THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME VIII slice II
Demijohn to Destructor

DEMIJOHN, a glass bottle or jar with a large round body and narrow neck, encased in wicker-work and provided with handles. The word is also used of an erthenware jar, similarly covered with wicker. The capacity of a demijohn varies from two to twelve gallons, but the common size contains five gallons. According to the New English Dictionary the word is an adaptation of a French Dame Jeanne, or Dame Jane, an application of a personal name to an object which is not uncommon; cf. the use of “Toby” for a particular form of jug and the many uses of the name “Jack.”

DEMISE, an Anglo-French legal term (from the Fr. démettre, Lat. dimittere, to send away) for a transfer of an estate, especially by lease. The word has an operative effect in a lease implying a covenant for “quiet enjoyment” (see [Landlord and Tenant]). The phrase “demise of the crown” is used in English law to signify the immediate transfer of the sovereignty, with all its attributes and prerogatives, to the successor without any interregnum in accordance with the maxim “the king never dies.” At common law the death of the sovereign eo facto dissolved parliament, but this was abolished by the Representation of the People Act 1867, § 51. Similarly the common law doctrine that all offices held under the crown determined at its demise has been negatived by the Demise of the Crown Act 1901. “Demise” is thus often used loosely for death or decease.

DEMIURGE (Gr. δημιουργός, from δήμιος, of or for the people, and ἒργον, work), a handicraftsman or artisan. In Homer the word has a wide application, including not only hand-workers but even heralds and physicians. In Attica the demiurgi formed one of the three classes (with the Eupatridae and the geomori, georgi or agroeci) into which the early population was divided (cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. xiii. 2). They represented either a class of the whole population, or, according to Busolt, a commercial nobility (see [Eupatridae]). In the sense of “worker for the people” the word was used throughout the Peloponnese, with the exception of Sparta, and in many parts of Greece, for a higher magistrate. The demiurgi among other officials represent Elis and Mantineia at the treaty of peace between Athens, Argos, Elis and Mantineia in 420 B.C. (Thuc. v. 47). In the [Achaean League] (q.v.) the name is given to ten elective officers who presided over the assembly, and Corinth sent “Epidemiurgi” every year to Potidaea, officials who apparently answered to the Spartan harmosts. In Plato δημιουργός is the name given to the “creator of the world” (Timaeus, 40) and the word was so adopted by the Gnostics (see [Gnosticism]).

DEMMIN, a town of Germany, kingdom of Prussia, on the navigable river Peene (which in the immediate neighbourhood receives the Trebel and the Tollense), 72 m. W.N.W. of Stettin, on the Berlin-Stralsund railway. Pop. (1905) 12,541. It has manufactures of textiles, besides breweries, distilleries and tanneries, and an active trade in corn and timber.

The town is of Slavonian origin and of considerable antiquity, and was a place of importance in the time of Charlemagne. It was besieged by a German army in 1148, and captured by Henry the Lion in 1164. In the Thirty Years’ War Demmin was the object of frequent conflicts, and even after the peace of Westphalia was taken and retaken in the contest between the electoral prince and the Swedes. It passed to Prussia in 1720, and its fortifications were dismantled in 1759. In 1807 several engagements took place in the vicinity between the French and Russians.

DEMOCHARES (c. 355-275 B.C.), nephew of Demosthenes, Athenian orator and statesman, was one of the few distinguished Athenians in the period of decline. He is first heard of in 322, when he spoke in vain against the surrender of Demosthenes and the other anti-Macedonian orators demanded by Antipater. During the next fifteen years he probably lived in exile. On the restoration of the democracy by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 307 he occupied a prominent position, but was banished in 303 for having ridiculed the decree of Stratocles, which contained a fulsome eulogy of Demetrius. He was recalled in 298, and during the next four years[1] fortified and equipped the city with provisions and ammunition. In 296 (or 295) he was again banished for having concluded an alliance with the Boeotians, and did not return until 287 (or 286). In 280 he induced the Athenians to erect a public monument in honour of his uncle with a suitable inscription. After his death (some five years later) the son of Demochares proposed and obtained a decree (Plutarch, Vitae decem oratorum, p. 851) that a statue should be erected in his honour, containing a record of his public services, which seem to have consisted in a reduction of public expenses, a more prudent management of the state finances (after his return in 287) and successful begging missions to the rulers of Egypt and Macedonia. Although a friend of the Stoic Zeno, Demochares regarded all other philosophers as the enemies of freedom, and in 306 supported the proposal of one Sophocles, advocating their expulsion from Attica. According to Cicero (Brutus, 83) Demochares was the author of a history of his own times, written in an oratorical rather than a historical style. As a speaker he was noted for his freedom of language (Parrhesiastes, Seneca, De ira, iii. 23). He was violently attacked by Timaeus, but found a strenuous defender in Polybius (xii. 13).

See also Plutarch, Demosthenes, 30, Demetrius, 24, Vitae decem oratorum, p. 847; J. G. Droysen’s essay on Demochares in Zeitschrift für die Altertumswissenschaft (1836), Nos. 20, 21.

[1] For the “four years’ war” and the chronological questions involved, see C. W. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. ii. 445.

DEMOCRACY (Gr. δημοκρατία, from δῆμος, the people, i.e. the commons, and κράτος, rule), in political science, that form of government in which the people rules itself, either directly, as in the small city-states of Greece, or through representatives. According to Aristotle, democracy is the perverted form of the third form of government, which he called πολιτεία, “polity” or “constitutional government,” the rule of the majority of the free and equal citizens, as opposed to monarchy and aristocracy, the rule respectively of an individual and of a minority consisting of the best citizens (see [Government] and [Aristocracy]). Aristotle’s restriction of “democracy” to bad popular government, i.e. mob-rule, or, as it has sometimes been called, “ochlocracy” (ὂχλος, mob), was due to the fact that the Athenian democracy had in his day degenerated far below the ideals of the 5th century, when it reached its zenith under Pericles. Since Aristotle’s day the word has resumed its natural meaning, but democracy in modern times is a very different thing from what it was in its best days in Greece and Rome. The Greek states were what are known as “city-states,” the characteristic of which was that all the citizens could assemble together in the city at regular intervals for legislative and other purposes. This sovereign assembly of the people was known at Athens as the [Ecclesia] (q.v.), at Sparta as the [Apella] (q.v.), at Rome variously as the Comitia Centuriata or the Concilium Plebis (see [Comitia]). Of representative government in the modern sense there is practically no trace in Athenian history, though certain of the magistrates (see [Strategus]) had a quasi-representative character. Direct democracy is impossible except in small states. In the second place the qualification for citizenship was rigorous; thus Pericles restricted citizenship to those who were the sons of an Athenian father, himself a citizen, and an Athenian mother (ἐξ ἀμφόῖν ἀστοῖν). This system excluded not only all the slaves, who were more numerous than the free population, but also resident aliens, subject allies, and those Athenians whose descent did not satisfy this criterion (τῷ γένει μὴ καθαροί). The Athenian democracy, which was typical in ancient Greece, was a highly exclusive form of government.

With the growth of empire and nation states this narrow parochial type of democracy became impossible. The population became too large and the distance too great for regular assemblies of qualified citizens. The rigid distinction of citizens and non-citizens was progressively more difficult to maintain, and new criteria of citizenship came into force. The first difficulty has been met by various forms of representative government. The second problem has been solved in various ways in different countries; moderate democracies have adopted a low property qualification, while extreme democracy is based on the extension of citizenship to all adult persons with or without distinction of sex. The essence of modern representative government is that the people does not govern itself, but periodically elects those who shall govern on its behalf (see [Government]; [Representation]).

DEMOCRATIC PARTY, originally Democratic-Republican Party, the oldest of existing political parties in the United States. Its origin lay in the principles of local self-government and repugnance to social and political aristocracy established as cardinal tenets of American colonial democracy, which by the War of Independence, which was essentially a democratic movement, became the basis of the political institutions of the nation. The evils of lax government, both central and state, under the Confederation caused, however, a marked anti-democratic reaction, and this united with the temperamental conservatism of the framers of the constitution of 1787 in the shaping of that conservative instrument. The influences and interests for and against its adoption took form in the groupings of Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and these, after the creation of the new government, became respectively, in underlying principles, and, to a large extent, in personnel, the [Federalist party] (q.v.) and the Democratic-Republican party.[1] The latter, organized by Thomas Jefferson in opposition to the Federalists dominated by Alexander Hamilton, was a real party by 1792. The great service of attaching to the constitution a democratic bill of rights belongs to the Anti-Federalists or Democratic-Republican party, although this was then amorphous. The Democratic-Republican party gained full control of the government, save the judiciary, in 1801, and controlled it continuously thereafter until 1825. No political “platforms” were then known, but the writings of Jefferson, who dominated his party throughout this period, take the place of such. His inaugural address of 1801 is a famous statement of democratic principles, which to-day are taken for granted only because, through the party organized by him to secure their success, they became universally accepted as the ideal of American institutions. In all the colonies, says John Adams, “a court and a country party had always contended”; Jefferson’s followers believed sincerely that the Federalists were a new court party, and monarchist. Hence they called themselves “Republicans” as against monarchists,—standing also, incidentally, for states’ rights against the centralization that monarchy (or any approach to it) implied; and “Democrats” as against aristocrats,—standing for the “common rights of Englishmen,” the “rights of man,” the levelling of social ranks and the widening of political privileges. In the early years of its history—and during the period of the French Revolution and afterwards—the Republicans sympathized with the French as against the British, the Federalists with the British as against the French.

Devotion to abstract principles of democracy and liberty, and in practical politics a strict construction of the constitution, in order to prevent an aggrandizement of national power at the expense of the states (which were nearer popular control) or the citizens, have been permanent characteristics of the Democratic party as contrasted with its principal opponents; but neither these nor any other distinctions have been continuously or consistently true throughout its long course.[2] After 1801 the commercial and manufacturing nationalistic[3] elements of the Federalist party, being now dependent on Jefferson for protection, gradually went over to the Republicans, especially after the War of 1812; moreover, administration of government naturally developed in Republican ranks a group of broad-constructionists. These groups fused, and became an independent party.[4] They called themselves National Republicans, while the Jacksonian Republicans soon came to be known simply as Democrats.[5] Immediately afterward followed the tremendous victory of the Jacksonians in 1828,—a great advance in radical democracy over the victory of 1800. In the interval the Federalist party had disappeared, and practically the entire country, embracing Jeffersonian democracy, had passed through the school of the Republican party. It had established the power of the “people” in the sense of that word in present-day American politics. Bills of rights in every state constitution protected the citizen; some state judges were already elective; very soon the people came to nominate their presidential candidates in national conventions, and draft their party platforms through their convention representatives.[6] After the National Republican scission the Democratic party, weakened thereby in its nationalistic tendencies, and deprived of the leadership of Jackson, fell quickly under the control of its Southern adherents and became virtually sectional in its objects. Its states’ rights doctrine was turned to the defence of slavery. In thus opposing anti-slavery sentiment—inconsistently, alike as regarded the “rights of man” and constitutional construction, with its original and permanent principles—it lost morale and power. As a result of the contest over Kansas it became fatally divided, and in 1860 put forward two presidential tickets: one representing the doctrine of Jefferson Davis that the constitution recognized slave-property, and therefore the national government must protect slavery in the territories; the other representing Douglas’s doctrine that the inhabitants of a territory might virtually exclude slavery by “unfriendly legislation.” The combined popular votes for the two tickets exceeded that cast by the new, anti-slavery Republican party (the second of the name) for Lincoln; but the election was lost. During the ensuing Civil War such members of the party as did not become War Democrats antagonized the Lincoln administration, and in 1864 made the great blunder of pronouncing the war “a failure.” Owing to Republican errors in reconstruction and the scandals of President Grant’s administration, the party gradually regained its strength and morale, until, having largely subordinated Southern questions to economic issues, it cast for Tilden for president in 1876 a popular vote greater than that obtained by the Republican candidate, Hayes, and gained control of the House of Representatives. The Electoral Commission, however, made Hayes president, and the quiet acceptance of this decision by the Democratic party did it considerable credit.

Since 1877 the Southern states have been almost solidly Democratic; but, except on the negro question, such unanimity among Southern whites has been, naturally, factitious; and by no means an unmixed good for the party. Apart from the “Solid South,” the period after 1875 is characterized by two other party difficulties. The first was the attempt from 1878 to 1896 to “straddle” the silver issue;[7] the second, an attempt after 1896 to harmonize general elements of conservatism and radicalism within the party. In 1896 the South and West gained control of the organization, and the national campaigns of 1896 and 1900 were fought and lost mainly on the issue of “free silver,” which, however, was abandoned before 1904. After 1898 “imperialism,” to which the Democrats were hostile, became another issue. Finally, after 1896, there became very apparent in the party a tendency to attract the radical elements of society in the general re-alignment of parties taking place on industrial-social issues; the Democratic party apparently attracting, in this readjustment, the “radicals” and the “masses” as in the time of Jefferson and Jackson. In this process, in the years 1896-1900, it took over many of the principles and absorbed, in large part, the members of the radical third-party of the “Populists,” only to be confronted thereupon by the growing strength of Socialism, challenging it to a farther radical widening of its programme. From 1860 to 1908 it elected but a single president (Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897).[8] All American parties accepted long ago in theory “Jeffersonian democracy”; but the Democratic party has been “the political champion of those elements of the [American] democracy which are most democratic. It stands nearest the people.”[9] It may be noted that the Jeffersonian Republicans did not attempt to democratize the constitution itself. The choice of a president was soon popularized, however, in effect; and the popular election of United States senators is to-day a definite Democratic tenet.[10]

Bibliography.—For an exposition of the party’s principles see Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. by P. L. Ford (10 vols., New York, 1892-1899); J. P. Foley (ed.), The Jeffersonian Cyclopaedia (New York, 1900); and especially the Campaign Text-Books of more recent times, usually issued by the national Democratic committee in alternate years, and M. Carey, The Democratic Speaker’s Handbook (Cincinnati, 1868). For a hostile criticism of the party, see W. D. Jones, Mirror of Modern Democracy; History of the Democratic Party from 1825 to 1861 (New York, 1864); Jonathan Norcross, History of Democracy Considered as a Party-Name and a Political Organization (New York, 1883); J. H. Patton, The Democratic Party: Its Political History and Influence (New York, 1884). Favourable treatises are R. H. Gillet, Democracy in the United States (New York, 1868); and George Fitch, Political Facts: an Historical Text-Book of the Democratic and Other Parties (Baltimore, 1884). See also, for general political history, Thomas H. Benton, Thirty Years’ View (2 vols., New York, 1854-1856, and later editions); James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress (2 vols., Norwich, Conn., 1884-1893); S. S. Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation (Providence, 1885); S. P. Orth, Five American Politicians: a Study in the Evolution of American Politics (Cleveland, 1906), containing sketches of four Democratic leaders—Burr, De Witt Clinton, Van Buren and Douglas; J. Macy, Party Organization and Machinery (New York, 1904); J. H. Hopkins, History of Political Parties in the United States (New York, 1900); E. S. Stanwood, History of the Presidency (last ed., Boston, 1904); J. P. Gordy, History of Political Parties, i. (New York, 1900); H. J. Ford, Rise and Growth of American Politics (New York, 1898); Alexander Johnston, History of American Politics (New York, 1900, and later editions); C. E. Merriam, A History of American Political Theories (New York, 1903), containing chapters on the Jeffersonian and the Jacksonian Democracy; and James A. Woodburn, Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States (New York, 1903).

[1] The prefix “Democratic” was not used by Jefferson; it became established, however, and official.

[2] Under the rubric of “strict construction” fall the greatest struggles in the party’s history: those over the United States Bank, over tariffs—for protection or for “revenue” only—over “internal improvements,” over issues of administrative economy in providing for the “general welfare,” &c. The course of the party has frequently been inconsistent, and its doctrines have shown, absolutely considered, progressive latitudinarianism.

[3] “Nationalistic” is used here and below, not in the sense of a general nationalistic spirit, such as that of Jackson, but to indicate the centralizing tendency of a broad construction of constitutional powers in behalf of commerce and manufactures.

[4] Standing for protective tariffs, internal improvements, &c.

[5] It should be borne in mind, however, that the Democratic party of Jackson was not strictly identical with the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson,—and some writers date back the origin of the present Democratic party only to 1828-1829.

[6] The Democratic national convention of 1832 was preceded by an Anti-Masonic convention of 1830 and by the National-Republican convention of 1831; but the Democratic platform of 1840 was the first of its kind.

[7] The attitude of the Republican party was no less inconsistent and evasive.

[8] It controlled the House of Representatives from 1874 to 1894 except in 1880-1882 and 1888-1890; but except for a time in Cleveland’s second term, there were never simultaneously a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in Congress.

[9] Professor A. D. Morse in International Monthly, October 1900. He adds, “It has done more to Americanize the foreigner than all other parties.” (It is predominant in the great cities of the country.)

[10] In connexion with the prevalent popular tendency to regard the president as a people’s tribune, it may be noted that a strong presidential veto is, historically, peculiarly a Democratic contribution, owing to the history of Jackson’s (compare Cleveland’s) administration.

DEMOCRITUS, probably the greatest of the Greek physical philosophers, was a native of Abdera in Thrace, or as some say—probably wrongly—of Miletus (Diog. Laërt. ix. 34). Our knowledge of his life is based almost entirely on tradition of an untrustworthy kind. He seems to have been born about 470 or 460 B.C., and was, therefore, an older contemporary of Socrates. He inherited a considerable property, which enabled him to travel widely in the East in search of information. In Egypt he settled for seven years, during which he studied the mathematical and physical systems of the ancient schools. The extent to which he was influenced by the Magi and the Eastern astrologists is a matter of pure conjecture. He returned from his travels impoverished; one tradition says that he received 500 talents from his fellow-citizens, and that a public funeral was decreed him. Another tradition states that he was regarded as insane by the Abderitans, and that Hippocrates was summoned to cure him. Diodorus Siculus tells us that he died at the age of ninety; others make him as much as twenty years older. His works, according to Diogenes Laërtius, numbered seventy-two, and were characterized by a purity of style which compares favourably with that of Plato. The absurd epithet, the “laughing philosopher,” applied to him by some unknown and very superficial thinker, may possibly have contributed in some measure to the fact that his importance was for centuries overlooked. It is interesting, however, to notice that Bacon (De Principiis) assigns to him his true place in the history of thought, and points out that both in his own day and later “in the times of Roman learning” he was spoken of in terms of the highest praise. In the variety of his knowledge, and in the importance of his influence on both Greek and modern speculation he was the Aristotle of the 5th century, while the sanity of his metaphysical theory has led many to regard him as the equal, if not the superior, of Plato.

