[Daniell, William], an eminent draughtsman; spent his early life in India; author of "Oriental Scenery," in six folio vols. (1769-1837).
[Danites], or Destroying Angels, a band of Mormons organised to prevent the entrance into Mormon territory of other than Mormon immigrants, but whose leader, for a massacre they perpetrated, was in 1827 convicted and shot.
[Dannecker, Johann Heinrich von], a distinguished German sculptor, born near Stuttgart, and educated by the Duke of Würtemberg, who had become his patron; became professor of Sculpture in the Academy at Stuttgart; his earlier subjects were from the Greek mythology, and his later Christian, the principal of the latter being a colossal "Christ," which he took eight years to complete; he executed besides busts of contemporaries, which are wonderful in expression, such as those of Schiller, Lavater, and Glück; "Ariadne on the Panther" is regarded as his masterpiece (1758-1841).
[Dante Alighieri], the great poet of Italy, "the voice of ten silent centuries," born in Florence; was of noble birth; showed early a great passion for learning; learned all that the schools and universities of the time could teach him "better than most"; fought as a soldier; did service as a citizen; at thirty-five filled the office of chief magistrate of Florence; had, while but a boy of ten, "met a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful girl of his own age and rank, and had grown up in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her," who became to him the ideal of all that was pure and noble and good; "made a great figure in his poem and a great figure in his life"; she died in 1290; he married another, "not happily, far from happily; in some civic Guelf-Ghibelline strife he was expelled the city, and his property confiscated; tried hard to recover it, even 'with arms in his hand,' but could not, and was doomed, 'whenever caught, to be burned alive'; invited to confess his guilt and return, he sternly answered: 'If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will never return.'" From this moment he was without home in this world; and "the great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world ... over which, this time-world, with its Florences and banishments, flutters as an unreal shadow." Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into "mystic unfathomable song," and this, his "[Divine Comedy]" (q. v.), the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. He died after finishing it, not yet very old, at the age of 56. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna, "shutout from my native shores." The Florentines begged back his body in a century after; the Ravenna people would not give it (1265-1321). See [Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Worship]," and Dean Plumptre's "[Life of Dante]."
[Danton, Georges Jacques], "The Titan of the Forlorn Hope" of the French Revolution, born at Arcis-sur-Aube, "of good farmer people ... a huge, brawny, black-browed man, with a waste energy as of a Hercules"; an advocate by profession, "esurient, but with nothing to do; found Paris and his country in revolt, rose to the front of the strife; resolved to do or die"; the cause threatened, he threw himself again and again into the breach defiant, his motto "to dare, and to dare, and again to dare," so as to put and keep the enemy in fear; "Let my name be blighted," he said, "what am I? The cause alone is great, and will live and not perish"; but the "[Sea-green]" (q. v.) viewed him with jealousy, held him suspect, had him arrested, brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the severity of whose proceedings under him he had condemned, and sentenced to the guillotine; a reflection of his in prison has been recorded: "Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with governing of men." "No weakness, Danton," he said to himself on the scaffold, as his heart began to sink within him as he thought of his wife. His last words were to Samson the headsman: "Thou wilt show my head to the people, it is worth showing"; words worthy of the brother of Mirabeau, who died saying, "I wish I could leave my head behind me, France needs it just now"; a man fiery-real, as has been said, genuine to the core, with many sins, yet lacking that greatest of sins, cant. "He was," says Mr. Belloc, "the most French, the most national, the nearest to the mother of all the Revolutionary group. He summed up France ... when we study him, we see France" (1759-1794). See [Carlyle's] "French Revolution."
[Dantzig] (116), the capital of W. Prussia, once a Hanse town, on the Vistula, 4 m. from the mouth; one of the great ports and trading centres of Germany and in the N. of Europe; it is traversed by canals, and many of the houses are built on piles of wood; exports grain brought down the river on timber rafts from the great grain country in the S.; it is one of the chief stations of the German navy.
[Danube, The], the great south-eastward-flowing river of Europe, 1750 m. in length, rises in the Black Forest, and is divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower; the Upper extends as far as Pressburg, begins to be navigable to Ulm, flows NE. as far as Ratisbon, and then bends SE. past Vienna; the Middle extends from Pressburg to the Iron Gate, enclosing between its gorges a series of rapids, below Orsova; and the Lower extends from the Iron Gate to the Black Sea. It receives numerous tributary rivers, 60 of them navigable, in its course; forms with them the great water highway of the SE. of Europe, and is of avail for traffic to all the races and nations whose territories it traverses; the navigation of the river is free indeed to all nations.
[Danubian Principalities], Moldavia and Wallachia.
[Danville], the name of several towns in the United States.