The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 458

WUNDT, WILHELM MAX, distinguished German physiologist, born in Baden, and professor at Leipzig; distinguished for his studies on the connection of the physical with the psychical in the human organisation, and has written on psychology as well as physiology; _b_. 1832.

WUPPERTHAL, a densely-peopled valley in Germany traversed by the river Wupper, which after a course of 40 m. enters the right bank of the Rhine between Cologne and Dusseldorf, and which embraces the towns of Barmen and Elberfeld.

WURMSER, COUNT VON, Austrian general, born in Alsace; took an active part in the war with France; commanded the respect of Napoleon from his defence of Mantua, on the capitulation of which he refused to take him prisoner (1721-1797).

WuRTEMBERG (2,035), a kingdom of South Germany, about one-fourth the size of Scotland, between Baden on the W. and Bavaria on the E.; the Black Forest extends along the W. of it, and it is traversed nearly E.

and W. by the Swabian Alp, which slopes down on the N. side into the valley of the Neckar, and on the S. into that of the Danube; the soil is fertile, and is in great part under cultivation, yielding corn, vines, and fruits, agriculture being the chief industry of the population; there are only four towns whose inhabitants exceed 20,000, of which Stuttgart is one, and Ulm, the capital, is the other; the towns are the centres of varied manufactures; education is of a high standard; and a.s.sociated with the country is a number of famous names-enough to mention the names of Kepler, Schiller, Hegel, Sch.e.l.ling, and Strauss; the government is const.i.tutional, under a hereditary sovereign.

WURTZ, CHARLES ADOLPHE, celebrated French chemist, born at Strasburg (1817-1884).

WuRZBURG (51), a Bavarian town in a valley of the Main, 70 m. SB. of Frankfort; its princ.i.p.al buildings are the Royal or Episcopal Palace, the cathedral, and the university, with the Julius Hospital, called after its founder, Bishop Julius, who was also founder of the university, which is attended by 1500 students, mostly medical, and has a library of 100,000 volumes; the fortress of Marienberg, overlooking the town, was till 1720 the episcopal palace.

WUTTKE, KARL, theologian, born at Breslau, professor at Halle; wrote on Christian ethics, stoutly maintained the incompatibility of Christianity with democracy, that a Christian could not be a democrat or a democrat a Christian (1819-1870).

WYANDOTS, a tribe of North American Indians of the Iroquois stock; were nearly exterminated in 1636, but a feeble remnant of them now occupy a small district in the Indian Territory.

WYATT, RICHARD, sculptor, born in London; studied in Home under Canova, and had Gibson for fellow-student; a man of cla.s.sical tastes, and produced a number of exquisitely-modelled, especially female, figures (1795-1850).

WYATT, SIR THOMAS, English poet, courtier, and statesman, born at Allington Castle, in Kent, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge; was a welcome presence at court, a friend of Anne Boleyn, in high favour with the king, and knighted in 1537; did a good deal of diplomatic work in Spain and the Netherlands, and died on his way to meet the Spanish amba.s.sador and convoy him to London; he had travelled in Italy, had studied the lyric poets of Italy, especially Petrarch, and, along with Surrey, imported their sentiment into English verse, "amourist poetry,"

as it has been called, "a poetry extremely personal, and personal as English poetry had scarcely ever been before" (1503-1542).

WYATT, SIR THOMAS, the younger, only son of the preceding; was leader of the rebellion that broke out in 1554 in consequence of the settlement of the marriage between Queen Mary and Philip of Spain, in which, being repulsed at Temple Bar, he surrendered, was committed to the Tower, and for which he was executed, Lady Jane Grey and her husband following to the same doom shortly after (1520-1554).

WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM, dramatist, born in Shrops.h.i.+re, of good birth, and resided for a time in Paris, being admitted to the circle of the Precieuses, but returned to England at the Restoration, and became a figure at the court; his plays were marked with the coa.r.s.eness of the time, and his best were "The Country Wife" (1675) and the "Plain Dealer"

(1677); married the Countess of Drogheda for her fortune, a legacy which cost him only lawsuits and imprisonment for debt; succeeded to his paternal estate when he was an old man; married again, and died immediately after (1640-1715).

WYCLIFFE, JOHN. See Wicliffe.

WYCOMBE, HIGH (13), a market-town in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, on the Wye, 25 m. SE. of Oxford; has a parish church built in the Norman style in 1273 and restored in 1887, and several public buildings; the manufacture of chairs, lace, and straw-plait among the leading industries.

WYE, a lovely winding river in South Wales, which rises near the source of the Severn on Plinlimmon, and falls into its estuary at Chepstow, 125 m. from its head; rapid in its course at first, it becomes gentler as it gathers volume; barges ascend it as far as Hereford, but a high tidal wave makes navigation dangerous at its mouth.

WYKEHAM, WILLIAM OF, bishop of Winchester, born in Hamps.h.i.+re of humble parentage; was patronised by the governor of Winchester Castle and introduced by him to Edward III., who employed him to superintend the rebuilding of Windsor Castle, and by-and-by made him Privy Seal and Lord Chancellor, though he fell into disgrace towards the close of Edward's reign; was restored to favour in Richard II.'s reign and once more made Chancellor; in his later years he founded the New College, Oxford, built and endowed St. Mary's College, Winchester, and rebuilt the cathedral there. He was less of a theologian than an architect; was disparagingly spoken of by John Wickliffe as a "builder of castles," and his favourite motto was, "Manners make the man"; (1324-1404).