His views may be treated under the following heads:—

1. The Atoms and Cosmology (adopted in part at least from the doctrines of Leucippus, though the relations between the two are hopelessly obscure). While agreeing with the Eleatics as to the eternal sameness of Being (nothing can arise out of nothing; nothing can be reduced to nothing), Democritus followed the physicists in denying its oneness and immobility. Movement and plurality being necessary to explain the phenomena of the universe and impossible without space (not-Being), he asserted that the latter had an equal right with Being to be considered existent. Being is the Full (πλῆρες, plenum); not-Being is the Void (κενόν, vacuum), the infinite space in which moved the infinite number of atoms into which the single Being of the Eleatics was broken up. These atoms are eternal and invisible; absolutely small, so small that their size cannot be diminished (hence the name ἄτομος, “indivisible”); absolutely full and incompressible, they are without pores and entirely fill the space they occupy; homogeneous, differing only in figure (as A from N), arrangement (as AN from NA), position (as N is Z on its side), magnitude (and consequently in weight, although some authorities dispute this). But while the atoms thus differ in quantity, their differences of quality are only apparent, due to the impressions caused on our senses by different configurations and combinations of atoms. A thing is only hot or cold, sweet or bitter, hard or soft by convention (νόμῳ); the only things that exist in reality (ἐτεῇ) are the atoms and the void. Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities is here anticipated. Thus, the atoms of water and iron are the same, but those of the former, being smooth and round, and therefore unable to hook on to one another, roll over and over like small globes, whereas the atoms of iron, being rough, jagged and uneven, cling together and form a solid body. Since all phenomena are composed of the same eternal atoms (just as a tragedy and a comedy contain the same letters) it may be said that nothing comes into being or perishes in the absolute sense of the words (cf. the modern “indestructibility of matter” and “conservation of energy”), although the compounds of the atoms are liable to increase and decrease, appearance and disappearance—in other words, to birth and death. As the atoms are eternal and uncaused, so is motion; it has its origin in a preceding motion, and so on ad infinitum. For the Love and Hate of Empedocles and the Nous (Intelligence) of Anaxagoras, Democritus substituted fixed and necessary laws (not chance; that is a misrepresentation due chiefly to Cicero). Everything can be explained by a purely mechanical (but not fortuitous) system, in which there is no room for the idea of a providence or an intelligent cause working with a view to an end. The origin of the universe was explained as follows. An infinite number of atoms was carried downwards through infinite space. The larger (and heavier), falling with greater velocity, overtook and collided with the smaller (and lighter), which were thereby forced upwards. This caused various lateral and contrary movements, resulting in a whirling movement (δίνη) resembling the rotation of Anaxagoras, whereby similar atoms were brought together (as in the winnowing of grain) and united to form larger bodies and worlds. Atoms and void being infinite in number and extent, and motion having always existed, there must always have been an infinite number of worlds, all consisting of similar atoms, in various stages of growth and decay.

2. The Soul.—Democritus devoted considerable attention to the structure of the human body, the noblest portion of which he considered to be the soul, which everywhere pervades it, a psychic atom being intercalated between two corporeal atoms. Although, in accordance with his principles, Democritus was bound to regard the soul as material (composed of round, smooth, specially mobile atoms, identified with the fire-atoms floating in the air), he admitted a distinction between it and the body, and is even said to have looked upon it as something divine. These all-pervading soul atoms exercise different functions in different organs; the head is the seat of reason, the heart of anger, the liver of desire. Life is maintained by the inhalation of fresh atoms to replace those lost by exhalation, and when respiration, and consequently the supply of atoms, ceases, the result is death. It follows that the soul perishes with, and in the same sense as, the body.

3. Perception.—Sensations are the changes produced in the soul by external impressions, and are the result of contact, since every action of one body (and all representations are corporeal phenomena) upon another is of the nature of a shock. Certain emanations (ἀποῤῥοαί, ἀπόῤῥοιαι) or images (εἴδωλα), consisting of subtle atoms, thrown off from the surface of an object, penetrate the body through the pores. On the principle that like acts upon like, the particular senses are only affected by that which resembles them. We see by means of the eye alone, and hear by means of the ear alone, these organs being best adapted to receive the images or sound currents. The organs are thus merely conduits or passages through which the atoms pour into the soul. The eye, for example, is damp and porous, and the act of seeing consists in the reflection of the image (δείκελον) mirrored on the smooth moist surface of the pupil. To the interposition of air is due the fact that all visual images are to some extent blurred. At the same time Democritus distinguished between obscure (σκοτίη) cognition, resting on sensation alone, and genuine (γνησίη), which is the result of inquiry by reason, and is concerned with atoms and void, the only real existences. This knowledge, however, he confessed was exceedingly difficult to attain.

It is in Democritus first that we find a real attempt to explain colour. He regards black, red, white and green as primary. White is characteristically smooth, i.e. casting no shadow, even, flat; black is uneven, rough, shadowy and so on. The other colours result from various mixtures of these four, and are infinite in number. Colour itself is not objective; it is found not in the ultimate plenum and vacuum, but only in derived objects according to their physical qualities and relations.

4. Theology.—The system of Democritus was altogether anti-theistic. But, although he rejected the notion of a deity taking part in the creation or government of the universe, he yielded to popular prejudice so far as to admit the existence of a class of beings, of the same form as men, grander, composed of very subtle atoms, less liable to dissolution, but still mortal, dwelling in the upper regions of air. These beings also manifested themselves to man by means of images in dreams, communicated with him, and sometimes gave him an insight into the future. Some of them were benevolent, others malignant. According to Plutarch, Democritus recognized one god under the form of a fiery sphere, the soul of the world, but this idea is probably of later origin. The popular belief in gods was attributed by Democritus to the desire to explain extraordinary phenomena (thunder, lightning, earthquakes) by reference to superhuman agency.

5. Ethics.—Democritus’s moral system—the first collection of ethical precepts which deserves the name—strongly resembles the negative side of the system of Epicurus. The summum bonum is the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of pain. But true pleasure is not sensual enjoyment; it has its principle in the soul. It consists not in the possession of wealth or flocks and herds, but in good humour, in the just disposition and constant tranquillity of the soul. Hence the necessity of avoiding extremes; too much and too little are alike evils. True happiness consists in taking advantage of what one has and being content with it (see [Ethics]).

Bibliography.—Fragments edited by F. Mullach (1843) with commentary and in his Fragmenta philosophorum Graecorum, i. (1860). See also H. Ritter and L. Preller, Historia philosophiae (chap. i. ad fin.); P. Lafaist (Lafaye), Dissertation sur la philosophie atomistique (1833); L. Liard, De Democrito philosopho (Paris, 1873); H. C. Liepmann, Die Leucipp-Democritischen Atome (Leipzig, 1886); F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus (Eng. trans. by E. C. Thomas, 1877); G. Hart, Zur Seelen- und Erkenntnislehre des Democritus (Leipzig, 1886); P. Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos (Marburg, 1893); A. Dyroff, Demokritstudien (Leipzig, 1899); among general works C. A. Brandis, Gesch. d. Entwickelungen d. griech. Philosophie (Bonn, 1862-1864); Ed. Zeller, Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Eng. trans., London, 1881); for his theory of sense-perception see especially J. I. Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition (Oxford, 1906).

DEMOGEOT, JACQUES CLAUDE (1808-1804), French man of letters, was born in Paris on the 5th of July 1808. He was professor of rhetoric at the lycée Saint Louis, and subsequently assistant professor at the Sorbonne. He wrote many detached papers on various literary subjects, and two reports on secondary education in England and Scotland in collaboration with H. Montucci. His reputation rests on his excellent Histoire de la littérature française depuis ses origines jusqu’à nos jours (1851), which has passed through many subsequent editions. He was also the author of a Tableau de la littérature française au XVIIe siècle (1859), and of a work (3 vols., 1880-1883) on the influence of foreign literatures on the development of French literature. He died in Paris in 1894.

DEMOGRAPHY (from Gr. δῆμος, people, and γράφειν, to write), the science which deals with the statistics of health and disease, of the physical, intellectual, physiological and economical aspects of births, marriages and mortality. The first to employ the word was Achille Guillard in his Éléments de statistique humaine ou démographie comparée (1855), but the meaning which he attached to it was merely that of the science which treats of the condition, general movement and progress of population in civilized countries, i.e. little more than what is comprised in the ordinary vital statistics, gleaned from census and registration reports. The word has come to have a much wider meaning and may now be defined as that branch of statistics which deals with the life-conditions of peoples.

DEMOIVRE, ABRAHAM (1667-1754), English mathematician of French extraction, was born at Vitry, in Champagne, on the 26th of May 1667. He belonged to a French Protestant family, and was compelled to take refuge in England at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685. Having laid the foundation of his mathematical studies in France, he prosecuted them further in London, where he read public lectures on natural philosophy for his support. The Principia mathematica of Sir Isaac Newton, which chance threw in his way, caused him to prosecute his studies with vigour, and he soon became distinguished among first-rate mathematicians. He was among the intimate personal friends of Newton, and his eminence and abilities secured his admission into the Royal Society of London in 1697, and afterwards into the Academies of Berlin and Paris. His merit was so well known and acknowledged by the Royal Society that they judged him a fit person to decide the famous contest between Newton and G. W. Leibnitz (see [Infinitesimal Calculus]). The life of Demoivre was quiet and uneventful. His old age was spent in obscure poverty, his friends and associates having nearly all passed away before him. He died at London, on the 27th of November 1754.

The Philosophical Transactions contain several of his papers. He also published some excellent works, such as Miscellanea analytica de seriebus et quadraturis (1730), in 4to. This contained some elegant and valuable improvements on then existing methods, which have themselves, however, long been superseded. But he has been more generally known by his Doctrine of Chances, or Method of Calculating the Probabilities of Events at Play. This work was first printed in 1618, in 4to, and dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton. It was reprinted in 1738, with great alterations and improvements; and a third edition was afterwards published with additions in 1756. He also published a Treatise on Annuities (1725), which has passed through several revised and corrected editions.

See C. Hutton, Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary (1815). For Demoivre’s Theorem see [Trigonometry: Analytical.]

DEMONETIZATION, a term employed in monetary science in two different senses. (a) The depriving or divesting of a metal of its standard monetary value. From 1663 to 1717 silver was the standard of value in England and gold coins passed at their market value. The debasement and underrating of the silver coinage insensibly brought about the demonetization of silver in England as a standard of value and the substitution of gold. During the latter half of the 19th century, the tremendous depreciation of silver, owing to its continually increasing production, and consequently the impossibility of preserving any ratio of stability between it and gold, led to the abandonment or demonetization of the metal as a standard and to its use merely as token money. (b) The withdrawal of coin from circulation, as, for example, in England that of all pre-Victorian gold coins under the provisions of the Coinage Act 1889, and the royal proclamation of the 22nd of November 1890.

DEMONOLOGY (Δαίμων, demon, genius, spirit), the branch of the science of religions which relates to superhuman beings which are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings which have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent beings of all kinds. It may be noted that the original sense of “demon” was a benevolent being; but in English the name now connotes malevolence; in German it has a neutral sense, e.g. Korndämonen. Demons, when they are regarded as spirits, may belong to either of the classes of spirits recognized by primitive [animism] (q.v.); that is to say, they may be human, or non-human, separable souls, or discarnate spirits which have never inhabited a body; a sharp distinction is often drawn between these two classes, notably by the Melanesians, the West Africans and others; the Arab jinn, for example, are not reducible to modified human souls; at the same time these classes are frequently conceived as producing identical results, e.g. diseases.

Under the head of demons are classified only such spirits as are believed to enter into relations with the human race; the term therefore includes (1) human souls regarded as genii or familiars, (2) such as receive a cult (for which see [Ancestor Worship]), and (3) ghosts or other malevolent revenants; excluded are souls conceived as inhabiting another world. But just as gods are not necessarily spiritual, demons may also be regarded as corporeal; vampires for example are sometimes described as human heads with appended entrails, which issue from the tomb to attack the living during the night watches. The so-called Spectre Huntsman of the Malay Peninsula is said to be a man who scours the firmament with his dogs, vainly seeking for what he could not find on earth—a buck mouse-deer pregnant with male offspring; but he seems to be a living man; there is no statement that he ever died, nor yet that he is a spirit. The incubus and succubus of the middle ages are sometimes regarded as spiritual beings; but they were held to give very real proof of their bodily existence. It should, however, be remembered that primitive peoples do not distinguish clearly between material and immaterial beings.

Prevalence of Demons.—According to a conception of the world frequently found among peoples of the lower cultures, all the affairs of life are supposed to be under the control of spirits, each ruling a certain element or even object, and themselves in subjection to a greater spirit. Thus, the Eskimo are said to believe in spirits of the sea, earth and sky, the winds, the clouds and everything in nature. Every cove of the seashore, every point, every island and prominent rock has its guardian spirit. All are of the malignant type, to be propitiated only by acceptable offerings from persons who desire to visit the locality where it is supposed to reside. A rise in culture often results in an increase in the number of spiritual beings with whom man surrounds himself. Thus, the Koreans go far beyond the Eskimo and number their demons by thousands of billions; they fill the chimney, the shed, the living-room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar; in thousands they waylay the traveller as he leaves his home, beside him, behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head, crying out upon him from air, earth and water.

Especially complicated was the ancient Babylonian demonology; all the petty annoyances of life—a sudden fall, a headache, a quarrel—were set down to the agency of fiends; all the stronger emotions—love, hate, jealousy and so on—were regarded as the work of demons; in fact so numerous were they, that there were special fiends for various parts of the human body—one for the head, another for the neck, and so on. Similarly in Egypt at the present day the jinn are believed to swarm so thickly that it is necessary to ask their permission before pouring water on the ground, lest one should accidentally be soused and vent his anger on the offending human being. But these beliefs are far from being confined to the uncivilized; Greek philosophers like Porphyry, no less than the fathers of the Church, held that the world was pervaded with spirits; side by side with the belief in witchcraft, we can trace through the middle ages the survival of primitive animistic views; and in our own day even these beliefs subsist in unsuspected vigour among the peasantry of the more uneducated European countries. In fact the ready acceptance of spiritualism testifies to the force with which the primitive animistic way of looking at things appealed to the white races in the middle of the last century.

Character of Spiritual World.—The ascription of malevolence to the world of spirits is by no means universal. In West Africa the Mpongwe believe in local spirits, just as do the Eskimo; but they are regarded as inoffensive in the main; true, the passer-by must make some trifling offering as he nears their place of abode; but it is only occasionally that mischievous acts, such as the throwing down of a tree on a passer-by, are, in the view of the natives, perpetuated by the Ombuiri. So too, many of the spirits especially concerned with the operations of nature are conceived as neutral or even benevolent; the European peasant fears the corn-spirit only when he irritates him by trenching on his domain and taking his property by cutting the corn; similarly, there is no reason why the more insignificant personages of the pantheon should be conceived as malevolent, and we find that the Petara of the Dyaks are far from indiscriminating and malignant, though disease and death are laid at their door.

Classification.—Besides the distinctions of human and non-human, hostile and friendly, the demons in which the lower races believe are classified by them according to function, each class with a distinctive name, with extraordinary minuteness, the list in the case of the Malays running to several score. They have, for example, a demon of the waterfall, a demon of wild-beast tracks, a demon which interferes with snares for wild-fowl, a baboon demon, which takes possession of dancers and causes them to perform wonderful feats of climbing, &c. But it is impossible to do more than deal with a few types, which will illustrate the main features of the demonology of savage, barbarous and semi-civilized peoples.

(a) Natural causes, either of death or of disease, are hardly, if at all, recognized by the uncivilized; everything is attributed to spirits or magical influence of some sort. The spirits which cause disease may be human or non-human and their influence is shown in more than one way; they may enter the body of the victim (see [Possession]), and either dominate his mind as well as his body, inflict specific diseases, or cause pains of various sorts. Thus the Mintra of the Malay Peninsula have a demon corresponding to every kind of disease known to them; the Tasmanian ascribed a gnawing pain to the presence within him of the soul of a dead man, whom he had unwittingly summoned by mentioning his name and who was devouring his liver; the Samoan held that the violation of a food tabu would result in the animal being formed within the body of the offender and cause his death. The demon theory of disease is still attested by some of our medical terms; epilepsy (Gr. ἐπίληψις, seizure) points to the belief that the patient is possessed. As a logical consequence of this view of disease the mode of treatment among peoples in the lower stages of culture is mainly magical; they endeavour to propitiate the evil spirits by sacrifice, to expel them by spells, &c. (see [Exorcism]), to drive them away by blowing, &c.; conversely we find the Khonds attempt to keep away smallpox by placing thorns and brushwood in the paths leading to places decimated by that disease, in the hope of making the disease demon retrace his steps. This theory of disease disappeared sooner than did the belief in possession; the energumens (ἐνεργούμενοι) of the early Christian church, who were under the care of a special clerical order of exorcists, testify to a belief in possession; but the demon theory of disease receives no recognition; the energumens find their analogues in the converts of missionaries in China, Africa and elsewhere. Another way in which a demon is held to cause disease is by introducing itself into the patient’s body and sucking his blood; the Malays believe that a woman who dies in childbirth becomes a langsuir and sucks the blood of children; victims of the lycanthrope are sometimes said to be done to death in the same way; and it is commonly believed in Africa that the wizard has the power of killing people in this way, probably with the aid of a familiar.

(b) One of the primary meanings of δαίμων is that of genius or familiar, tutelary spirit; according to Hesiod the men of the golden race became after death guardians or watchers over mortals. The idea is found among the Romans also; they attributed to every man a genius who accompanied him through life. A Norse belief found in Iceland is that the fylgia, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of deciding their quarrels in person. The animal guardian reappears in the nagual of Central America (see article [Totemism]), the yunbeai of some Australian tribes, the manitou of the Red Indian and the bush soul of some West African tribes; among the latter the link between animal and human being is said to be established by the ceremony of the blood bond. Corresponding to the animal guardian of the ordinary man, we have the familiar of the witch or wizard. All the world over it is held that such people can assume the form of animals; sometimes the power of the shaman is held to depend on his being able to summon his familiar; among the Ostiaks the shaman’s coat was covered with representations of birds and beasts; two bear’s claws were on his hands; his wand was covered with mouse-skin; when he wished to divine he beat his drum till a black bird appeared and perched on his hut; then the shaman swooned, the bird vanished, and the divination could begin. Similarly the Greenland angekok is said to summon his torngak (which may be an ancestral ghost or an animal) by drumming; he is heard by the bystanders to carry on a conversation and obtain advice as to how to treat diseases, the prospects of good weather and other matters of importance. The familiar, who is sometimes replaced by the devil, commonly figured in witchcraft trials; and a statute of James I. enacted that all persons invoking an evil spirit or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding or rewarding any evil spirit should be guilty of felony and suffer death. In modern spiritualism the familiar is represented by the “guide,” corresponding to which we have the theosophical “guru.”

