, natural people, and natural scenes; took to journalism at length, and became a keen abolitionist and the poet-laureate of abolition; his poems are few and fugitive (1807-1893).

WHITTINGTON, SIR RICHARD, Lord Mayor of London, born at Pauntley, Gloucesters.h.i.+re; came to London, prospered in business, was elected Lord Mayor thrice over, and knighted; this is the Whittington of the nursery tale, "d.i.c.k Whittington and his Cat" (1538-1623).

WHITWORTH, SIR JOSEPH, eminent mechanician, born at Stockport; the rival of Lord Armstrong in the invention of ordnance; invented artillery of great range and accuracy; was made a baronet in 1869 (1803-1887).

WHYTE-MELVILLE, GEORGE JOHN, novelist of the sporting-field, born at Mount Melville, near St. Andrews; entered the army, and for a time served in it; met his death while hunting (1821-1878).

WICK (8), county-town of Caithness, on Wick River, 161 m. NE. of Inverness, is the chief seat of the herring fishery in Scotland; Wick proper, with its suburbs Louisburgh and Boathaven, is on the N. of the river, and Pultneytown on the S.; has a few manufactures, with distilleries and breweries.

WICKED BIBLE, an edition of the Bible with the word _not_ omitted from the Seventh Commandment, for issuing which in 1632 the printers were fined and the impression destroyed.

WICKLOW (61), a maritime county, with a capital of the name in Leinster, Ireland; is in great part mountainous and barren; has mines and quarries, and some fertile parts.

WICLIFFE, JOHN, or WYCLIF, the "Morning Star of the Reformation," born at Hipswell, near Richmond, Yorks.h.i.+re; studied at Oxford, and became Master of Balliol in 1361, professor of Divinity in 1372, and rector of Lutterworth in 1375; here he laboured and preached with such faithfulness that the Church grew alarmed, and persecution set in, which happily, however, proved scatheless, and only the more emboldened him in the work of reform which he had taken up; and of that work the greatest was his translation of the Bible from the Vulgate into the mother-tongue, at which, with a.s.sistance from his disciples, he laboured for some 10 or 15 years, and which was finished in 1380; he may be said to have died in harness, for he was struck with paralysis while standing before the altar at Lutterworth on 29th December 1384, and died the last day of the year; his remains were exhumed and burned afterwards, and the ashes thrown into the river Swift close by the town, "and thence borne," says Andrew Fuller, "into the main ocean, the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over" (1325-1384).

WIDDIN (14), a town on the right bank of the Danube, Bulgaria; is a centre of industry and trade; was a strong place, but by decree of the Berlin Congress in 1879 the fortress was demolished.

WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN, eminent German litterateur, born near Biberach, a small village in Swabia, son of a pastor of the pietist school; studied at Tubingen; became professor of Philosophy at Erfurt, and settled in Weimar in 1772 as tutor to the two sons of the d.u.c.h.ess Amalia, where he by-and-by formed a friends.h.i.+p with Goethe and the other members of the literary coterie who afterwards settled there; he wrote in an easy and graceful style, and his best work is a heroic poem ent.i.tled "Oberon" (1733-1813).

WIELICZKA (6), a town in Austrian Galicia, near Cracow, famous for its salt mines, which have been wrought continuously since 1250, the galleries of which extend to more than 50 m. in length, and the annual output of which is over 50,000 tons.

WIER, JOHANN, physician, born in North Brabant; was distinguished as the first to attack the belief in witchcraft, and the barbarous treatment to which suspects were subjected; the attack was treated as profane, and provoked the hostility of the clergy, and it would have cost him his life if he had not been protected by Wilhelm IV., Duke of Julich and Cleves, whose physician he was (1516-1566).

WIERTZ, ANTOINE, a Belgian painter, born at Dinant, did a great variety of pictures on a variety of subjects, some of them on a large scale, and all in evidence of a high ideal of his profession, and an original genius for art (1806-1865).

WIESBADEN (65), capital of Hesse-Na.s.sau, a famous German watering-place, abounding in hot springs, 5 m. NW. of Mainz; has a number of fine buildings and fine parade grounds, picture-gallery, museum, and large library; is one of the best-frequented spas in Europe, and is annually visited by 60,000 tourists or invalids; it was famed for its springs among the old Romans.

WIFE OF BATH, one of the pilgrims in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."