WYNNAD, a highland district in the Western Ghats, Madras Presidency, with extensive coffee plantations, and a wide distribution of auriferous quartz rock, the working of which has been on an extravagant scale, and has involved the loss of much capital.

WYNTOUN, ANDREW OF, Scottish chronicler; lived at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries; was canon regular of St.

Andrews and prior of St. Serf, Lochleven; the subject of his "Original Chronicle," as he calls it, was Scottish history, introduced by foreign from the creation downwards, and it was written in verse that can hardly be called poetry; it is of value historically and interesting philologically, and consists of nine books or cantos; it is to him we owe "When Alexander our King was dead."

WYOMING (60), a North-West State of the American Union, chiefly on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, an elevated region about three times the area of Ireland and a comparatively spa.r.s.e population, settled princ.i.p.ally along the line of the Union Pacific Railway; it has a very rugged surface, and abounds in deep canons and frowning precipices, the lakes also are deep, and there are immense geysers, one, the Great Geyser, throwing up a volume of water 300 ft. high; it is rich in minerals, yields good crops of various grains, rears large herds of horses and cattle, as well as game on its moors, and trout and salmon in its rivers. See YELLOWSTONE PARK.

WYOMING VALLEY, a fertile valley in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River, 20 m. long by 5 broad; it was the scene of a series of contests between rival settlers, when the last of them were set upon by an invading force, forced to surrender, and either ma.s.sacred or driven forth from the valley; Campbell's "Gertrude of Wyoming" relates to this last disaster.

WYSS, JOHANN RUDOLF, Swiss litterateur, born at Bern, professor of Philosophy there; the author of the "Swiss Family Robinson," on which alone his t.i.tle to fame rests (1781-1830).

WYVERN, a heraldic device in shape of a dragon with expanded wings, with only two legs and the pointed tail of a scorpion.

X

XANTHUS, princ.i.p.al city in ancient Lycia, on a river of the same name, celebrated for its temples and works of art; sustained two sieges, the last of which terminated in the self-destruction of its inhabitants; ruins of it exist, and are Cyclopean; also the name of a river in the Troad, called also the Scamander.

XANTIPPE, the name of the wife of Socrates, a woman of a peevish and shrewish disposition, the subject of exaggerated gossip in Athens, to the exaltation of the temper of her husband, which it never ruffled. She is quaintly described by an old English writer as "a pa.s.sing shrewde, curste, and wayward woman, wife to the pacient and wise philosopher Socrates."

XAVIER, ST. FRANCIS, a Jesuit missionary, styled usually the "Apostle of the Indies," born, of a n.o.ble family, in the north of Spain; a student of Sainte Barbe in Paris, he took to philosophy, became acquainted with Ignatius Loyola, and was a.s.sociated with him in the formation of the Jesuit Society; was sent in 1541, under sanction of the Pope, by John III. of Portugal to Christianise India, and arrived at Goa in 1542, from whence he extended his missionary labours to the Eastern Archipelago, Ceylon, and j.a.pan, in which enterprises they were attended with signal success; on his return to Goa in 1552 he proceeded to organise a mission to China, in which he experienced such opposition and so many difficulties that on his way to carry on his work there he sickened and died; he was buried at Goa; beatified by Paul V. in 1619, and canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622 (1506-1552).

XEBEC, a small three-masted vessel with lateen and square sails, used formerly in the Mediterranean by the Algerine pirates, and mounted with guns.

XENIEN, the name, derived from Martial, of a series of stinging epigrams issued at one time by Goethe and Schiller, which created a great sensation and gave offence to many, causing "the solemn empire of dulness to quake from end to end."

XENOCRATES, an ancient philosopher and a disciple of Plato, born in Chalcedon, and a successor of Plato's in the Academy as head of it; _d_.

314 B.C.

XENOPHANES, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, born in Asia Minor; was the first to enunciate the doctrine "all is one," but "without specifying," says SCHWEGLER, "whether this unity was intellectual or moral.... Aristotle says he called G.o.d the one." See ELEATICS.

XENOPHON, historian, philosopher, and military commander, born at Athens, son of an Athenian of good position; was a pupil and friend of Socrates; joined the expedition of Cyrus against his brother Artaxerxes, and on the failure of it conducted the ten thousand Greeks--"the Retreat of the Ten Thousand"--who went up with him back to the Bosphorus, served afterwards in several military adventures, brought himself under the ban of his fellow-citizens in Athens, and retired to Elis, where he spent 20 years of his life in the pursuits of country life and in the prosecution of literature; the princ.i.p.al of his literary works, which it appears have all come down to us, are the "Anabasis," being an account in seven books of the expedition of Cyrus and his own conduct of the retreat; the "Memorabilia," in four books, being an account of the life and teaching and in defence of his master Socrates; the "Helenica," in seven books, being an account of 49 years of Grecian history in continuation of Thucydides to the battle of Mantinea; and "Cyropaedeia," in eight books, being an ideal account of the education of Cyrus the Elder. Xenophon wrote pure Greek in a plain, perspicuous, and unaffected style, had an eye to the practical in his estimate of things, and professed a sincere belief in a divine government of the world (435-354 B.C.).