(c) The familiar is sometimes an ancestral spirit, and here we touch the fringe of the cult of the dead (see also [Ancestor Worship]). Especially among the lower races the dead are regarded as hostile; the Australian avoids the grave even of a kinsman and elaborate ceremonies of mourning are found amongst most primitive peoples, whose object seems to be to rid the living of the danger they run by association with the ghost of the dead. Among the Zulu the spirits of the dead are held to be friendly or hostile, just as they were in life; on the Congo a man after death joins the good or bad spirits according as his life has been good or bad. Especially feared among many peoples are the souls of those who have committed suicide or died a violent death; the woman who dies in childbed is held to become a demon of the most dangerous kind; even the unburied, as restless, dissatisfied spirits, are more feared than ordinary ghosts. Naturally spirits of these latter kinds are more valuable as familiars than ordinary dead men’s souls. We find many recipes for securing their aid. In the Malay Peninsula the blood of a murdered man must be put in a bottle and prayers said over; after seven days of this worship a sound is heard and the operator puts his finger into the bottle for the polong, as the demon is called, to suck; it will fly through the air in the shape of an exceedingly diminutive female figure, and is always preceded by its pet, the pelesit, in the shape of a grasshopper. In Europe a similar demon is said to be obtainable from a cock’s egg. In South Africa and India, on the other hand, the magician digs up a dead body, especially of a child, to secure a familiar. The evocation of spirits, especially in the form of necromancy, is an important branch of the demonology of many peoples; and the peculiarities of trance mediumship, which seem sufficiently established by modern research, go far to explain the vogue of this art. It seems to have been common among the Jews, and the case of the witch of Endor is narrated in a way to suggest something beyond fraud; in the book of magic which bears the name of Dr Faustus may be found many of the formulae for raising demons; in England may be mentioned especially Dr Dee as one of the most famous of those who claimed before the days of modern [spiritualism] (q.v.) to have intercourse with the unseen world and to summon demons at his will. Sometimes the spirits were summoned to appear as did the phantoms of the Greek heroes to Odysseus; sometimes they were called to enter a crystal (see [Crystal-Gazing]); sometimes they are merely asked to declare the future or communicate by moving external objects without taking a visible form; thus among the Karens at the close of the burial ceremonies the ghost of the dead man, which is said to hover round till the rites are completed, is believed to make a ring swing round and snap the string from which it hangs.

(d) The vampire is a particular form of demon which calls for some notice. In the Malay Peninsula, parts of Polynesia, &c., it is conceived as a head with attached entrails, which issues, it may be from the grave, to suck the blood of living human beings. According to the Malays a penanggalan (vampire) is a living witch, and can be killed if she can be caught; she is especially feared in houses where a birth has taken place and it is the custom to hang up a bunch of thistle in order to catch her; she is said to keep vinegar at home to aid her in re-entering her own body. In Europe the Slavonic area is the principal seat of vampire beliefs, and here too we find, as a natural development, that means of preventing the dead from injuring the living have been evolved by the popular mind. The corpse of the vampire, which may often be recognized by its unnaturally ruddy and fresh appearance, should be staked down in the grave or its head should be cut off; it is interesting to note that the cutting off of heads of the dead was a neolithic burial rite.

(e) The vampire is frequently blended in popular idea with the [Poltergeist] (q.v.) or knocking spirit, and also with the werwolf (see [Lycanthropy]).

(f) As might be expected, dream demons are very common; in fact the word “nightmare” (A.S. mær, spirit, elf) preserves for us a record of this form of belief, which is found right down to the lowest planes of culture. The Australian, when he suffers from an oppression in his sleep, says that Koin is trying to throttle him; the Caribs say that Maboya beats them in their sleep; and the belief persists to this day in some parts of Europe; horses too are said to be subject to the persecutions of demons, which ride them at night. Another class of nocturnal demons are the incubi and succubi, who are said to consort with human beings in their sleep; in the Antilles these were the ghosts of the dead; in New Zealand likewise ancestral deities formed liaisons with females; in the Samoan Islands the inferior gods were regarded as the fathers of children otherwise unaccounted for; the Hindus have rites prescribed by which a companion nymph may be secured. The question of the real existence of incubi and succubi, whom the Romans identified with the fauns, was gravely discussed by the fathers of the church; and in 1418 Innocent VIII. set forth the doctrine of lecherous demons as an indisputable fact; and in the history of the Inquisition and of trials for witchcraft may be found the confessions of many who bore witness to their reality. In the Anatomy of Melancholy Burton assures us that they were never more numerous than in A.D. 1600.

(g) Corresponding to the personal tutelary spirit (supra, b) we have the genii of buildings and places. The Romans celebrated the birthday of a town and of its genius, just as they celebrated that of a man; and a snake was a frequent form for this kind of demon; when we compare with this the South African belief that the snakes which are in the neighbourhood of the kraal are the incarnations of the ancestors of the residents, it seems probable that some similar idea lay at the bottom of the Roman belief; to this day in European folklore the house snake or toad, which lives in the cellar, is regarded as the “life index” or other self of the father of the house; the death of one involves the death of the other, according to popular belief. The assignment of genii to buildings and gates is connected with an important class of sacrifices; in order to provide a tutelary spirit, or to appease chthonic deities, it was often the custom to sacrifice a human being or an animal at the foundation of a building; sometimes we find a similar guardian provided for the frontier of a country or of a tribe. The house spirit is, however, not necessarily connected with this idea. In Russia the domovoi (house spirit) is an important personage in folk-belief; he may object to certain kinds of animals, or to certain colours in cattle; and must, generally speaking, be propitiated and cared for. Corresponding to him we have the drudging goblin of English folklore.

(h) It has been shown above how the animistic creed postulates the existence of all kinds of local spirits, which are sometimes tied to their habitats, sometimes free to wander. Especially prominent in Europe, classical, medieval and modern, and in East Asia, is the spirit of the lake, river, spring, or well, often conceived as human, but also in the form of a bull or horse; the term Old Nick may refer to the water-horse Nök. Less specialized in their functions are many of the figures of modern folklore, some of whom have perhaps replaced some ancient goddess, e.g. Frau Holda; others, like the Welsh Pwck, the Lancashire boggarts or the more widely found Jack-o’-Lantern (Will o’ the Wisp), are sprites who do no more harm than leading the wanderer astray. The banshee is perhaps connected with ancestral or house spirits; the Wild Huntsman, the Gabriel hounds, the Seven Whistlers, &c., are traceable to some actual phenomenon; but the great mass of British goblindom cannot now be traced back to savage or barbarous analogues. Among other local sprites may be mentioned the kobolds or spirits of the mines. The fairies (see [Fairy]), located in the fairy knolls by the inhabitants of the Shetlands, may also be put under this head.

(i) The subject of plant souls is referred to in connexion with [animism] (q.v.); but certain aspects of this phase of belief demand more detailed treatment. Outside the European area vegetation spirits of all kinds seem to be conceived, as a rule, as anthropomorphic; in classical Europe, and parts of the Slavonic area at the present day, the tree spirit was believed to have the form of a goat, or to have goats’ feet.

Of special importance in Europe is the conception of the so-called “corn spirit”; W. Mannhardt collected a mass of information proving that the life of the corn is supposed to exist apart from the corn itself and to take the form, sometimes of an animal, sometimes of a man or woman, sometimes of a child. There is, however, no proof that the belief is animistic in the proper sense. The animal which popular belief identified with the corn demon is sometimes killed in the spring in order to mingle its blood or bones with the seed; at harvest-time it is supposed to sit in the last corn and the animals driven out from it are sometimes killed; at others the reaper who cuts the last ear is said to have killed the “wolf” or the “dog,” and sometimes receives the name of “wolf” or “dog” and retains it till the next harvest. The corn spirit is also said to be hiding in the barn till the corn is threshed, or it may be said to reappear at midwinter, when the farmer begins to think of his new year of labour and harvest. Side by side with the conception of the corn spirit as an animal is the anthropomorphic view of it; and this element must have predominated in the evolution of the cereal deities like Demeter; at the same time traces of the association of gods and goddesses of corn with animal embodiments of the corn spirit are found.

(j) In many parts of the world, and especially in Africa, is found the conception termed the “otiose creator”; that is to say, the belief in a great deity, who is the author of all that exists but is too remote from the world and too high above terrestrial things to concern himself with the details of the universe. As a natural result of this belief we find the view that the operations of nature are conducted by a multitude of more or less obedient subordinate deities; thus, in Portuguese West Africa the Kimbunda believe in Suku-Vakange, but hold that he has committed the government of the universe to innumerable kilulu good and bad; the latter kind are held to be far more numerous, but Suku-Vakange is said to keep them in order by occasionally smiting them with his thunderbolts; were it not for this, man’s lot would be insupportable.

Sometimes the gods of an older religion degenerate into the demons of the belief which supersedes it. A conspicuous example of this is found in the attitude of the Hebrew prophets to the gods of the nations, whose power they recognize without admitting their claim to reverence and sacrifice. The same tendency is seen in many early missionary works and is far from being without influence even at the present day. In the folklore of European countries goblindom is peopled by gods and nature-spirits of an earlier heathendom. We may also compare the Persian devs with the Indian devas.

Expulsion of Demons.—In connexion with demonology mention must be made of the custom of expelling ghosts, spirits or evils generally. Primitive peoples from the Australians upwards celebrate, usually at fixed intervals, a driving out of hurtful influences. Sometimes, as among the Australians, it is merely the ghosts of those who have died in the year which are thus driven out; from this custom must be distinguished another, which consists in dismissing the souls of the dead at the close of the year and sending them on their journey to the other world; this latter custom seems to have an entirely different origin and to be due to love and not fear of the dead. In other cases it is believed that evil spirits generally or even non-personal evils such as sins are believed to be expelled. In these customs originated perhaps the scapegoat, some forms of [sacrifice] (q.v.) and other cathartic ceremonies.

Bibliography.—Tylor, Primitive Culture; Frazer, Golden Bough; Skeat, Malay Magic; Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte; Callaway, Religion of the Amazulu; Hild, Étude sur les démons; Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, i. 731; Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. xxvi. 79; Calmet, Dissertation sur les esprits; Maury, La Magie; L. W. King, Babylonian Magic; Lenormant, La Magie chez les Chaldéens; R. C. Thompson, Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie; Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels; Sibly, Illustration of the Occult Sciences; Scott, Demonology; Pitcairn, Scottish Criminal Trials; Jewish Quarterly Rev. viii. 576, &c.; Horst, Zauberbibliothek; Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Demonology.” See also bibliography to [Possession], [Animism] and other articles.

(N. W. T.)

DE MORGAN, AUGUSTUS (1806-1871), English mathematician and logician, was born in June 1806, at Madura, in the Madras presidency. His father, Colonel John De Morgan, was employed in the East India Company’s service, and his grandfather and great-grandfather had served under Warren Hastings. On the mother’s side he was descended from James Dodson, F.R.S., author of the Anti-logarithmic Canon and other mathematical works of merit, and a friend of Abraham Demoivre. Seven months after the birth of Augustus, Colonel De Morgan brought his wife, daughter and infant son to England, where he left them during a subsequent period of service in India, dying in 1816 on his way home.

Augustus De Morgan received his early education in several private schools, and before the age of fourteen years had learned Latin, Greek and some Hebrew, in addition to acquiring much general knowledge. At the age of sixteen years and a half he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied mathematics, partly under the tuition of Sir G. B. Airy. In 1825 he gained a Trinity scholarship. De Morgan’s love of wide reading somewhat interfered with his success in the mathematical tripos, in which he took the fourth place in 1827. He was prevented from taking his M.A. degree, or from obtaining a fellowship, by his conscientious objection to signing the theological tests then required from masters of arts and fellows at Cambridge.

A career in his own university being closed against him, he entered Lincoln’s Inn; but had hardly done so when the establishment, in 1828, of the university of London, in Gower Street, afterwards known as University College, gave him an opportunity of continuing his mathematical pursuits. At the early age of twenty-two he gave his first lecture as professor of mathematics in the college which he served with the utmost zeal and success for a third of a century. His connexion with the college, indeed, was interrupted in 1831, when a disagreement with the governing body caused De Morgan and some other professors to resign their chairs simultaneously. When, in 1836, his successor was accidentally drowned, De Morgan was requested to resume the professorship.

In 1837 he married Sophia Elizabeth, daughter of William Frend, a Unitarian in faith, a mathematician and actuary in occupation, a notice of whose life, written by his son-in-law, will be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (vol. v.). They settled in Chelsea (30 Cheyne Row), where in later years Mrs De Morgan had a large circle of intellectual and artistic friends.

As a teacher of mathematics De Morgan was unrivalled. He gave instruction in the form of continuous lectures delivered extempore from brief notes. The most prolonged mathematical reasoning, and the most intricate formulae, were given with almost infallible accuracy from the resources of his extraordinary memory. De Morgan’s writings, however excellent, give little idea of the perspicuity and elegance of his viva voce expositions, which never failed to fix the attention of all who were worthy of hearing him. Many of his pupils have distinguished themselves, and, through Isaac Todhunter and E. J. Routh, he had an important influence on the later Cambridge school. For thirty years he took an active part in the business of the Royal Astronomical Society, editing its publications, supplying obituary notices of members, and for eighteen years acting as one of the honorary secretaries. He was also frequently employed as consulting actuary, a business in which his mathematical powers, combined with sound judgment and business-like habits, fitted him to take the highest place.

De Morgan’s mathematical writings contributed powerfully towards the progress of the science. His memoirs on the “Foundation of Algebra,” in the 7th and 8th volumes of the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions, contain some of the most important contributions which have been made to the philosophy of mathematical method; and Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, in the preface to his Lectures on Quaternions, refers more than once to those papers as having led and encouraged him in the working out of the new system of quaternions. The work on Trigonometry and Double Algebra (1849) contains in the latter part a most luminous and philosophical view of existing and possible systems of symbolic calculus. But De Morgan’s influence on mathematical science in England can only be estimated by a review of his long series of publications, which commence, in 1828, with a translation of part of Bourdon’s Elements of Algebra, prepared for his students. In 1830 appeared the first edition of his well-known Elements of Arithmetic, which did much to raise the character of elementary training. It is distinguished by a simple yet thoroughly philosophical treatment of the ideas of number and magnitude, as well as by the introduction of new abbreviated processes of computation, to which De Morgan always attributed much practical importance. Second and third editions were called for in 1832 and 1835; a sixth edition was issued in 1876. De Morgan’s other principal mathematical works were The Elements of Algebra (1835), a valuable but somewhat dry elementary treatise; the Essay on Probabilities (1838), forming the 107th volume of Lardner’s Cyclopaedia, which forms a valuable introduction to the subject; and The Elements of Trigonometry and Trigonometrical Analysis, preliminary to the Differential Calculus (1837). Several of his mathematical works were published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which De Morgan was at one time an active member. Among these may be mentioned the Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus (1842); the Elementary Illustrations of the Differential and Integral Calculus, first published in 1832, but often bound up with the larger treatise; the essay, On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831); and a brief treatise on Spherical Trigonometry (1834). By some accident the work on probability in the same series, written by Sir J. W. Lubbock and J. Drinkwater-Bethune, was attributed to De Morgan, an error which seriously annoyed his nice sense of bibliographical accuracy. For fifteen years he did all in his power to correct the mistake, and finally wrote to The Times to disclaim the authorship. (See Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxvi. p. 118.) Two of his most elaborate treatises are to be found in the Encyclopaedia metropolitana, namely the articles on the Calculus of Functions, and the Theory of Probabilities. De Morgan’s minor mathematical writings were scattered over various periodicals. A list of these and other papers will be found in the Royal Society’s Catalogue, which contains forty-two entries under the name of De Morgan.

In spite, however, of the excellence and extent of his mathematical writings, it is probably as a logical reformer that De Morgan will be best remembered. In this respect he stands alongside of his great contemporaries Sir W. R. Hamilton and George Boole, as one of several independent discoverers of the all-important principle of the quantification of the predicate. Unlike most mathematicians, De Morgan always laid much stress upon the importance of logical training. In his admirable papers upon the modes of teaching arithmetic and geometry, originally published in the Quarterly Journal of Education (reprinted in The Schoolmaster, vol ii.), he remonstrated against the neglect of logical doctrine. In 1839 he produced a small work called First Notions of Logic, giving what he had found by experience to be much wanted by students commencing with Euclid. In October 1846 he completed the first of his investigations, in the form of a paper printed in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (vol. viii. No. 29). In this paper the principle of the quantified predicate was referred to, and there immediately ensued a memorable controversy with Sir W. R. Hamilton regarding the independence of De Morgan’s discovery, some communications having passed between them in the autumn of 1846. The details of this dispute will be found in the original pamphlets, in the Athenaeum and in the appendix to De Morgan’s Formal Logic. Suffice it to say that the independence of De Morgan’s discovery was subsequently recognized by Hamilton. The eight forms of proposition adopted by De Morgan as the basis of his system partially differ from those which Hamilton derived from the quantified predicate. The general character of De Morgan’s development of logical forms was wholly peculiar and original on his part.

Late in 1847 De Morgan published his principal logical treatise, called Formal Logic, or the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable. This contains a reprint of the First Notions, an elaborate development of his doctrine of the syllogism, and of the numerical definite syllogism, together with chapters of great interest on probability, induction, old logical terms and fallacies. The severity of the treatise is relieved by characteristic touches of humour, and by quaint anecdotes and allusions furnished from his wide reading and perfect memory. There followed at intervals, in the years 1850, 1858, 1860 and 1863, a series of four elaborate memoirs on the “Syllogism,” printed in volumes ix. and x. of the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions. These papers taken together constitute a great treatise on logic, in which he substituted improved systems of notation, and developed a new logic of relations, and a new onymatic system of logical expression. In 1860 De Morgan endeavoured to render their contents better known by publishing a Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic, from which may be obtained a good idea of his symbolic system, but the more readable and interesting discussions contained in the memoirs are of necessity omitted. The article “Logic” in the English Cyclopaedia (1860) completes the list of his logical publications.

Throughout his logical writings De Morgan was led by the idea that the followers of the two great branches of exact science, logic and mathematics, had made blunders,—the logicians in neglecting mathematics, and the mathematicians in neglecting logic. He endeavoured to reconcile them, and in the attempt showed how many errors an acute mathematician could detect in logical writings, and how large a field there was for discovery. But it may be doubted whether De Morgan’s own system, “horrent with mysterious spiculae,” as Hamilton aptly described it, is fitted to exhibit the real analogy between quantitative and qualitative reasoning, which is rather to be sought in the logical works of Boole.

