[Prussia] (24,690), the leading State of the German Empire, occupies about two-thirds of the imperial territory, and contributes three-fifths of the population; it stretches from Holland and Belgium in the W. to Russia in the E., has Jutland and the sea on the N., and Lorraine, Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxony, and Austria on the S.; the SW. portion is hilly and the soil often poor, but containing valuable mineral deposits; the N. and E. belongs to the great European plain, devoted to agriculture and grazing; Hesse-Cassel is extremely fertile, and Nassau produces excellent wine; in the E. and in Hanover are extensive forests; Silesia, Westphalia, and Rhenish Prussia contain the chief coal-fields, and are consequently the chief industrial provinces; half the zinc of the world is mined in Prussia; lead, iron, copper, antimony, &c., are also wrought; the Hartz Mountains are noted for their mines; Salt, amber, and precious stones are found on the Baltic shores; textiles, metal wares, and beer are the main industries; Berlin and Elberfeld are the two chief manufacturing centres on the Continent; the great navigable rivers, Niemen, Vistula, Oder, Elbe, Weser, Rhine, and their tributaries and canals, excellent railways, and her central European position all favour Prussia's commerce, while her coast-line, harbours, and growing mercantile fleet put her in communication with the markets of the world; seven-eighths of the people are Germans; Slavonic races are represented by Poles, Wends, Lithuanians, and Czechs, while the Danes appear in Schleswig-Holstein; the prevailing religion is Protestant; education is compulsory and good; there are ten universities, and many great libraries and educational institutions; the Prussian is the largest contingent in the German army; the king of Prussia is emperor of Germany. The basis of the Prussian people was laid by German colonists placed amid the pagan Slavs whom they had conquered by the Teutonic knights of the 13th century; in 1511 their descendants chose a Hohenzollern prince; a century later the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg succeeded; despite the Thirty Years' War Prussia became a European State, and was recognised as a kingdom in 1703; Frederick the Great (1740-1786) enlarged its bounds and developed its resources; the successive partitions of Poland added to her territory; humiliated by the peace of Tilsit 1807, and ruined by the French occupation, she recovered after Waterloo; William I. and Bismarck still further increased her territory and prestige; by the Austrian War of 1866 and the French War of 1870-71 her position as premier State in the German Confederation was assured.
[Prynne, William], a Puritan censor morum, born near Bath, bred to the bar; wrote a book or pamphlet called "Histrio-Mastix, or the Player's Scourge," against the stage, for which and a reflection in it against the virtue of the queen he was brought before the Star Chamber in 1634, sentenced to the pillory, and had his ears cropped off, and for an offence against Laud, whether by order of the Star Chamber or not is uncertain, was in 1637 sentenced anew, and "lost his ears a second and final time, having had them 'sewed on again' before; this time a heroine on the scaffold," adds Carlyle, "received them on her lap and kissed him"; after this the zeal of Prynne appears to have waxed cold, for he was as a recalcitrant imprisoned by Cromwell, after whose death he espoused the Royalist cause, and was appointed Keeper of the Records of the Tower (1600-1669).
[Prytane`um], name given to the public hall in Greek cities, and the head-quarters of the Executive.
[Psalmanazar, George], an impostor, born in the South of France, who, being brought to London, imposed on Compton, bishop of London, by fabricating a history of Formosa, of which he professed to be a native, but was convicted of the error of his ways by Law's "Serious Call," and led afterwards what seemed a sober life, and one to commend the regard of Johnson (1679-1763).
