[Directory, The], the name given to the government of France, consisting of a legislative body of two chambers, the Council of the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred, which succeeded the fall of the Convention, and ruled France from October 27, 1795, till its overthrow by Bonaparte on the 18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799). The Directors proper were five in number, and were elected by the latter council from a list presented by the former, and the chief members of it were Barras and Carnot.
[Dirschau] (11), a Prussian town on the Vistula, 21 m. SE. of Danzig, with iron-works and a timber trade.
[Dis], a name given to Pluto and the nether world over which he rules.
[Discipline, The Two Books of], books of dates 1561 and 1581, regulative of ecclesiastical order in the Presbyterian churches of Scotland, of which the ground-plan was drawn up by Knox on the Geneva model.
[Discobolus, The], an antique statue representing the thrower of the discus, in the Louvre, and executed by the sculptor Myron.
[Discord, Apple of]. See [infra].
[Discord, The Goddess of], a mischief-making divinity, daughter of Night and sister of Mars, who on the occasion of the wedding of Thetis with Peleus, threw into the hall where all the gods and goddesses were assembled a golden apple inscribed "To the most Beautiful," and which gave rise to dissensions that both disturbed the peace of Olympus and the impartial administration of justice on earth. See [Paris].
[Dismal Science], Carlyle's name for the political economy that with self-complacency leaves everything to settle itself by the law of supply and demand, as if that were all the law and the prophets. The name is applied to every science that affects to dispense with the spiritual as a ruling factor in human affairs.
[Dismas, St.], the good thief to whom Christ promised Paradise as he hung on the cross beside Him.