Perhaps the largest part, in volume, of De Morgan’s writings remains still to be briefly mentioned; it consists of detached articles contributed to various periodical or composite works. During the years 1833-1843 he contributed very largely to the first edition of the Penny Cyclopaedia, writing chiefly on mathematics, astronomy, physics and biography. His articles of various length cannot be less in number than 850, and they have been estimated to constitute a sixth part of the whole Cyclopaedia, of which they formed perhaps the most valuable portion. He also wrote biographies of Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley for Knight’s British Worthies, various notices of scientific men for the Gallery of Portraits, and for the uncompleted Biographical Dictionary of the Useful Knowledge Society, and at least seven articles in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography. Some of De Morgan’s most interesting and useful minor writings are to be found in the Companions to the British Almanack, to which he contributed without fail one article each year from 1831 up to 1857 inclusive. In these carefully written papers he treats a great variety of topics relating to astronomy, chronology, decimal coinage, life assurance, bibliography and the history of science. Most of them are as valuable now as when written.

Among De Morgan’s miscellaneous writings may be mentioned his Explanation of the Gnomonic Projection of the Sphere, 1836, including a description of the maps of the stars, published by the Useful Knowledge Society; his Treatise on the Globes, Celestial and Terrestrial, 1845, and his remarkable Book of Almanacks (2nd edition, 1871), which contains a series of thirty-five almanacs, so arranged with indices of reference, that the almanac for any year, whether in old style or new, from any epoch, ancient or modern, up to A. D. 2000, may be found without difficulty, means being added for verifying the almanac and also for discovering the days of new and full moon from 2000 B. C. up to A. D. 2000. De Morgan expressly draws attention to the fact that the plan of this book was that of L. B. Francoeur and J. Ferguson, but the plan was developed by one who was an unrivalled master of all the intricacies of chronology. The two best tables of logarithms, the small five-figure tables of the Useful Knowledge Society (1839 and 1857), and Shroen’s Seven Figure-Table (5th ed., 1865), were printed under De Morgan’s superintendence. Several works edited by him will be found mentioned in the British Museum Catalogue. He made numerous anonymous contributions through a long series of years to the Athenaeum, and to Notes and Queries, and occasionally to The North British Review, Macmillan’s Magazine, &c.

Considerable labour was spent by De Morgan upon the subject of decimal coinage. He was a great advocate of the pound and mil scheme. His evidence on this subject was sought by the Royal Commission, and, besides constantly supporting the Decimal Association in periodical publications, he published several separate pamphlets on the subject.

One marked characteristic of De Morgan was his intense and yet reasonable love of books. He was a true bibliophile and loved to surround himself, as far as his means allowed, with curious and rare books. He revelled in all the mysteries of watermarks, title-pages, colophons, catch-words and the like; yet he treated bibliography as an important science. As he himself wrote, “the most worthless book of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation; like a telescopic star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes; but it serves, in hands which know how to use it, to determine the places of more important bodies.” His evidence before the Royal Commission on the British Museum in 1850 (Questions 5704*-5815,* 6481-6513, and 8966-8967), should be studied by all who would comprehend the principles of bibliography or the art of constructing a catalogue, his views on the latter subject corresponding with those carried out by Panizzi in the British Museum Catalogue. A sample of De Morgan’s bibliographical learning is to be found in his account of Arithmetical Books, from the Invention of Printing (1847), and finally in his Budget of Paradoxes. This latter work consists of articles most of which were originally published in the Athenaeum, describing the various attempts which have been made to invent a perpetual motion, to square the circle, or to trisect the angle; but De Morgan took the opportunity to include many curious bits gathered from his extensive reading, so that the Budget, as reprinted by his widow (1872), with much additional matter prepared by himself, forms a remarkable collection of scientific ana. De Morgan’s correspondence with contemporary scientific men was very extensive and full of interest. It remains unpublished, as does also a large mass of mathematical tracts which he prepared for the use of his students, treating all parts of mathematical science, and embodying some of the matter of his lectures. De Morgan’s library was purchased by Lord Overstone, and presented to the university of London.

In 1866 his life became clouded by the circumstances which led him to abandon the institution so long the scene of his labours. The refusal of the council to accept the recommendation of the senate, that they should appoint an eminent Unitarian minister to the professorship of logic and mental philosophy, revived all De Morgan’s sensitiveness on the subject of sectarian freedom; and, though his feelings were doubtless excessive, there is no doubt that gloom was thrown over his life, intensified in 1867 by the loss of his son George Campbell De Morgan, a young man of the highest scientific promise, whose name, as De Morgan expressly wished, will long be connected with the London Mathematical Society, of which he was one of the founders. From this time De Morgan rapidly fell into ill-health, previously almost unknown to him, dying on the 18th of March 1871. An interesting and truthful sketch of his life will be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for the 9th of February 1872, vol. xxii. p. 112, written by A. C. Ranyard, who says, “He was the kindliest, as well as the most learned of men—benignant to every one who approached him, never forgetting the claims which weakness has on strength.”

De Morgan left no published indications of his opinions on religious questions, in regard to which he was extremely reticent. He seldom or never entered a place of worship, and declared that he could not listen to a sermon, a circumstance perhaps due to the extremely strict religious discipline under which he was brought up. Nevertheless there is reason to believe that he was of a deeply religious disposition. Like M. Faraday and Sir I. Newton he entertained a confident belief in Providence, founded not on any tenuous inference, but on personal feeling. His hope of a future life also was vivid to the last.

It is impossible to omit a reference to his witty sayings, some specimens of which are preserved in Dr Sadler’s most interesting Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson (1869), which also contains a humorous account of H. C. R. by De Morgan. It may be added that De Morgan was a great reader and admirer of Dickens; he was also fond of music, and a fair performer on the flute.

(W. S. J.)

His son, William Frend De Morgan (b. 1839), first became known in artistic circles as a potter, the “De Morgan” tiles being remarkable for his rediscovery of the secret of some beautiful colours and glazes. But later in life he became even better known to the literary world by his novels, Joseph Vance (1906), Alice for Short (1907), Somehow Good (1908) and It Never Can Happen Again (1909), in which the influence of Dickens and of his own earlier family life were conspicuous.

DEMOSTHENES, the great Attic orator and statesman, was born in 384 (or 383) B.C. His father, who bore the same name, was an Athenian citizen belonging to the deme of Paeania. His mother, Cleobule, was the daughter of Gylon, a citizen who had been active in procuring the protection of the kings of Bosporus for the Athenian colony of Nymphaeon in the Crimea, and whose wife was a native of that region. On these grounds the adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him with a traitorous or barbarian ancestry. The boy had a bitter foretaste of life. He was seven years old when his father died, leaving property (in a manufactory of swords, and another of upholstery) worth about £3500, which, invested as it seems to have been (20% was not thought exorbitant), would have yielded rather more than £600 a year, £300 a year was a very comfortable income at Athens, and it was possible to live decently on a tenth of it. Nicias, a very rich man, had property equivalent, probably, to not more than £4000 a year. Demosthenes was born then, to a handsome, though not a great fortune. But his guardians—two nephews of his father, Aphobus and Demophon, and one Therippides—abused their trust, and handed over to Demosthenes, when he came of age, rather less than one-seventh of his patrimony, perhaps between £50 and £60 a year. Demosthenes, after studying with [Isaeus] (q.v.)—then the great master of forensic eloquence and of Attic law, especially in will cases[1]—brought an action against Aphobus, and gained a verdict for about £2400. But it does not appear that he got the money; and, after some more fruitless proceedings against Onetor, the brother-in-law of Aphobus, the matter was dropped,—not, however, before his relatives had managed to throw a public burden (the equipment of a ship of war) on their late ward, whereby his resources were yet further straitened. He now became a professional writer of speeches or pleas (λογογράφος) for the law courts, sometimes speaking himself. Biographers have delighted to relate how painfully Demosthenes made himself a tolerable speaker,—how, with pebbles in his mouth, he tried his lungs against the waves, how he declaimed as he ran up hill, how he shut himself up in a cell, having first guarded himself against a longing for the haunts of men by shaving one side of his head, how he wrote out Thucydides eight times, how he was derided by the Assembly and encouraged by a judicious actor who met him moping about the Peiraeus. He certainly seems to have been the reverse of athletic (the stalwart Aeschines upbraids him with never having been a sportsman), and he probably had some sort of defect or impediment in his speech as a boy. Perhaps the most interesting fact about his work for the law courts is that he seems to have continued it, in some measure, through the most exciting parts of his great political career. The speech for Phormio belongs to the same year as the plea for Megalopolis. The speech against Boeotus “Concerning the Name” comes between the First Philippic and the First Olynthiac. The speech against Pantaenetus comes between the speech “On the Peace” and the Second Philippic.

The political career of Demosthenes, from his first direct contact with public affairs in 355 B.C. to his death in 322, has an essential unity. It is the assertion, in successive Political career and creed. forms adapted to successive moments, of unchanging principles. Externally, it is divided into the chapter which precedes and the chapter which follows Chaeronea. But its inner meaning, the secret of its indomitable vigour, the law which harmonizes its apparent contrasts, cannot be understood unless it is regarded as a whole. Still less can it be appreciated in all its large wisdom and sustained self-mastery if it is viewed merely as a duel between the ablest champion and the craftiest enemy of Greek freedom. The time indeed came when Demosthenes and Philip stood face to face as representative antagonists in a mortal conflict. But, for Demosthenes, the special peril represented by Philip, the peril of subjugation to Macedon, was merely a disastrous accident. Philip happened to become the most prominent and most formidable type of a danger which was already threatening Greece before his baleful star arose. As Demosthenes said to the Athenians, if the Macedonian had not existed, they would have made another Philip for themselves. Until Athens recovered something of its old spirit, there must ever be a great standing danger, not for Athens only, but for Greece,—the danger that sooner or later, in some shape, from some quarter—no man could foretell the hour, the manner or the source—barbarian violence would break up the gracious and undefiled tradition of separate Hellenic life.

What was the true relation of Athens to Greece? The answer which he gave to this question is the key to the life of Demosthenes. Athens, so Demosthenes held, was the natural head of Greece. Not, however, as an empress holding subject or subordinate cities in a dependence more or less compulsory. Rather as that city which most nobly expressed the noblest attributes of Greek political existence, and which, by her preeminent gifts both of intellect and of moral insight, was primarily responsible, everywhere and always, for the maintenance of those attributes in their integrity. Wherever the cry of the oppressed goes up from Greek against Greek, it was the voice of Athens which should first remind the oppressor that Hellene differed from barbarian in postponing the use of force to the persuasions of equal law. Wherever a barbarian hand offered wrong to any city of the Hellenic sisterhood, it was the arm of Athens which should first be stretched forth in the holy strength of Apollo the Averter. Wherever among her own children the ancient loyalty was yielding to love of pleasure or of base gain, there, above all, it was the duty of Athens to see that the central hearth of Hellas was kept pure. Athens must never again seek “empire” in the sense which became odious under the influence of Cleon and Hyperbolus,—when, to use the image of Aristophanes, the allies were as Babylonian slaves grinding in the Athenian mill. Athens must never permit, if she could help it, the re-establishment of such a domination as Sparta exercised in Greece from the battle of Aegospotami to the battle of Leuctra. Athens must aim at leading a free confederacy, of which the members should be bound to her by their own truest interests. Athens must seek to deserve the confidence of all Greeks alike.

Such, in the belief of Demosthenes, was the part which Athens must perform if Greece was to be safe. But reforms must be effected before Athens could be capable of such a part. The evils to be cured were different phases of one malady. Athens had long been suffering from the profound decay of public spirit. Since the early years of the Peloponnesian War, the separation of Athenian society from the state had been growing more and more marked. The old type of the eminent citizen, who was at once statesman and general, had become almost extinct. Politics were now managed by a small circle of politicians. Wars were conducted by professional soldiers whose troops were chiefly mercenaries, and who were usually regarded by the politicians Theoric fund. either as instruments or as enemies. The mass of the citizens took no active interest in public affairs. But, though indifferent to principles, they had quickly sensitive partialities for men, and it was necessary to keep them in good humour. Pericles had introduced the practice of giving a small bounty from the treasury to the poorer citizens, for the purpose of enabling them to attend the theatre at the great festivals,—in other words, for the purpose of bringing them under the concentrated influence of the best Attic culture. A provision eminently wise for the age of Pericles easily became a mischief when the once honourable name of “demagogue” began to mean a flatterer of the mob. Before the end of the Peloponnesian War the festival-money (theoricon) was abolished. A few years after the restoration of the democracy it was again introduced. But until 354 B.C. it had never been more than a gratuity, of which the payment depended on the treasury having a surplus. In 354 B.C. Eubulus became steward of the treasury. He was an able man, with a special talent for finance, free from all taint of personal corruption, and sincerely solicitous for the honour of Athens, but enslaved to popularity, and without principles of policy. His first measure was to make the festival-money a permanent item in the budget. Thenceforth this bounty was in reality very much what Demades afterwards called it,—the cement (κόλλα) of the democracy.

Years before the danger from Macedon was urgent, Demosthenes had begun the work of his life,—the effort to lift the spirit of Athens, to revive the old civic loyalty, to rouse the Forensic speeches in Public causes. city into taking that place and performing that part which her own welfare as well as the safety of Greece prescribed. His formally political speeches must never be considered apart from his forensic speeches in public causes. The Athenian procedure against the proposer of an unconstitutional law—i.e. of a law incompatible with existing laws—had a direct tendency to make the law court, in such cases, a political arena. The same tendency was indirectly exerted by the tolerance of Athenian juries (in the absence of a presiding expert like a judge) for irrelevant matter, since it was usually easy for a speaker to make capital out of the adversary’s political antecedents. But the forensic speeches of Demosthenes for public causes are not only political in this general sense. They are documents, as indispensable as the Olynthiacs or Philippics, for his own political career. Only by taking them along with the formally political speeches, and regarding the whole as one unbroken series, can we see clearly the full scope of the task which he set before him,—a task in which his long resistance to Philip was only the most dramatic incident, and in which his real achievement is not to be measured by the event of Chaeronea.

A forensic speech, composed for a public cause, opens the political career of Demosthenes with a protest against a signal abuse. In 355 B.C., at the age of twenty-nine, he wrote the speech “Against Androtion.” This combats on legal grounds a proposal that the out-going senate should receive the honour of a golden crown. In its larger aspect, it is a denunciation of the corrupt system which that senate represented, and especially of the manner in which the treasury had been administered by Aristophon. In 354 B.C. Demosthenes composed and spoke the oration “Against Leptines,” who had effected a slender saving for the state by the expedient of revoking those hereditary exemptions from taxation which had at various times been conferred in recognition of distinguished merit. The descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton alone had been excepted from the operation of the law. This was the first time that the voice of Demosthenes himself had been heard on the public concerns of Athens, and the utterance was a worthy prelude to the career of a statesman. He answers the advocates of the retrenchment by pointing out that the public interest will not ultimately be served by a wholesale violation of the public faith. In the same year he delivered his first strictly political speech, “On the Navy Boards” (Symmories). The Athenians, irritated by the support which Artaxerxes had lately given to the revolt of their allies, and excited by rumours of his hostile preparations, were feverishly eager for a war with Persia. Demosthenes urges that such an enterprise would at present be useless; that it would fail to unite Greece; that the energies of the city should be reserved for a real emergency; but that, before the city can successfully cope with any war, there must be a better organization of resources, and, first of all, a reform of the navy, which he outlines with characteristic lucidity and precision.

Two years later (352 B.C.) he is found dealing with a more definite question of foreign policy. Sparta, favoured by the depression of Thebes in the Phocian War, was threatening Megalopolis. Both Sparta and Megalopolis sent embassies to Athens. Demosthenes supported Megalopolis. The ruin of Megalopolis would mean, he argued, the return of Spartan domination in the Peloponnesus. Athenians must not favour the tyranny of any one city. They must respect the rights of all the cities, and thus promote unity based on mutual confidence. In the same year Demosthenes wrote the speech “Against Timocrates,” to be spoken by the same Diodorus who had before prosecuted Androtion, and who now combated an attempt to screen Androtion and others from the penalties of embezzlement. The speech “Against Aristocrates,” also of 352 B.C., reproves that foreign policy of feeble makeshifts which was now popular at Athens. The Athenian tenure of the Thracian Chersonese partly depended for its security on the good-will of the Thracian prince Cersobleptes. Charidemus, a soldier of fortune who had already played Athens false, was now the brother-in-law and the favourite of Cersobleptes. Aristocrates proposed that the person of Charidemus should be invested with a special sanctity, by the enactment that whoever attempted his life should be an outlaw from all dominions of Athens. Demosthenes points out that such adulation is as futile as it is fulsome. Athens can secure the permanence of her foreign possessions only in one way—by being strong enough to hold them.

Thus, between 355 and 352, Demosthenes had laid down the main lines of his policy. Domestic administration must be purified. Statesmen must be made to feel that they Principles of policy. are responsible to the state. They must not be allowed to anticipate judgment on their deserts by voting each other golden crowns. They must not think to screen misappropriation of public money by getting partisans to pass new laws about state-debtors. Foreign policy must be guided by a larger and more provident conception of Athenian interests. When public excitement demands a foreign war, Athens must not rush into it without asking whether it is necessary, whether it will have Greek support, and whether she herself is ready for it. When a strong Greek city threatens a weak one, and seeks to purchase Athenian connivance with the bribe of a border-town, Athens must remember that duty and prudence alike command her to respect the independence of all Greeks. When it is proposed, by way of insurance on Athenian possessions abroad, to flatter the favourite of a doubtful ally, Athens must remember that such devices will not avail a power which has no army except on paper, and no ships fit to leave their moorings.

But the time had gone by when Athenians could have tranquil leisure for domestic reform. A danger, calling for prompt action, had at last come very near. For six years Athens had Athens and Philip. been at war with Philip on account of his seizure of Amphipolis. Meanwhile he had destroyed Potidaea and founded Philippi. On the Thracian coasts he had become master of Abdera and Maronea. On the Thessalian coast he had acquired Methone. In a second invasion of Thessaly, he had overthrown the Phocians under Onomarchus, and had advanced to Thermopylae, to find the gates of Greece closed against him by an Athenian force. He had then marched to Heraeon on the Propontis, and had dictated a peace to Cersobleptes. He had formed an alliance with Cardia, Perinthus and Byzantium. Lastly, he had begun to show designs on the great Confederacy of Olynthus, the more warlike Miletus of the North. The First Philippic of Demosthenes was spoken in 351 B.C. The Third Philippic—the latest of the extant political speeches—was spoken in 341 B.C. Between these he delivered eight political orations, of which seven are directly concerned with Philip. The whole series falls into two great divisions. The first division comprises those speeches which were spoken against Philip while he was still a foreign power threatening Greece from without. Such are the First Philippic and the three orations for Olynthus. The second division comprises the speeches spoken against Philip when, by admission to the Amphictyonic Council, he had now won his way within the circle of the Greek states, and when the issue was no longer between Greece and Macedonia, but between the Greek and Macedonian parties in Greece. Such are the speech “On the Peace,” the speech “On the Embassy,” the speech “On the Chersonese,” the Second and Third Philippics.