[Psalms, The Book of], the name given in the Septuagint to a collection of sacred songs in the Hebrew Bible, which are all of a lyrical character, and appear to have been at first collected for liturgical purposes. Their range is co-extensive with nearly all divine truth, and there are tones in them in accord with the experience and feelings of devout men in all ages. Nay, "the Psalter alone," says Ruskin, "which practically was the service-book of the Church for many ages, contains, merely in the first half of it, the sum of personal and social wisdom,... while the 48th, 72nd, and 75th have in them the law and the prophecy of all righteous government, and every real triumph of natural science is anticipated in the 104th." The collection bears the name of David, but it is clear the great body of them are of later date as well as of divers authorship, although it is often difficult to determine by whom some of them were written, and when. The determination of this, however, is of the less consequence, as the question is more a speculative one than a spiritual one, and whatever may be the result of inquiry in this matter now going on, the spiritual value of the Psalms, which is their real value, is nowise affected thereby. It matters nothing who wrote them or when they were written; they are there, are conceived from situations such as are obvious enough and common to the lot of all good men, and they bear on spiritual interests, which are our primary ones, and these, still, as in every other time, the alone really pressing ones. They express the real experiences of living men, who lay under an inner necessity to utter such a song, relieving themselves by the effort and ministering a means of relief to others in a like situation of soul.
[Psyche] (i. e. the soul), in the later Greek mythology the youngest of three daughters of a king, and of such beauty as to eclipse the attractions and awake the jealousy of Venus, the goddess of beauty, who in consequence sent Cupid, her son, to inspire her with love for a hideous monster, and so compass her ruin. Cupid, fascinated with her himself, spirited her away to a palace furnished with every delight, but instead of delivering her over to the monster, visited her himself at night as her husband, and left her before daybreak in the morning, because she must on no account know who he was. Here her sisters came to see her, and in their jealousy persuaded her to assure herself that it was not a monster that she slept with, so that she lit a lamp the next night to discover, when a drop of oil from it fell on his shoulder as he lay asleep beside her, upon which he at a bound started up and vanished out of sight. She thereupon gave way to a long wail of lamentation and set off a-wandering over the wide world in search of her lost love, till she came to the palace of Venus, her arch-enemy, who seized on her person and made her her slave, subjecting her to a series of services, all of which she accomplished to the letter, so that Venus was obliged to relent and consent that, in the presence of all the gods of Olympus, Cupid and she should be united in immortal wedlock. It is the story of the trials of the soul to achieve immortality. See "Stories from the Greek Mythology," by the Editor.
[Psychical Research, Society for], a society founded in 1882 to inquire into the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred subjects of a recondite kind, the subject of Telepathy having engaged recently a good deal of attention.
[Ptolemaic System], the highly complex system of astronomy ascribed to Claudius Ptolemy, which assumed that the earth was the centre of a sphere which carried the heavenly bodies along in its daily revolution, accounted for the revolutions of the sun and moon by supposing they moved in eccentric circles round the earth, and regarded the planets as moving in epicycles round a point which itself revolved in an eccentric circle round the earth like the sun and moon.
[Ptolemaïs], the name of certain cities of antiquity, the most celebrated being Acre, in [Syria] (q. v.).
[Ptolemy], the name of the Macedonian kings of Egypt, of which there were 14 in succession, of whom Ptolemy I., Soter, was a favourite general of Alexander the Great, and who ruled Egypt from 328 to 285 B.C.; Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, who ruled from 285 to 247, a patron of letters and an able administrator; Ptolemy III., Euergetes, who ruled from 247 to 222; Ptolemy IV., Philopator, who ruled from 222 to 205; Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, who ruled from 205 to 181; Ptolemy VI., Philometor, who ruled from 181 to 146; Ptolemy VII., Euergetes II., who ruled from 146 to 117; Ptolemy VIII., Soter, who ruled from 117 to 107, was driven from Alexandria, returning to it in 88, and reigning till 81; Ptolemy X., Alexander I., who ruled from 107 to 88; Ptolemy X. Alexander II., who ruled from 81 to 80; Ptolemy XI., Auletes, who ruled from 80 to 51; Ptolemy XII., who ruled from 51 to 47; Ptolemy XIII., the Infant King, who ruled from 47 to 43; Ptolemy XIV., Cesarion, the son of Julius Cæsar and Cleopatra, who ruled from 43 to 30.