DOLGELLEY (Dolgellau, dale of hazels), a market town and the county town of Merionethshire, North Wales, situated on the streams Wnion and Aran at the north base of Cader Idris, on the Cambrian and Great Western railways, 232 m. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901) 2437. It consists of small squares and narrow streets, with a free grammar school (1665), market hall, assize hall, county gaol, &c. The so-called parliament house (1404) of Owen Glendower’s members has been demolished. There is some trade in coarse flannel and tweed. Glendower’s treaty with Charles of France (Owinus D.G. princeps Walliae ... Datum apud Dolguelli ...) was dated here. The families of county rank in the neighbourhood include those of Nannau, Hengwrt (the famous Hengwrt Welsh MSS. are at Peniarth), Caerynwch, Fronwnion, Bron-y-gadair, Brynygwin, Brynadda, Abergwynnant, Garthangharad. The county family, Vaughan, claims descent from Rodric Fawr, king of North Wales, Glendower’s kinsman and enemy lived at Nannau. Scott (Marmion, vi. canto, note) refers to the demon oak at Nannau in 1813. Among neighbouring hills are Moel Offrwm (or Orthrwm—of sacrifice or of oppression) and Moel Cynwch.
DOLGORUKI, VASILY LUKICH, Count (1672-1739), Russian diplomatist and minister, was one of the first batch of young Russians whom Peter the Great sent abroad to be educated. From 1687 to 1700 he resided at Paris, where he learned thoroughly the principal European languages, acquired the superficial elegance of the court of Versailles, and associated with the Jesuits, whose moral system he is said to have appropriated. On his return home he entered the diplomatic service. From 1706 to 1707 he represented Russia in Poland; and from 1707 to 1720 he was her minister at Copenhagen, where he succeeded in persuading King Frederick IV. to join the second coalition against Charles XII. At the end of 1720 he was transferred to Versailles, in order to seek the mediation of France in the projected negotiations with Sweden and obtain the recognition of Peter’s imperial title by the French court. In 1724 he represented Russia at Warsaw and in 1726 at Stockholm, the object of the latter mission being to detach Sweden from the Hanoverian alliance, in which he did not succeed. During the reign of Peter II. (1727-1730) Dolgoruki was appointed a member of the supreme privy council, and after procuring the banishment of Menshikov he appropriated the person of the young emperor, whom he would have forced to marry his niece Catherine but for Peter’s untimely death. He then drew up a letter purporting to be the last will of the emperor, appointing Catherine Dolgoruki his successor, but shortly afterwards abandoned the nefarious scheme as impracticable, and was one of the first to support the election of Anne of Courland to the throne on condition that she first signed nine “articles of limitation,” which left the supreme power in the hands of the Russian council. Anne, who repudiated the “articles” on the first opportunity, never forgave Dolgoruki for this. He was deprived of all his offices and dignities on the 17th of April 1730, and banished first to his country seat and then to the Solovetsky monastery. Nine years later the charge of forging the will of Peter II. was revived against him, and he was tortured and then beheaded at Novgorod on the 8th of November 1739.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The Pupils of Peter the Great (London, 1895).
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DOLHAIN, the most eastern town of Belgium, situated on the Vesdre, N. E. of Verviers and close to the Prussian frontier. Pop. (1904) 4757. It is quite a modern town, occupying the site of the lower town of the ancient city of Limburg, which was destroyed by Louis XIV. in 1675. On a rocky eminence above Dolhain are still to be seen the fine ruins of the old castle of Limburg, the cradle of the ancient family of that name from which sprang the Luxemburg family and several emperors of Germany. The Gothic church of St George of the 13th century has been restored. At a short distance from Dolhain is the famous dam of the Gileppe, the vast reservoir constructed to supply Verviers with water free from lime for its cloth manufactures. The aqueduct from Gileppe to Verviers is nearly 5½ m. in length.
DOLICHOCEPHALIC (long-headed), a term invented by Andreas Retzius to denote (as opposed to “brachycephalic”) those skulls the diameter of which from side to side, or the transverse diameter, is small in comparison with the longitudinal diameter or that from front to back. Retzius, though inventing the term, did not define it precisely. Paul Broca applied it to skulls having a cephalic index of seventy-five and under, and this limit is generally adopted. Dolichocephaly, according to Retzius, was the distinctive cranial feature of the earliest inhabitants of Europe. To-day it is characteristic of the negro races, of the Papuans, the Polynesians and the Australians, though among the negritos and some of the pigmy races of Africa brachycephalic skulls are the rule. Of the yellow races the Eskimo is the most dolichocephalic. Of white races the Arabs and Kabyles of Algeria, and the Guanchos of the Canary Islands, are most notable for dolichocephalic tendency. Dolichocephaly is sometimes frontal, as among adult whites, sometimes occipital or confined to the back of the head, as among inferior negro-races, Australians, Papuans and newly-born whites.