The First Philippic, spoken early in 351 B.C., was no sudden note of alarm drawing attention to an unnoticed peril. On the contrary, the Assembly was weary of the subject. For First Philippic. six years the war with Philip had been a theme of barren talk. Demosthenes urges that it is time to do something, and to do it with a plan. Athens fighting Philip has fared, he says, like an amateur boxer opposed to a skilled pugilist. The helpless hands have only followed blows which a trained eye should have taught them to parry. An Athenian force must be stationed in the north, at Lemnos or Thasos. Of 2000 infantry and 200 cavalry at least one quarter must be Athenian citizens capable of directing the mercenaries.

Later in the same year Demosthenes did another service to the cause of national freedom. Rhodes, severed by its own act from the Athenian Confederacy, had since 355 been virtually subject to Mausolus, prince (δυνάστης) of Caria, himself a tributary of Persia. Mausolus died in 351, and was succeeded by his widow Artemisia. The democratic party in Rhodes now appealed to Athens for help in throwing off the Carian yoke. Demosthenes supported their application in his speech “For the Rhodians.” No act of his life was a truer proof of statesmanship. He failed. But at least he had once more warned Athens that the cause of political freedom was everywhere her own, and that, wherever that cause was forsaken, there a new danger was created both for Athens and for Greece.

Next year (350) an Athenian force under Phocion was sent to Euboea, in support of Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria, against the faction of Cleitarchus. Demosthenes protested against Euboean War. spending strength, needed for greater objects, on the local quarrels of a despot. Phocion won a victory at Tamynae. But the “inglorious and costly war” entailed an outlay of more than £12,000 on the ransom of captives alone, and ended in the total destruction of Athenian influence throughout Euboea. That island was now left an open field for the intrigues of Philip. Worst of all, the party of Eubulus not only defeated a proposal, arising from this campaign, for applying the festival-money to the war-fund, but actually carried a law making it high treason to renew the proposal. The degree to which political enmity was exasperated by the Euboean War may be judged from the incident of Midias, an adherent of Eubulus, and a type of opulent rowdyism. Demosthenes was choragus of his tribe, and was wearing the robe of that sacred office at the great festival in the theatre of Dionysus, when Midias struck him on the face. The affair was eventually compromised. The speech “Against Midias” written by Demosthenes for the trial (in 349) was neither spoken nor completed, and remains, as few will regret, a sketch.

It was now three years since, in 352, the Olynthians had sent an embassy to Athens, and had made peace with their only sure ally. In 350 a second Olynthian embassy had sought Olynthiacs. and obtained Athenian help. The hour of Olynthus had indeed come. In 349 Philip opened war against the Chalcidic towns of the Olynthian League. The First and Second Olynthiacs of Demosthenes were spoken in that year in support of sending one force to defend Olynthus and another to attack Philip. “Better now than later,” is the thought of the First Olynthiac. The Second argues that Philip’s strength is overrated. The Third—spoken in 348—carries us into the midst of action.[2] It deals with practical details. The festival-fund must be used for the war. The citizens must serve in person. A few months later, Olynthus and the thirty-two towns of the confederacy were swept from the earth. Men could walk over their sites, Demosthenes said seven years afterwards, without knowing that such cities had existed. It was now certain that Philip could not be stopped outside of Greece. The question was, What point within Greece shall he be allowed to reach?

Eubulus and his party, with that versatility which is the privilege of political vagueness, now began to call for a congress of the allies to consider the common danger. They found a brilliant interpreter in Aeschines, who, after having been a tragic actor and a clerk to the assembly, had entered political life with the advantages of a splendid gift for eloquence, a fine presence, a happy address, a ready wit and a facile conscience. While his opponents had thus suddenly become warlike, Demosthenes had become pacific. He saw that Athens must have time to collect strength. Nothing could be gained, meanwhile, by going on with the war. Macedonian sympathizers at Athens, of whom Philocrates was the chief, also favoured peace. Eleven envoys, including Philocrates, Aeschines, and Demosthenes, were sent to Philip in February 346 B.C. After a debate at Athens, peace Peace between Philip and Athens. was concluded with Philip in April. Philip on the one hand, Athens and her allies on the other, were to keep what they respectively held at the time when the peace was ratified. But here the Athenians made a fatal error. Philip was bent on keeping the door of Greece open. Demosthenes was bent on shutting it against him. Philip was now at war with the people of Halus in Thessaly. Thebes had for ten years been at war with Phocis. Here were two distinct chances for Philip’s armed intervention in Greece. But if the Halians and the Phocians were included in the peace, Philip could not bear arms against them without violating the peace. Accordingly Philip insisted that they should not be included. Demosthenes insisted they should be included. They were not included. The result followed speedily. The same envoys were sent a second time to Philip at the end of April 346 for the purpose of receiving his oaths in ratification of the peace. It was late in June before he returned from Thrace to Pella—thus gaining, under the terms, all the towns that he had taken meanwhile. He next took the envoys with him through Thessaly to Thermopylae. There—at the invitation of Thessalians and Thebans—he intervened in the Phocian War. Phalaecus End of Phocian War. surrendered. Phocis was crushed. Philip took its place in the Amphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece. The right of precedence in consultation of the oracle (προμαντεία) was transferred from Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech “On the Peace” in September. It ought never to have been made on such terms, he said. But, having been made, it had better be kept. “If we went to war now, where should we find allies? And after losing Oropus, Amphipolis, Cardia, Chios, Cos, Rhodes, Byzantium, shall we fight about the shadow of Delphi?”

During the eight years between the peace of Philocrates and the battle of Chaeronea, the authority of Demosthenes steadily grew, until it became first predominant and then paramount. He had, indeed, a melancholy advantage. Each year his argument was more and more cogently enforced by the logic of facts. In 344 he visited the Peloponnesus for the purpose of counteracting Macedonian intrigue. Mistrust, he told the Peloponnesian cities, is the safeguard of free communities against tyrants. Philip lodged a formal complaint at Athens. Here, as elsewhere, the future master of Greece reminds us of Napoleon on the eve of the first empire. He has the same imperturbable and persuasive effrontery in protesting that he is doing one thing at the moment when his energies are concentrated on doing the opposite. Demosthenes replied in the Second Philippic. “If,” he Second Philippic. said, “Philip is the friend of Greece, we are doing wrong. If he is the enemy of Greece, we are doing right. Which is he? I hold him to be our enemy, because everything that he has hitherto done has benefited himself and hurt us.” The prosecution of Aeschines for malversation on the embassy (commonly known as De falsa legatione), which was brought to an issue in the following year, marks the moral strength of the position now held by Demosthenes. When the gravity of the charge and the complexity of the evidence are considered, the acquittal of Aeschines by a narrow majority must be deemed his condemnation. The speech “On the Affairs of the Chersonese” and the Third Philippic were the crowning efforts of Demosthenes. Spoken in the same year, 341 B.C., and within a short space of each other, they must be taken together. The speech “On the Affairs of the Chersonese” regards the situation chiefly from an Athenian point of view. “If the peace means,” argues Demosthenes, “that Philip can seize with impunity one Athenian possession after another, but that Athenians shall not on their peril touch aught that belongs to Philip, where is the line to be drawn? We shall go to war, I am told, when it is necessary. If the necessity has not come Third Philippic. yet, when will it come?” The Third Philippic surveys a wider horizon. It ascends from the Athenian to the Hellenic view. Philip has annihilated Olynthus and the Chalcidic towns. He has ruined Phocis. He has frightened Thebes. He has divided Thessaly. Euboea and the Peloponnesus are his. His power stretches from the Adriatic to the Hellespont. Where shall be the end? Athens is the last hope of Greece. And, in this final crisis, Demosthenes was the embodied energy of Athens. It was Demosthenes who went to Byzantium, brought the estranged city back to the Athenian alliance, and snatched it from the hands of Philip. It was Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea, hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate appeal gained one last chance, the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who broke down the barrier of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the unspeakable calamity of Chaeronea.

But the work of Demosthenes was not closed by the ruin of his cause. During the last sixteen years of his life (338-322) he rendered services to Athens not less important, and Municipal activity. perhaps more difficult, than those which he had rendered before. He was now, as a matter of course, foremost in the public affairs of Athens. In January 337, at the annual winter Festival of the Dead in the Outer Ceramicus, he spoke the funeral oration over those who had fallen at Chaeronea. He was member of a commission for strengthening the fortifications of the city (τειχοποιός). He administered the festival-fund. During a dearth which visited Athens between 330 and 326 he was charged with the organization of public relief. In 324 he was chief (ἀρχιθέωρος) of the sacred embassy to Olympia. Already, in 336, Ctesiphon had proposed that Demosthenes should receive a golden crown from the state, and that his extraordinary merits should be proclaimed in the theatre at the Great Dionysia. The proposal was adopted by the senate as a bill (προβοούλευμα); but it must be passed by the Assembly before it could become an act (ψήφισμα). To prevent this, Aeschines gave notice, in 336, that he intended to proceed against Ctesiphon for having proposed an unconstitutional measure. For six years Aeschines avoided action on this notice. At last, in 330, the patriotic party felt strong enough to force him to an issue. Aeschines spoke the speech “Against Ctesiphon,” an attack on the whole public life of Demosthenes. Demosthenes gained an overwhelming victory for himself and for the honour of Athens in the most finished, the most splendid and the most pathetic work of ancient eloquence—the immortal oration “On the Crown.”

In the winter of 325-324 Harpalus, the receiver-general of Alexander in Asia, fled to Greece, taking with him 8000 mercenaries, and treasure equivalent to about a million and Affair of Harpalus. a quarter sterling. On the motion of Demosthenes he was warned from the harbours of Attica. Having left his troops and part of his treasure at Taenarum, he again presented himself at the Peiraeus, and was now admitted. He spoke fervently of the opportunity which offered itself to those who loved the freedom of Greece. All Asia would rise with Athens to throw off the hated yoke. Fiery patriots like Hypereides were in raptures. For zeal which could be bought Harpalus had other persuasions. But Demosthenes stood firm. War with Alexander would, he saw, be madness. It could have but one result,—some indefinitely worse doom for Athens. Antipater and Olympias presently demanded the surrender of Harpalus. Demosthenes opposed this. But he reconciled the dignity with the loyalty of Athens by carrying a decree that Harpalus should be arrested, and that his treasure should be deposited in the Parthenon, to be held in trust for Alexander. Harpalus escaped from prison. The amount of the treasure, which Harpalus had stated as 700 talents, proved to be no more than 350. Demosthenes proposed that the Areopagus should inquire what had become of the other 350. Six months, spent in party intrigues, passed before the Areopagus gave in their report (ἀπόφασις). The report inculpated nine persons. Demosthenes headed the list of the accused. Hypereides was among the ten public prosecutors. Demosthenes was condemned, fined fifty talents, and, in default of payment, imprisoned. After a few days he escaped from prison to Aegina, and thence to Troezen. Two things in this obscure affair are beyond reasonable doubt. First, that Demosthenes was not bribed by Harpalus. The hatred of the Macedonian party towards Demosthenes, and the fury of those vehement patriots who cried out that he had betrayed their best opportunity, combined to procure his condemnation, with the help, probably, of some appearances which were against him. Secondly, it can hardly be questioned that, by withstanding the hot-headed patriots at this juncture, Demosthenes did heroic service to Athens.

Next year (323 B.C.) Alexander died. Then the voice of Demosthenes, calling Greece to arms, rang out like a trumpet. Early in August 322 the battle of Crannon decided the End of Lamian War. Lamian War against Greece. Antipater demanded, as the condition on which he would refrain from besieging Athens, the surrender of the leading patriots. Demades moved the decree of the Assembly by which Demosthenes, Hypereides, and some others were condemned to death as Demosthenes condemned. traitors. On the 20th of Boedromion (September 16) 322, a Macedonian garrison occupied Munychia. It was a day of solemn and happy memories, a day devoted, in the celebration of the Great Mysteries, to sacred joy,—the day on which the glad procession of the Initiated returned from Eleusis to Athens. It happened, however, to have another association, more significant than any ironical contrast for the present purpose of Antipater. It was the day on which, thirteen years before, Alexander had punished the rebellion of Thebes with annihilation.

The condemned men had fled to Aegina. Parting there from Hypereides and the rest, Demosthenes went on to Calauria, a small island off the coast of Argolis. In Calauria there Flight to Calauria. was an ancient temple of Poseidon, once a centre of Minyan and Ionian worship, and surrounded with a peculiar sanctity as having been, from time immemorial, an inviolable refuge for the pursued. Here Demosthenes sought asylum. Archias of Thurii, a man who, like Aeschines, had begun life as a tragic actor, and who was now in the pay of Antipater, soon traced the fugitive, landed in Calauria, and appeared before the temple of Poseidon with a body of Thracian spearmen. Plutarch’s picturesque narrative bears the marks of artistic elaboration. Demosthenes had dreamed the night before that he and Archias were competing for a prize as tragic actors; the house applauded Demosthenes; but his chorus was shabbily equipped, and Archias gained the prize. Archias was not the man to stick at sacrilege. In Aegina, Hypereides and the others had been taken from the shrine of Aeacus. But he hesitated to violate an asylum so peculiarly sacred as the Calaurian temple. Standing before its open door, with his Thracian soldiers around him, he endeavoured to prevail on Demosthenes to quit the holy precinct. Antipater would be certain to pardon him. Demosthenes sat silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. At last, as the emissary persisted in his bland persuasions, he looked up and said,—“Archias, you never moved me by your acting, and you will not move me now by your promises.” Archias lost his temper, and began to threaten. “Now,” rejoined Demosthenes, “you speak like a real Macedonian oracle; before you were acting. Wait a moment, then, till I write to my friends.” With these words, Demosthenes withdrew into the inner part of the temple,—still visible, however, from the entrance. He took out a roll of paper, as if he were going to write, put the pen to his mouth, and bit it, as was his habit in composing. Then he threw his head back, and drew his cloak over it. The Thracian spearmen, who were watching him from the door, began to gibe at his cowardice. Death. Archias went in to him, encouraged him to rise, repeated his old arguments, talked to him of reconciliation with Antipater. By this time Demosthenes felt that the poison which he had sucked from the pen was beginning to work. He drew the cloak from his face, and looked steadily at Archias. “Now you can play the part of Creon in the tragedy as soon as you like,” he said, “and cast forth my body unburied. But I, O gracious Poseidon, quit thy temple while I yet live; Antipater and his Macedonians have done what they could to pollute it.” He moved towards the door, calling to them to support his tottering steps. He had just passed the altar of the god, when he fell, and with a groan gave up the ghost (October 322 B.C.).

As a statesman, Demosthenes needs no epitaph but his own words in the speech “On the Crown,”—I say that, if the event had been manifest to the whole world beforehand, not even then Political character. ought Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had any regard for her glory, or for her past, or for the ages to come. The Persian soldier in Herodotus, following Xerxes to foreseen ruin, confides to his fellow-guest at the banquet that the bitterest pain which man can know is πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν,—complete, but helpless, prescience. In the grasp of a more inexorable necessity, the champion of Greek freedom was borne onward to a more tremendous catastrophe than that which strewed the waters of Salamis with Persian wrecks and the field of Plataea with Persian dead; but to him, at least, it was given to proclaim aloud the clear and sure foreboding that filled his soul, to do all that true heart and free hand could do for his cause, and, though not to save, yet to encourage, to console and to ennoble. As the inspiration of his life was larger and higher than the mere courage of resistance, so his merit must be regarded as standing altogether outside and above the struggle with Macedon. The great purpose which he set before him was to revive the public spirit, to restore the political vigour, and to re-establish the Panhellenic influence of Athens,—never for her own advantage merely, but always in the interest of Greece. His glory is, that while he lived he helped Athens to live a higher life. Wherever the noblest expressions of her mind are honoured, wherever the large conceptions of Pericles command the admiration of statesmen, wherever the architect and the sculptor love to dwell on the masterpieces of Ictinus and Pheidias, wherever the spell of ideal beauty or of lofty contemplation is exercised by the creations of Sophocles or of Plato, there it will be remembered that the spirit which wrought in all these would have passed sooner from among men, if it had not been recalled from a trance, which others were content to mistake for the last sleep, by the passionate breath of Demosthenes.

The orator in whom artistic genius was united, more perfectly than in any other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has held in the modern world the same Oratory. rank which was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay’s ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero? Yet the critic’s remark was not so pointless as Macaulay thought it. Sincerity and intensity are, indeed, to the modern reader, the most obvious characteristics of Demosthenes. His style is, on the whole, singularly free from what we are accustomed to regard as rhetorical embellishment. Where the modern orator would employ a wealth of imagery, or elaborate a picture in exquisite detail, Demosthenes is content with a phrase or a word. Burke uses, in reference to Hyder Ali, the same image which Demosthenes uses in reference to Philip. “Compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivity of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which darkened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic.” Demosthenes forbears to amplify. “The people gave their voice, and the danger which hung upon our borders went by like a cloud.” To our modern feeling, the eloquence of Demosthenes exhibits everywhere a general stamp of earnest and simple strength. But it is well to remember the charge made against the style of Demosthenes by a contemporary Greek orator, and the defence offered by the best Greek critic of oratory. Aeschines reproached the diction of Demosthenes with excess of elaboration and adornment (περιεργία). Dionysius, in reply, admits that Demosthenes does at times depart from simplicity,—that his style is sometimes elaborately ornate and remote from the ordinary usage. But, he adds, Demosthenes adopts this manner where it is justified by the elevation of his theme. The remark may serve to remind us of our modern disadvantage for a full appreciation of Demosthenes. The old world felt, as we do, his moral and mental greatness, his fire, his self-devotion, his insight. But it felt also, as we can never feel, the versatile perfection of his skill. This it was that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients. The ardent patriot, the far-seeing statesman, were united in his person with the consummate and unapproachable artist. Dionysius devoted two special treatises to Demosthenes,—one on his language and style (λεκτικὸς τόπος), the other on his treatment of subject-matter (πραγματικὸς τόπος). The latter is lost. The former is one of the best essays in literary criticism which antiquity has bequeathed to us. The idea which it works out is that Demosthenes has perfected Greek prose by fusing in a glorious harmony the elements which had hitherto belonged to separate types. The austere dignity of Antiphon, the plain elegance of Lysias, the smooth and balanced finish of that middle or normal character which is represented by Isocrates, have come together in Demosthenes. Nor is this all. In each species he excels the specialists. He surpasses the school of Antiphon in perspicuity, the school of Lysias in verve, the school of Isocrates in variety, in felicity, in symmetry, in pathos, in power. Demosthenes has at command all the discursive brilliancy which fascinates a festal audience. He has that power of concise and lucid narration, of terse reasoning, of persuasive appeal, which is required by the forensic speaker. His political eloquence can worthily image the majesty of the state, and enforce weighty counsels with lofty and impassioned fervour. A true artist, he grudged no labour which could make the least part of his work more perfect. Isocrates spent ten years on the Panegyricus. After Plato’s death, a manuscript was found among his papers with the first eight words of the Republic arranged in several different orders. What wonder, then, asks the Greek critic, if the diligence of Demosthenes was no less incessant and minute? “To me,” he says, “it seems far more natural that a man engaged in composing political discourses, imperishable memorials of his power, should neglect not even the smallest details, than that the veneration of painters and sculptors, who are darkly showing forth their manual tact and toil in a corruptible material, should exhaust the refinements of their art on the veins, on the feathers, on the down of the lip, and the like niceties.”

More than half of the sixty-one speeches extant under the name of Demosthenes are certainly or probably spurious. The results to which the preponderance of opinion leans are given Works. in the following table. Those marked a were already rejected or doubted in antiquity; those marked m, first in modern times:[3]

Or. 60 (ἐπιτάφιος) and Or. 61 (ἐρωτικός) are works of rhetoricians. The six epistles are also forgeries; they were used by the composer of the twelve epistles which bear the name of Aeschines. The 56 προοίμια, exordia or sketches for political speeches, are by various hands and of various dates.[5] They are valuable as being compiled from Demosthenes himself, or from other classical models.

The ancient fame of Demosthenes as an orator can be compared only with the fame of Homer as a poet. Cicero, with generous appreciation, recognizes Demosthenes as the standard of perfection. Dionysius, the closest and most penetrating of his ancient critics, exhausts the language of admiration in showing how Demosthenes united and elevated whatever had been best in earlier masters of the Greek idiom. Hermogenes, in his works Literary history of Demosthenes. on rhetoric, refers to Demosthenes as ὁ ῥήτωρ, the orator. The writer of the treatise On Sublimity knows no heights loftier than those to which Demosthenes has risen. From his own younger contemporaries, Aristotle and Theophrastus, who founded their theory of rhetoric in large part on his practice, down to the latest Byzantines, the consent of theorists, orators, antiquarians, anthologists, lexicographers, offered the same unvarying homage to Demosthenes. His work busied commentators such as Xenon, Minucian, Basilicus, Aelius, Theon, Zosimus of Gaza. Arguments to his speeches were drawn up by rhetoricians so distinguished as Numenius and Libanius. Accomplished men of letters, such as Julius Vestinus and Aelius Dionysius, selected from his writings choice passages for declamation or perusal, of which fragments are incorporated in the miscellany of Photius and the lexicons of Harpocration, Pollux and Suidas. It might have been anticipated that the purity of a text so widely read and so renowned would, from the earliest times, have been guarded with jealous care. The works of the three great dramatists had been thus protected, about 340 B.C., by a standard Attic recension. But no such good fortune befell the works of Demosthenes. Alexandrian criticism was chiefly occupied with poetry. The titular works of Demosthenes were, indeed, registered, with those of the other orators, in the catalogues (ῥητορικοὶ πίνακες) of Alexandria and Pergamum. But no thorough attempt was made to separate the authentic works from those spurious works which had even then become mingled with them. Philosophical schools which, like the Stoic, felt the ethical interest of Demosthenes, cared little for his language. The rhetoricians who imitated or analysed his style cared little for the criticism of his text. Their treatment of it had, indeed, a direct tendency to falsify it. It was customary to indicate by marks those passages which were especially useful for study or imitation. It then became a rhetorical exercise to recast, adapt or interweave such passages. Sopater, the commentator on Hermogenes, wrote on μεταβολαὶ καὶ μεταποιήσεις τῶν Δημοσθένους χωρίων, “adaptations or transcripts of passages in Demosthenes.” Such manipulation could not but lead to interpolations or confusions in the original text. Great, too, as was the attention bestowed on the thought, sentiment and style of Demosthenes, comparatively little care was bestowed on his subject-matter. He was studied more on the moral and the formal side than on the real side. An incorrect substitution of one name for another, a reading which gave an impossible date, insertions of spurious laws or decrees, were points which few readers would stop to notice. Hence it resulted that, while Plato, Thucydides and Demosthenes were the most universally popular of the classical prose-writers, the text of Demosthenes, the most widely used perhaps of all, was also the least pure. His more careful students at length made an effort to arrest the process of corruption. Editions of Demosthenes based on a critical recension, and called Ἀττικιανά (ἀντίγραφα), came to be distinguished from the vulgates, or δημώδεις ἐκδόσεις.

Among the extant manuscripts of Demosthenes—upwards of 170 in number—one is far superior, as a whole, to the rest. This is Parisinus Σ 2934, of the 10th century. A comparison Manuscripts. of this MS. with the extracts of Aelius, Aristeides and Harpocration from the Third Philippic favours the view that it is derived from an Ἀττικιανόν, whereas the δημώδεις ἐκδόσεις, used by Hermogenes and by the rhetoricians generally, have been the chief sources of our other manuscripts. The collation of this manuscript by Immanuel Bekker first placed the textual criticism of Demosthenes on a sound footing. Not only is this manuscript nearly free from interpolations, but it is the sole voucher for many excellent readings. Among the other MSS., some of the most important are—Marcianus 416 F, of the 10th (or 11th) century, the basis of the Aldine edition; Augustanus I. (N 85), derived from the last, and containing scholia to the speeches on the Crown and the Embassy, by Ulpian, with some by a younger writer, who was perhaps Moschopulus; Parisinus Υ; Antverpiensis Ω—the last two comparatively free from additions. The fullest authority on the MSS. is J. T. Vömel, Notitia codicum Demosth., and Prolegomena Critica to his edition published at Halle (1856-1857), pp. 175-178.[6]

The extant scholia on Demosthenes are for the most part poor. Their staple consists of Byzantine erudition; and their value depends chiefly on what they have preserved of older Scholia. criticism. They are better than usual for the Περὶ στεφάνου, Κατὰ Τιμοκράτους; best for the Περὶ παραπρεσβείας. The Greek commentaries ascribed to Ulpian are especially defective on the historical side, and give little essential aid. Editions:—C. W. Müller, in Orat. Att. ii. (1847-1858); Scholia Graeca in Demosth. ex cod. aucta et emendata (Oxon., 1851; in W. Dindorf’s ed.).

Bibliography.—Editio princeps (Aldus, Venice, 1504); J. J. Reiske (with notes of J. Wolf, J. Taylor, J. Markland, &c., 1770-1775); revised edition of Reiske by G. H. Schäfer (1823-1826); I. Bekker, in Oratores Attici (1823-1824), the first edition based on codex Σ (see above); W. S. Dobson (1828); J. G. Baiter and H. Sauppe (1850); W. Dindorf (in Teubner series, 1867, 4th ed. by F. Blass, 1885-1889); H. Omont, facsimile edition of codex Σ (1892-1893); S. H. Butcher in Oxford Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca (1903 foll.); W. Dindorf (9 vols., Oxford, 1846-1851), with notes of previous commentators and Greek scholia; R. Whiston (political speeches) with introductions and notes (1859-1868). For a select list of the numerous English and foreign editions and translations of separate speeches see J. B. Mayor, Guide to the Choice of Classical Books (1885, suppt. 1896). Mention may here be made of De corona by W. W. Goodwin (1901, ed. min., 1904); W. H. Simcox (1873, with Aeschines In Ctesiphontem); and P. E. Matheson (1899); Leptines by J. E. Sandys (1890); De falsa legatione by R. Shilleto (4th ed., 1874); Select Private Orations by J. E. Sandys and F. A. Paley (3rd ed., 1898, 1896); Midias by W. W. Goodwin (1906). C. R. Kennedy’s complete translation is a model of scholarly finish, and the appendices on Attic law, &c., are of great value. There are indices to Demosthenes by J. Reiske (ed. G. H. Schäfer, 1823); S. Preuss (1892). Among recent papyrus finds are fragments of a special lexicon to the Aristocratea and a commentary by Didymus (ed. H. Diels and W. Schubart, 1904). Illustrative literature: A. D. Schäfer, Demosthenes und seine Zeit (2nd ed., 1885-1887), a masterly and exhaustive historical work; F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit (1887-1898); W. J. Brodribb, “Demosthenes” in Ancient Classics for English Readers (1877); S. H. Butcher, Introduction to the Study of Demosthenes (1881); C. G. Böhnecke, Demosthenes, Lykurgos, Hyperides, und ihr Zeitalter (1864); A. Bouillé, Histoire de Démosthène (2nd ed., 1868); J. Girard, Études sur l’éloquence attique (1874); M. Croiset, Des idées morales dans l’Éloquence politique de Démosthène (1874); A. Hug, Demosthenes als politischer Denker (1881); L. Brédit, L’Éloquence politique en Grèce (2nd ed., 1886); A. Bougot, Rivalité d’Eschine et Démosthène (1891). For fuller bibliographical information consult R. Nicolai, Griechische Literaturgeschichte (1881); W. Engelmann, Scriptores Graeci (1881); G. Hüttner in C. Bursian’s Jahresbericht, li. (1889).

(R. C. J.)

[1] See Jebb’s Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos, vol. ii. p. 267 f.

[2] It is generally agreed that the Third Olynthiac is the latest; but the question of the order of the First and Second has been much discussed. See Grote (History of Greece, chap. 88, appendix), who prefers the arrangement ii. i. iii., and Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, iii. p. 319.

[3] The dates agree in the main with those given by A. D. Schäfer in Demosthenes und seine Zeit (2nd ed., 1885-1887), and by F. Blass in Die attische Beredsamkeit (1887-1898), who regards thirty-three (or possibly thirty-five) of the speeches as genuine.

[4] Or. 11 and 12 are probably both by Anaximenes of Lampsacus.

[5] According to Blass, the second and third epistles and the exordia are genuine.

[6] See also H. Usener in Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, p. 188 (1892); J. H. Lipsius, “Zur Textcritik des Demosthenes” in Berichte ... der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1893) with special reference to the papyrus finds at the end of the 19th century; E. Bethe, Demosthenis scriptorum corpus (1893).

DEMOTIC (Gr. δημοτικός, of or belonging to the people), a term, meaning popular, specially applied to that cursive script of the ancient Egyptian language used for business and literary purposes,—for the people. It is opposed to “hieratic” (Gr. ἱερατικός, of or belonging to the priests), the script, an abridged form of the hieroglyphic, used in transcribing the religious texts. (See [Writing], and [Egypt]: II., Ancient, D. Language and Writing.)

DEMOTICA, or Dimotica, a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople; on the Maritza valley branch of the Constantinople-Salonica railway, about 35 m. S. of Adrianople. Pop. (1905) about 10,000. Demotica is built at the foot of a conical hill on the left bank of the river Kizildeli, near its junction with the Maritza. It was formerly the seat of a Greek archbishop, and besides the ancient citadel and palace on the summit of the hill contains several Greek churches, mosques and public baths. In the middle ages, when it was named Didymotichos, it was one of the principal marts of Thrace; in modern times it has regained something of its commercial importance, and exports pottery, linen, silk and grain. These goods are sent to Dédéagatch for shipment. Demotica was the birthplace of the Turkish sultan Bayezid I. (1347); after the battle of Poltava, Charles XII. of Sweden resided here from February 1713 to October 1714.

DEMPSTER, THOMAS (1579-1625), Scottish scholar and historian, was born at Cliftbog, Aberdeenshire, the son of Thomas Dempster of Muresk, Auchterless and Killesmont, sheriff of Banff and Buchan. According to his own account, he was the twenty-fourth of twenty-nine children, and was early remarkable for precocious talent. He obtained his early education in Aberdeenshire, and at ten entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge; after a short while he went to Paris, and, driven thence by the plague, to Louvain, whence by order of the pope he was transferred with several other Scottish students to the papal seminary at Rome. Being soon forced by ill health to leave, he went to the English college at Douai, where he remained three years and took his M.A. degree. While at Douai he wrote a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth, which caused a riot among the English students. But, if his truculent character was thus early displayed, his abilities were no less conspicuous; and, though still in his teens, he became lecturer on the Humanities at Tournai, whence, after but a short stay, he returned to Paris, to take his degree of doctor of canon law, and become regent of the college of Navarre. He soon left Paris for Toulouse, which in turn he was forced to leave owing to the hostility of the city authorities, aroused by his violent assertion of university rights. He was now elected professor of eloquence at the university or academy of Nîmes, but not without a murderous attack upon him by one of the defeated candidates and his supporters, followed by a suit for libel, which, though he ultimately won his case, forced him to leave the town. A short engagement in Spain, as tutor to the son of Marshal de Saint Luc, was terminated by another quarrel; and Dempster now returned to Scotland with the intention of asserting a claim to his father’s estates. Finding his relatives unsympathetic, and falling into heated controversy with the Presbyterian clergy, he made no long stay, but returned to Paris, where he remained for seven years, becoming professor in several colleges successively. At last, however, his temporary connexion with the collège de Beauvais was ended by a feat of arms which proved him as stout a fighter with his sword as with his pen; and, since his victory was won over officers of the king’s guard, it again became expedient for him to change his place of residence. The dedication of his edition of Rosinus’ Antiquitatum Romanorum corpus absolutissimum to King James I. had won him an invitation to the English court; and in 1615 he went to London. His reception by the king was flattering enough; but his hopes of preferment were dashed by the opposition of the Anglican clergy to the promotion of a papist. He left for Rome, where, after a short imprisonment on suspicion of being a spy, he gained the favour of Pope Paul V., through whose influence with Cosimo II., grand duke of Tuscany, he was appointed to the professorship of the Pandects at Pisa. He had married while in London, but ere long had reason to suspect his wife’s relations with a certain Englishman. Violent accusations followed, indignantly repudiated; a diplomatic correspondence ensued, and a demand was made, and supported by the grand duke, for an apology, which the professor refused to make, preferring rather to lose his chair. He now set out once more for Scotland, but was intercepted by the Florentine cardinal Luigi Capponi, who induced him to remain at Bologna as professor of Humanity. This was the most distinguished post in the most famous of continental universities, and Dempster was now at the height of his fame. Though his Roman Antiquities and Scotia illustrior had been placed on the Index pending correction, Pope Urban VIII. made him a knight and gave him a pension. He was not, however, to enjoy his honours long. His wife eloped with a student, and Dempster, pursuing the fugitives in the heat of summer, caught a fever, and died at Bologna on the 6th of September 1625.

Dempster owed his great position in the history of scholarship to his extraordinary memory, and to the versatility which made him equally at home in philology, criticism, law, biography and history. His style is, however, often barbarous; and the obvious defects of his works are due to his restlessness and impetuosity, and to a patriotic and personal vanity which led him in Scottish questions into absurd exaggerations, and in matters affecting his own life into an incurable habit of romancing. The best known of his works is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Scotorum (Bologna, 1627). In this book he tries to prove that Bernard (Sapiens), Alcuin, Boniface and Joannes Scotus Erigena were all Scots, and even Boadicea becomes a Scottish author. This criticism is not applicable to his works on antiquarian subjects, and his edition of Benedetto Accolti’s De bello a Christianis contra barbaros (1623) has great merits.

A portion of his Latin verse is printed in the first volume (pp. 306-354) of Delitiae poëtarum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1637).

DEMURRAGE (from “demur,” Fr. demeurer, to delay, derived from Lat. mora), in the law of merchant shipping, the sum payable by the freighter to the shipowner for detention of the vessel in port beyond the number of days allowed for the purpose of loading or unloading (see [Affreightment: under Charter-parties]). The word is also used in railway law for the charge on detention of trucks; and in banking for the charge per ounce made by the Bank of England in exchanging coin or notes for bullion.

DEMURRER (from Fr. demeurer, to delay, Lat. morari), in English law, an objection taken to the sufficiency, in point of law, of the pleading or written statement of the other side. In equity pleading a demurrer lay only against the bill, and not against the answer; at common law any part of the pleading could be demurred to. On the passing of the Judicature Act of 1875 the procedure with respect to demurrers in civil cases was amended, and, subsequently, by the Rules of the Supreme Court, Order XXV. demurrers were abolished and a more summary process for getting rid of pleadings which showed no reasonable cause of action or defence was adopted, called proceedings in lieu of demurrer. Demurrer in criminal cases still exists, but is now seldom resorted to. Demurrers are still in constant use in the United States. See [Answer]; [Pleading].

DENAIN, a town of northern France in the department of Nord, 8 m. S.W. of Valenciennes by steam tramway. A mere village in the beginning of the 19th century, it rapidly increased from 1850 onwards, and, according to the census of 1906, possessed 22,845 inhabitants, mainly engaged in the coal mines and iron-smelting works, to which it owes its development. There are also breweries, manufactories of machinery, sugar and glass. A school of commerce and industry is among the institutions. Denain has a port on the left bank of the Scheldt canal. Its vicinity was the scene of the decisive victory gained in 1712 by Marshal Villars over the allies commanded by Prince Eugène; and the battlefield is marked by a monolithic monument inscribed with the verses of Voltaire:—

DENBIGH, WILLIAM FEILDING, 1st Earl of (d. 1643), son of Basil Feilding[1] of Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire, and of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Walter Aston, was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and knighted in 1603. He married Susan, daughter of Sir George Villiers, sister of the future duke of Buckingham, and on the rise of the favourite received various offices and dignities. He was appointed custos rotulorum of Warwickshire, and master of the great wardrobe in 1622, and created baron and viscount Feilding in 1620, and earl of Denbigh on the 14th of September 1622. He attended Prince Charles on the Spanish adventure, served as admiral in the unsuccessful expedition to Cadiz in 1625, and commanded the disastrous attempt upon Rochelle in 1628, becoming the same year a member of the council of war, and in 1633 a member of the council of Wales. In 1631 Lord Denbigh visited the East. On the outbreak of the Civil War he served under Prince Rupert and was present at Edgehill. On the 3rd of April 1643 during Rupert’s attack on Birmingham he was wounded and died from the effects on the 8th, being buried at Monks Kirby in Warwickshire. His courage, unselfishness and devotion to duty are much praised by Clarendon.

See E. Lodge, Portraits (1850), iv. 113; J. Nichols, Hist. of Leicestershire (1807), iv. pt. 1, 273; Hist. MSS. Comm Ser. 4th Rep. app. 254; Cal. of State Papers, Dom.; Studies in Peerage and Family History, by J. H. Round (1901), 216.

His eldest son, Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh (c. 1608-1675), was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was summoned to the House of Lords as Baron Feilding in March 1629. After seeing military service in the Netherlands he was sent in 1634 by Charles I. as ambassador to Venice, where he remained for five years. When the Civil War broke out Feilding, unlike the other members of his family, ranged himself among the Parliamentarians, led a regiment of horse at Edgehill, and, having become earl of Denbigh in April 1643, was made commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary army in Warwickshire and the neighbouring counties, and lord-lieutenant of Warwickshire. During the year 1644 he was fairly active in the field, but in some quarters he was distrusted and he resigned his command after the passing of the self-denying ordinance in April 1645. At Uxbridge in 1645 Denbigh was one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the king, and he undertook a similar duty at Carisbrooke in 1647. Clarendon relates how at Uxbridge Denbigh declared privately that he regretted the position in which he found himself, and expressed his willingness to serve Charles I. He supported the army in its dispute with the parliament, but he would take no part in the trial of Charles I. Under the government of the commonwealth Denbigh was a member of the council of state, but his loyalty to his former associates grew lukewarm, and gradually he came to be regarded as a royalist. In 1664 the earl was created Baron St Liz. Although four times married he left no issue when he died on the 28th of November 1675.

His titles devolved on his nephew William Feilding (1640-1685), son and heir of his brother George (created Baron Feilding of Lecaghe, Viscount Callan and earl of Desmond), and the earldom of Desmond has been held by his descendants to the present day in conjunction with the earldom of Denbigh.

[1] The descent of the Feildings from the house of Habsburg, through the counts of Laufenburg and Rheinfelden, long considered authentic, and immortalized by Gibbon, has been proved to have been based on forged documents. See J. H. Round, Peerage and Family History (1901).

DENBIGH (Dinbych), a municipal and (with Holt, Ruthin and Wrexham) contributory parliamentary borough, market town and county town of Denbighshire, N. Wales, on branches of the London & North Western and the Great Western railways. Pop. (1901) 6438. Denbigh Castle, surrounding the hill with a double wall, was built, in Edward I.’s reign, by Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, from whom the town received its first charter. The outer wall is nearly a mile round; over its main gateway is a niche with a figure representing, possibly, Edward I., but more probably, de Lacy. Here, in 1645, after the defeat of Rowton Moor, Charles I. found shelter, the castle long resisting the Parliamentarians, and being reduced to ruins by his successor. The chief buildings are the Carmelite Priory (ruins dating perhaps from the 13th century); a Bluecoat school (1514); a free grammar school (1527); an orphan girl school (funds left by Thomas Howel to the Drapers’ Co., in Henry VII.’s reign); the town hall (built in 1572 by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, enlarged and restored in 1780); an unfinished church (begun by Leicester); a market hall (with arcades or “rows,” such as those of Chester or Yarmouth); and the old parish church of St Marcella. The streams near Denbigh are the Clwyd and Elwy. The inhabitants of Denbigh are chiefly occupied in the timber trade, butter-making, poultry-farming, bootmaking, tanning and quarrying (lime, slate and paving-stones). The borough of Denbigh has a separate commission of the peace, but no separate court of quarter sessions. The town has long been known as a Welsh publishing centre, the vernacular newspaper, Baner, being edited and printed here. Near Denbigh, at Bodelwyddan, &c., coal is worked.

The old British tower and castle were called Castell caled fryn yn Rhôs, the “castle of the hard hill in Rhôs.” Din in Dinbych means a fort. There is a goblin well at the castle. Historically, David (Dafydd), brother of the last Llewelyn, was here (aet. Edward I.) perhaps on a foray; also Henry Lacy, who built the castle (aet. Edward I.), given to the Mortimers and to Leicester (under Edward III. and Elizabeth, respectively).

DENBIGHSHIRE (Dinbych), a county of N. Wales, bounded N. by the Irish Sea, N.E. by Flint and Cheshire, S.E. by Flint and Shropshire, S. by Montgomery and Merioneth, and W. by Carnarvon. Area, 662 sq. m. On the N. coast, within the Denbighshire borders and between Old Colwyn and Llandulas, is a wedge of land included in Carnarvonshire, owing to a change in the course of the Conwy stream. (Thus, also, Llandudno is partly in the Bangor, and partly in the St Asaph, diocese.) The surface of Denbighshire is irregular, and physically diversified. In the N.W. are the bleak Hiraethog (“longing”) hills, sloping W. to the Conwy and E. to the Clwyd. In the N. are Colwyn and Abergele bays, on the S. the Yspytty (Lat. Hospitium) and Llangwm range, between Denbigh and Merioneth. From this watershed flow the Elwy, Aled, Clywedog, Merddwr and Alwen, tributaries of the Clwyd, Conwy and Dee (Dyfrdwy). Some of the valleys contrast agreeably with the bleak hills, e.g. those of the Clwyd and Elwy. The portion lying between Ruabon (Rhiwabon) hills and the Dee is agricultural and rich in minerals; the Berwyn to Offa’s Dyke (Wâl Offa) is wild and barren, except the Tanat valley, Llansilin and Ceiriog. One feeder of the Tanat forms the Pistyll Rhaiadr (waterspout fall), another rises in Llyncaws (cheese pool) under Moel Sych (dry bare-hill), the highest point in the county. Aled and Alwen are both lakes and streams.

Geology.-The geology of the county is full of interest, as it develops all the principal strata that intervenes between the Ordovician and the Triassic series. In the Ordovician district, which extends from the southern boundary to the Ceiriog, the Llandeilo formation of the eastern slopes of the Berwyn and the Bala beds of shelly sandstone are traversed east and west by bands of intrusive felspathic porphyry and ashes. The same formation occurs just within the county border at Cerrig-y-Druidion, Langum, Bettys-y-coed and in the Fairy Glen. Northwards from the Ceiriog to the limestone fringe at Llandrillo the Wenlock shale of the Silurian covers the entire mass of the Hiraethog and Clwydian hills, but verging on its western slopes into the Denbighshire grit, which may be traced southward in a continuous line from the mouth of the Conway as far as Llanddewi Ystrad Enni in Radnorshire, near Pentre-Voelas and Conway they are abundantly fossiliferous. On its eastern slope a narrow broken band of the Old Red, or what may be a conglomeratic basement bed of the Carboniferous Limestone series, crops up along the Vale of Clwyd and in Eglwyseg. Resting upon this the Carboniferous Limestone extends from Llanymynach, its extreme southern point, to the Cyrnybrain fault, and there forks into two divisions that terminate respectively in the Great Orme’s Head and in Talargoch, and are separated from each other by the denuded shales of the Moel Famma range. In the Vale of Clwyd the limestone underlies the New Red Sandstone, and in the eastern division it is itself overlaid by the Millstone Grit of Ruabon and Minera, and by a long reach of the Coal Measures which near Wrexham are 4½ m. in breadth. Eastward of these a broad strip of the red marly beds succeeds, formerly considered to be Permian but now regarded as belonging to the Coal Measures, and yet again between this and the Dee the ground is occupied—as in the Vale of Clwyd—by the New Red rocks. As in the other northern counties of Wales, the whole of the lower ground is covered more or less thickly with glacial drift. On the western side of the Vale of Clwyd, at Cefn and Plâs Heaton, the caves, which are a common feature in such limestone districts, have yielded the remains of the rhinoceros, mammoth, hippopotamus and other extinct mammals.

Coal is mined from the Coal Measures, and from the limestone below, lead with silver and zinc ores have been obtained. Valuable fireclays and terra-cotta marls are also taken from the Coal Measures about Wrexham.

The uplands being uncongenial for corn, ponies, sheep and black cattle are reared, for fattening in the Midlands of England and sale in London. Oats and turnips, rather than wheat, barley and potatoes, occupy the tilled land. The county is fairly wooded. There are several important farmers’ clubs (the Denbighshire and Flintshire, the vale of Conway, the Cerrig y druidion, &c.). The London & North-Western railway (Holyhead line), with the Conway and Clwyd valleys branches, together with the lines connecting Denbigh with Ruabon (Rhiwabon), via Ruthin and Corwen, Wrexham with Connah’s Quay (Great Central) and Rhosllanerchrhugog with Glyn Ceiriog (for the Great Western and Great Central railways) have opened up the county. Down the valley of Llangollen also runs the Holyhead road from London, well built and passing through fine scenery. At Nantglyn paving flags are raised, at Rhiwfelen (near Llangollen) slabs and slates, and good slates are also obtained at Glyn Ceiriog. There is plenty of limestone, with china stone at Brymbo. Cefn Rhiwabon yields sandstone (for hones) and millstone grit. Chirk, Ruabon and Brymbo have coal mines. The great Minera is the principal lead mine. There is much brick and pottery clay. The Ceiriog valley has a dynamite factory. Llangollen and Llansantffraid (St Bridgit’s) have woollen manufactures.

The area of the ancient county is 423,499 acres, with a population in 1901 of 129,942. The area of the administrative county is 426,084 acres. The chief towns are: Wrexham, a mining centre and N. Wales military centre, with a fine church; Denbigh; Ruthin, where assizes are held (here are a grammar school, a warden and a 13th-century castle rebuilt); Llangollen and Llanrwst; and Holt, with an old ruined castle. The Denbigh district of parliamentary boroughs is formed of: Denbigh (pop. 6483), Holt (1059), Ruthin (2643), and Wrexham (14,966). The county has two parliamentary divisions. The urban districts are: Abergele and Pensarn (2083), Colwyn Bay and Colwyn (8689), Llangollen (3303), and Llanrwst (2645). Denbighshire is in the N. Wales circuit, assizes being held at Ruthin. Denbigh and Wrexham boroughs have separate commissions of the peace, but no separate quarter-session courts. The ancient county, which is in the diocese of St Asaph, contains seventy-five ecclesiastical parishes and districts and part of a parish.

The county was formed, by an act of Henry VIII., out of the lordships of Denbigh, Ruthin (Rhuthyn), Rhos and Rhyfoniog, which are roughly the Perfeddwlad (midland) between Conway and Clwyd, and the lordships of Bromfield, Yale (Iâl, open land) and Chirkland, the old possessions of Gruffydd ap Madoc, arglwydd (lord) of Dinas Brân. Cefn (Elwy Valley) limestone caves hold the prehistoric hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, lion, hyena, bear, reindeer, &c.; Plâs Heaton cave, the glutton; Pont Newydd, felstone tools and a polished stone axe (like that of Rhosdigre); Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddian, “platycnemic (skeleton) men of Denbighshire” (like those of Perthi Chwareu). Clawdd Coch has traces of the Romans; so also Penygaer and Penbarras. Roman roads ran from Deva (Chester) to Segontium (Carnarvon) and from Deva to Mons Heriri (Tomen y mur). To their period belong the inscribed Gwytherin and Pentrefoelas (near Bettws-y-coed) stones. The Valle Crucis “Eliseg’s pillar” tells of Brochmael and the Cairlegion (Chester) struggle against Æthelfrith’s invading Northumbrians, A.D. 613, while Offa’s dike goes back to the Mercian advance. Near and parallel to Offa’s is the shorter and mysterious Watt’s dike. Chirk is the only Denbighshire castle comparatively untouched by time and still occupied. Ruthin has cloisters; Wrexham, the Brynffynnon “nunnery”; and at both are collegiate churches. Llanrwst, Gresford and Derwen boast rood lofts and screens; Whitchurch and Llanrwst, portrait brasses and monuments; Derwen, a churchyard cross; Gresford and Llanrhaiadr (Dyffryn Clwyd), stained glass. Near Abergele, known for its sea baths, is the ogof (or cave), traditionally the refuge of Richard II. and the scene of his capture by Bolingbroke in 1399.

See J. Williams, Denbigh (1856), and T. F. Tout, Welsh Shires.

DENDERA, a village in Upper Egypt, situated in the angle of the great westward bend of the Nile opposite Kena. Here was the ancient city of Tentyra, capital of the Tentyrite nome, the sixth of Upper Egypt, and the principal seat of the worship of Hathor [Aphrodite] the cow-goddess of love and joy. The old Egyptian name of Tentyra was written ’In·t (Ant), but the pronunciation of it is unknown: in later days it was ’In·t-t-ntr·t, “ant of the goddess,” pronounced Ni-tentôri, whence Τέντυρα, Τέντυρις. The temple of Hathor was built in the 1st century B.C., being begun under the later Ptolemies (Ptol. XIII.) and finished by Augustus, but much of the decoration is later. A great rectangular enclosure of crude bricks, measuring about 900 X 850 ft., contains the sacred buildings: it was entered by two stone gateways, in the north and the east sides, built by Domitian. Another smaller enclosure lies to the east with a gateway also of the Roman period.

The plan of the temple may be supposed to have included a colonnaded court in front of the present façade, and pylon towers at the entrance; but these were never built, probably for lack of funds. The building, which is of sandstone, measures about 300 ft. from front to back, and consists of two oblong rectangles; the foremost, placed transversely to the other, is the great hypostyle hall or pronaos, the broadest and loftiest part of the temple, measuring 135 ft. in width, and comprising about one-third of the whole structure; the façade has six columns with heads of Hathor, and the ceiling is supported by eighteen great columns. The second rectangle contains a small hypostyle hall with six columns, and the sanctuary, with their subsidiary chambers. The sanctuary is surrounded by a corridor into which the chambers open: on the west side is an apartment forming a court and kiosk for the celebration of the feast of the New Year, the principal festival of Dendera. On the roof of the temple, reached by two staircases, are a pavilion and several chambers dedicated to the worship of Osiris. Inside and out, the whole of the temple is covered with scenes and inscriptions in crowded characters, of ceremonial and religious import; the decoration is even carried into a remarkable series of hidden passages and chambers or crypts made in the solid walls for the reception of its most valuable treasures. The architectural style is dignified and pleasing in design and proportions. The interior of the building has been completely cleared: from the outside, however, its imposing effect is quite lost, owing to the mounds of rubbish amongst which it is sunk. North-east of the entrance is a “Birth House” for the cult of the child Harsemteu, and behind the temple a small temple of Isis, dating from the reign of Augustus. The original foundation of the temple must date back to a remote time: the work of some of the early builders is in fact referred to in the inscriptions on the present structure. Petrie’s excavation of the cemetery behind the temple enclosures revealed burials dating from the fourth dynasty onwards, the most important being mastables of the period from the sixth to the eleventh dynasties; many of these exhibited a peculiar degradation of the contemporary style of sculpture.

The zodiacs of the temple of Dendera gave rise to a considerable literature before their late origin was established by Champollion in 1822: one of them, from a chamber on the roof, was removed in 1820 to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Figures of the celebrated Cleopatra VI. occur amongst the sculptures on the exterior of the temple, but they are purely conventional, without a trace of portraiture. Horus of Edfu, the enemy of the crocodiles and hippopotami of Set, appears sometimes as the consort of Hathor of Dendera. The skill displayed by the Tentyrites in capturing the crocodile is referred to by Strabo and other Greek writers. Juvenal, in his seventeenth satire, takes as his text a religious riot between the Tentyrites and the neighbouring Ombites, in the course of which an unlucky Ombite was torn to pieces and devoured by the opposite party. The Ombos in question is not the distant Ombos south of Edfu, where the crocodile was worshipped; Petrie has shown that opposite Coptos, only about 15 m. from Tentyra, there was another Ombos, venerating the hippopotamus sacred to Set.

See A. Mariette, Dendérah (5 vols. atlas and text, 1869-1880); W. M. F. Petrie, Denderah (1900); Nagada and Ballas (1896).

(F. Ll. G.)

DENDROCOMETES (so named by F. Stein), a genus of suctorian Infusoria, characterized by the repeatedly branched attached body; each of the lobes of the body gives off a few retractile tentacles. It is parasitic on the gills of the so-called freshwater shrimp Gammarus pulex.

For its conjugation see Sydney H. Hickson, in Quarterly Journ. of Microsc. Science, vol xlv. (1902), p. 325.

DENE-HOLES, the name given to certain caves or excavations in England, which have been popularly supposed to be due to the Danes or some other of the early northern invaders of the country. The common spelling “Dane hole” is adduced as evidence of this, and individual names, such as Vortigern’s Caves at Margate, and Canute’s Gold Mine near Bexley, naturally follow the same theory. The word, however, is probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon den, a hole or valley. There are many underground excavations in the south of the country, also found to some extent in the midlands and the north, but true dene-holes are found chiefly in those parts of Kent and Essex along the lower banks of the Thames. With one exception there are no recorded specimens farther east than those of the Grays Thurrock district, situated in Hangman’s Wood, on the north, and one near Rochester on the south side of the river.

The general outline of the formation of these caves is invariably the same. The entrance is a vertical shaft some 3 ft. in diameter falling, on an average, to a depth of 60 ft. The depth is regulated, obviously, by the depth of the chalk from the surface, but, although chalk could have been obtained close at hand within a few feet, or even inches, from the surface, a depth of from 45 to 80 ft., or more, is a characteristic feature. It is believed that dene-holes were also excavated in sand, but as these would be of a perishable nature there are no available data of any value. The shaft, when the chalk is reached, widens out into a domed chamber with a roof of chalk some 3 ft. thick. The walls frequently contract somewhat as they near the floor. As a rule there is only one chamber, from 16 to 18 ft. in height, beneath each shaft. From this excessive height it has been inferred that the caves were not primarily intended for habitations or even hiding-places. In some cases the chamber is extended, the roof being supported by pillars of chalk left standing. A rare specimen of a twin-chamber was discovered at Gravesend. In this case the one entrance served for both caves, although a separate aperture connected them on the floor level. Where galleries are found connecting the chambers, forming a bewildering labyrinth, a careful scrutiny of the walls usually reveals evidence that they are the work of a people of a much later period than that of the chambers, or, as they become in these cases, the halls of the galleries.

Isolated specimens have been discovered in various parts of Kent and Essex, but the most important groups have been found at Grays Thurrock, in the districts of Woolwich, Abbey Wood and Bexley, and at Gravesend. Those at Bexley and Grays Thurrock are the most valuable still existing.

It is generally found that the tool work on the roof or ceiling is rougher than that on the walls, where an upright position could be maintained. Casts taken of some of the pick-holes near the roof show that, in all probability, they were made by bone or horn picks. And numerous bone picks have been discovered in Essex and Kent. These pick-holes are amongst the most valuable data for the study of dene-holes, and have assisted in fixing the date of their formation to pre-Roman times. Very few relics of antiquarian value have been discovered in any of the known dene-holes which have assisted in fixing the date or determining the uses of these prehistoric excavations. Pliny mentions pits sunk to a depth of a hundred feet, “where they branched out like the veins of mines.” This has been used in support of the theory that dene-holes were wells sunk for the extraction of chalk; but no known dene-hole branches out in this way. Chrétien de Troyes has a passage on underground caves in Britain which may have reference to dene-holes, and tradition of the 14th century treated the dene-holes of Grays as the fabled gold mines of Cunobeline (or Cymbeline) of the 1st century.

Vortigern’s Caves at Margate are possibly dene-holes which have been adapted by later peoples to other purposes; and excellent examples of various pick-holes may be seen on different parts of the walls.

Local tradition in some cases traces the use of these caves to the smugglers, and, when it is remembered that illicit traffic was common not only on the coast but in the Thames as far up the river as Barking Creek, the theory is at least tenable that these ready-made hiding-places, difficult of approach and dangerous to descend, were so utilized.

There are three purposes for which dene-holes may have been originally excavated: (a) as hiding-places or dwellings, (b) draw-wells for the extraction of chalk for agricultural uses, and (c) storehouses for grain. For several reasons it is unlikely that they were used as habitations, although they may have been used occasionally as hiding-places. Other evidence has shown that it is equally improbable that they were used for the extraction of chalk. The chief reasons against this theory are that chalk could have been obtained outcropping close by, and that every trace of loose chalk has been removed from the vicinity of the holes, while known examples of chalk draw-wells do not descend to so great a depth. The discovery of a shallow dene-hole, about 14 ft. below the surface, at Stone negatives this theory still further. The last of the three possible uses for which these prehistoric excavations were designed is usually accepted as the most probable. Silos, or underground storehouses, are well known in the south of Europe and Morocco. It is supposed that the grain was stored in the ear and carefully protected from damp by straw. A curious smoothness of the roof of one of the chambers of the Gravesend twin-chamber dene-hole has been put forward as additional evidence in support of this theory. One other theory has been advanced, viz. that the excavations were made in order to get flints for implements, but this is quite impossible, as a careful examination of a few examples will show.

Further reference may be made to Essex Dene-holes by T. V. Holmes and W. Cole; to The Archaeological Journal (1882); the Transactions of the Essex Field Club; Archaeologia Cantiana, &c.; Dene-holes by F. W. Reader, in Old Essex, ed. A. C. Kelway (1908).

(A. J. P.)

DENGUE (pronounced deng-ga), an infectious fever occurring in warm climates. The symptoms are a sudden attack of fever, accompanied by rheumatic pains in the joints and muscles with severe headache and erythema. After a few days a crisis is reached and an interval of two or three days is followed by a slighter return of fever and pain and an eruption resembling measles, the most marked characteristic of the disease. The disease is rarely fatal, death occurring only in cases of extreme weakness caused by old age, infancy or other illness. Little is known of the aetiology of “dengue.” The virus is probably similar to that of other exanthematous fevers and communicated by an intermediary culex. The disease is nearly always epidemic, though at intervals it appears to be pandemic and in certain districts almost endemic. The area over which the disease ranges may be stated generally to be between 32° 47′ N. and 23° 23′ S. Throughout this area “dengue” is constantly epidemic. The earliest epidemic of which anything is known occurred in 1779-1780 in Egypt and the East Indies. The chief epidemics have been those of 1824-1826 in India, and in the West Indies and the southern states of North America, of 1870-1875, extending practically over the whole of the tropical portions of the East and reaching as far as China. In 1888 and 1889 a great outbreak spread along the shores of the Aegean and over nearly the whole of Asia Minor. Perhaps “dengue” is most nearly endemic in equatorial East Africa and in the West Indies. The word has usually been identified with the Spanish dengue, meaning stiff or prim behaviour, and adopted in the West Indies as a name suitable to the curious cramped movements of a sufferer from the disease, similar to the name “dandy-fever” which was given to it by the negroes. According to the New English Dictionary (quoting Dr Christie in The Glasgow Medical Journal, September 1881), both “dengue” and “dandy” are corruptions of the Swahili word dinga or denga, meaning a sudden attack of cramp, the Swahili name for the disease being ka-dinga pepo.

See Sir Patrick Manson, Tropical Diseases; a Manual of Diseases of Warm Climates (1903).

DENHAM, DIXON (1786-1828), English traveller in West Central Africa, was born in London on the 1st of January 1786. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, and was articled to a solicitor, but joined the army in 1811. First in the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and afterwards in the 54th foot, he served in the campaigns in Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium, and received the Waterloo medal. In 1821 he volunteered to join Dr Oudney and [Hugh Clapperton] (q.v.), who had been sent by the British government via Tripoli to the central Sudan. He joined the expedition at Murzuk in Fezzan. Finding the promised escort not forthcoming, Denham, whose energy was boundless, started for England to complain of the “duplicity” of the pasha of Tripoli. The pasha, alarmed, sent messengers after him with promises to meet his demands. Denham, who had reached Marseilles, consented to return, the escort was forthcoming, and Murzuk was regained in November 1822. Thence the expedition made its way across the Sahara to Bornu, reached in February 1823. Here Denham, against the wish of Oudney and Clapperton, accompanied a slave-raiding expedition into the Mandara highlands south of Bornu. The raiders were defeated, and Denham barely escaped with his life. When Oudney and Clapperton set out, December 1823, for the Hausa states, Denham remained behind. He explored the western, south and south-eastern shores of Lake Chad, and the lower courses of the rivers Waube, Logone and Shari. In August 1824, Clapperton having returned and Oudney being dead, Bornu was left on the return journey to Tripoli and England. In December 1826 Denham, promoted lieutenant-colonel, sailed for Sierra Leone as superintendent of liberated Africans. In 1828 he was appointed governor of Sierra Leone, but after administering the colony for five weeks died of fever at Freetown on the 8th of May 1828.

See Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the years 1822-1824 (London, 1826), the greater part of which is written by Denham; The Story of Africa, vol. i. chap. xiii. (London, 1892), by Dr Robert Brown.

DENHAM, SIR JOHN (1615-1669), English poet, only son of Sir John Denham (1559-1639), lord chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, was born in Dublin in 1615. In 1617 his father became baron of the exchequer in England, and removed to London with his family. In Michaelmas term 1631 the future poet was entered as a gentleman commoner at Trinity College, Oxford. He removed in 1634 to Lincoln’s Inn, where he was, says John Aubrey, a good student, but not suspected of being a wit. The reputation he had gained at Oxford of being the “dreamingest young fellow” gave way to a scandalous reputation for gambling. In 1634 he married Ann Cotton, and seems to have lived with his father at Egham, Surrey. In 1636 he wrote his paraphrase of the second book of the Aeneid (published in 1656 as The Destruction of Troy, with an excellent verse essay on the art of translation). About the same time he wrote a prose tract against gambling, The Anatomy of Play (printed 1651), designed to assure his father of his repentance, but as soon as he came into his fortune he squandered it at play. It was a surprise to everyone when in 1642 he suddenly, as Edmund Waller said, “broke out like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when no one was aware, nor in the least expected it,” by publishing The Sophy, a tragedy in five acts, the subject of which was drawn from Sir Thomas Herbert’s travels. At the beginning of the Civil War Denham was high sheriff for Surrey, and was appointed governor of Farnham Castle. He showed no military ability, and speedily surrendered the castle to the parliament. He was sent as a prisoner to London, but was soon permitted to join the king at Oxford.

In 1642 appeared Cooper’s Hill, a poem describing the Thames scenery round his home at Egham. The first edition was anonymous: subsequent editions show numerous alterations, and the poem did not assume its final form until 1655. This famous piece, which was Pope’s model for his Windsor Forest, was not new in theme or manner, but the praise which it received was well merited by its ease and grace. Moreover Denham expressed his commonplaces with great dignity and skill. He followed the taste of the time in his frequent use of antithesis and metaphor, but these devices seem to arise out of the matter, and are not of the nature of mere external ornament. At Oxford he wrote many squibs against the roundheads. One of the few serious pieces belonging to this period is the short poem “On the Earl of Strafford’s Trial and Death.”

From this time Denham was much in Charles I.’s confidence. He was entrusted with the charge of forwarding letters to and from the king when he was in the custody of the parliament, a duty which he discharged successfully with Abraham Cowley, but in 1648 he was suspected by the Parliamentary authorities, and thought it wiser to cross the Channel. He helped in the removal of the young duke of York to Holland, and for some time he served Queen Henrietta Maria in Paris, being entrusted by her with despatches for Holland. In 1650 he was sent to Poland in company with Lord Crofts to obtain money for Charles II. They succeeded in raising £10,000. After two years spent at the exiled court in Holland, Denham returned to London and being quite without resources, he was for some time the guest of the earl of Pembroke at Wilton. In 1655 an order was given that Denham should restrict himself to some place of residence to be selected by himself at a distance of not less than 20 m. from London; subsequently he obtained from the Protector a licence to live at Bury St Edmunds, and in 1658 a passport to travel abroad with the earl of Pembroke. At the Restoration Denham’s services were rewarded by the office of surveyor-general of works. His qualifications as an architect were probably slight, but it is safe to regard as grossly exaggerated the accusations of incompetence and peculation made by Samuel Butler in his brutal “Panegyric upon Sir John Denham’s Recovery from his Madness.” He eventually secured the services of Christopher Wren as deputy-surveyor. In 1660 he was also made a knight of the Bath.

In 1665 he married for the second time. His wife, Margaret, daughter of Sir William Brooke, was, according to the comte de Gramont, a beautiful girl of eighteen. She soon became known as the mistress of the duke of York, and the scandal, according to common report, shattered the poet’s reason. While Denham was recovering, his wife died, poisoned, it was said, by a cup of chocolate. Some suspected the duchess of York of the crime, but the Comte de Gramont says that the general opinion was that Denham himself was guilty. No sign of poison, however, was found in the examination after Lady Denham’s death. Denham survived her for two years, dying at his house near Whitehall in March 1669. He was buried on the 23rd in Westminster Abbey. In the last years of his life he wrote the bitter political satires on the shameful conduct of the Dutch War entitled “Directions to a Painter,” and “Fresh Directions,” continuing Edmund Waller’s “Instructions to a Painter.” The printer of these poems, with which were printed one by Andrew Marvell, was sentenced to stand in the pillory. In 1667 Denham wrote his beautiful elegy on Abraham Cowley.

Denham’s poems include, beside those already given, a verse paraphrase of Cicero’s Cato major, and a metrical version of the Psalms. As a writer of didactic verse, he was perhaps too highly praised by his immediate successors. Dryden called Cooper’s Hill “the exact standard of good writing,” and Pope in his Windsor Forest called him “majestic Denham.” His collected poems with a dedicatory epistle to Charles II. appeared in 1668. Other editions followed, and they are reprinted in Chalmers’ (1810) and other collections of the English poets. His political satires were printed with some of Rochester’s and Marvell’s in Bibliotheca curiosa, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1885).

DÉNIA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Alicante; on the Mediterranean Sea, at the head of a railway from Carcagente. Pop. (1900) 12,431. Dénia occupies the seaward slopes of a hill surmounted by a ruined castle, and divided by a narrow valley on the south from the limestone ridge of Mongó (2500 ft.), which commands a magnificent view of the Balearic Islands and the Valencian coast. The older houses of Dénia are characterized by their flat Moorish roofs (azoteas) and view-turrets (miradores), while fragments of the Moorish ramparts are also visible near the harbour; owing, however, to the rapid extension of local commerce, many of the older quarters were modernized at the beginning of the 20th century. Nails, and woollen, linen and esparto grass fabrics are manufactured here; and there is a brisk export trade in grapes, raisins and onions, mostly consigned to Great Britain or the United States. Baltic timber and British coal are largely imported. The harbour bay, which is well lighted and sheltered by a breakwater, contains only a small space of deep water, shut in by deposits of sand on three sides. In 1904 it accommodated 402 vessels of 175,000 tons; about half of which were small fishing craft, and coasters carrying agricultural produce to Spanish and African ports.

Dénia was colonized by Greek merchants from Emporiae (Ampurias in Catalonia), or Massilia (Marseilles), at a very early date; but its Greek name of Hemeroskopeion was soon superseded by the Roman Dianium. In the 1st century B.C., Sertorius made it the naval headquarters of his resistance to Rome; and, as its name implies, it was already famous for its temple of Diana, built in imitation of that at Ephesus. The site of this temple can be traced at the foot of the castle hill. Dénia was captured by the Moors in 713, and from 1031 to 1253 belonged successively to the Moorish kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia. According to an ancient but questionable tradition, its population rose at this period to 50,000, and its commerce proportionately increased. After the city was retaken by the Christians in 1253, its prosperity dwindled away, and only began to revive in the 19th century. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), Dénia was thrice besieged; and in 1813 the citadel was held for five months by the French against the allied British and Spanish forces, until the garrison was reduced to 100 men, and compelled to surrender, on honourable terms.

DENIKER, JOSEPH (1852- ) French naturalist and anthropologist, was born of French parents at Astrakhan, Russia, on the 6th of March 1852. After receiving his education at the university and technical institute of St Petersburg, he adopted engineering as a profession, and in this capacity travelled extensively in the petroleum districts of the Caucasus, in Central Europe, Italy and Dalmatia. Settling at Paris in 1876, he studied at the Sorbonne, where he took his degree in natural science. In 1888 he was appointed chief librarian of the Natural History Museum, Paris. Among his many valuable ethnological works mention may be made of Recherches anatomiques et embryologiques sur les singes anthropoides (1886); Étude sur les Kalmouks (1883); Les Ghiliaks (1883); and Races et peuples de la terre (1900). He became one of the chief editors of the Dictionnaire de géographie universelle, and published many papers in the anthropological and zoological journals of France.

DENILIQUIN, a municipal town of Townsend county, New South Wales, Australia, 534 m. direct S.W. of Sydney, and 195 m. by rail N. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2644. The business of the town is chiefly connected with the interests of the sheep and cattle farmers of the Riverina district, a plain country, in the main pastoral, but suited in some parts for cultivation. Deniliquin has a well-known public school.

DENIM (an abbreviation of serge de Nîmes), the name originally given to a kind of serge. It is now applied to a stout twilled cloth made in various colours, usually of cotton, and used for overalls, &c.

DENINA, CARLO GIOVANNI MARIA (1731-1813), Italian historian, was born at Revello, Piedmont, in 1731, and was educated at Saluzzo and Turin. In 1753 he was appointed to the chair of humanity at Pignerol, but he was soon compelled by the influence of the Jesuits to retire from it. In 1756 he graduated as doctor in theology, and began authorship with a theological treatise. Promoted to the professorship of humanity and rhetoric in the college of Turin, he published (1769-1772) his Delle revoluzioni d’Italia, the work on which his reputation is mainly founded. Collegiate honours accompanied the issue of its successive volumes, which, however, at the same time multiplied his foes and stimulated their hatred. In 1782, at Frederick the Great’s invitation, he went to Berlin, where he remained for many years, in the course of which he published his Vie et règne de Frédéric II (Berlin, 1788) and La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II (3 vols., Berlin, 1790-1791). His Delle revoluzioni della Germania was published at Florence in 1804, in which year he went to Paris as the imperial librarian, on the invitation of Napoleon. At Paris he published in 1805 his Tableau de la Haute Italie, et des Alpes qui l’entourent. He died there on the 5th of December 1813.

DENIS (Dionysius), SAINT, first bishop of Paris, patron saint of France. According to Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 30), he was sent into Gaul at the time of the emperor Decius. He suffered martyrdom at the village of Catulliacus, the modern St Denis. His tomb was situated by the side of the Roman road, where rose the priory of St-Denis-de-l’Estrée, which existed until the 18th century. In the 5th century the clergy of the diocese of Paris built a basilica over the tomb. About 625 Dagobert, son of Lothair II., founded in honour of St Denis, at some distance from the basilica, the monastery where the greater number of the kings of France have been buried. The festival of St Denis is celebrated on the 9th of October. With his name are already associated in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum the priest Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius. Other traditions—of no value—are connected with the name of St Denis. A false interpretation of Gregory of Tours, apparently dating from 724, represented St Denis as having received his mission from Pope Clement, and as having suffered martyrdom under Domitian (81-96). Hilduin, abbot of St-Denis in the first half of the 9th century, identified Denis of Paris with Denis (Dionysius) the Areopagite (mentioned in Acts xviii. 34), bishop of Athens (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 4. 10, iv. 23. 3), and naturally attributed to him the celebrated writings of the pseudo-Areopagite. St Denis is generally represented carrying his head in his hands.

See Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, iv. 696-987; Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, p. 37 (Brussels, 1895); Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, No. 2171-2203 (Brussels, 1899); J. Havet, Les Origines de Saint-Denis, in his collected works, i. 191-246 (Paris, 1896); Cahier, Caractéristiques des saints, p. 761 (Paris, 1867). (H. De.)

DENIS, JOHANN NEPOMUK COSMAS MICHAEL (1729-1800), Austrian poet, was born at Schärding on the Inn, on the 27th of September 1729. He was brought up by the Jesuits, entered their order, and in 1759 was appointed professor in the Theresianum in Vienna, a Jesuit college. In 1784, after the suppression of the college, he was made second custodian of the court library, and seven years later became chief librarian. He died on the 29th of September 1800. A warm admirer of Klopstock, he was one of the leading members of the group of so-called “bards”; and his original poetry, published under the title Die Lieder Sineds des Barden (1772), shows all the extravagances of the “bardic” movement. He is best remembered as the translator of Ossian (1768-1769; also published together with his own poems in 5 vols. as Ossians und Sineds Lieder, 1784). More important than either his original poetry or his translations were his efforts to familiarize the Austrians with the literature of North Germany; his Sammlung kürzerer Gedichte aus den neuern Dichtern Deutschlands, 3 vols. (1762-1766), was in this respect invaluable. He has also left a number of bibliographical compilations, Grundriss der Bibliographie und Bücherkunde (1774), Grundriss der Literaturgeschichte (1776), Einleitung in die Bücherkunde (1777) and Wiens Buchdruckergeschichte bis 1560 (1782).

Ossians und Sineds Lieder have not been reprinted since 1791; but a selection of his poetry edited by R. Hamel will be found in vol. 48 (1884) of Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur. His Literarischer Nachlass was published by J. F. von Retzer in 1802 (2 vols.). See P. von Hofmann-Wellenhof, Michael Denis (1881).

DENISON, GEORGE ANTHONY (1805-1896), English churchman, brother of John Evelyn Denison (1800-1873; speaker of the House of Commons 1857-1872; Viscount Ossington), was born at Ossington, Notts, on the 11th of December 1805, and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1828 he was elected fellow of Oriel; and after a few years there as a tutor, during which he was ordained and acted as curate at Cuddesdon, he became rector of Broadwindsor, Dorset (1838). He became a prebendary of Sarum in 1841 and of Wells in 1849. In 1851 he was preferred to the valuable living of East Brent, Somerset, and in the same year was made archdeacon of Taunton. For many years Archdeacon Denison represented the extreme High Tory party not only in politics but in the Church, regarding all “progressive” movements in education or theology as abomination, and vehemently repudiating the “higher criticism” from the days of Essays and Reviews (1860) to those of Lux Mundi (1890). In 1853 he resigned his position as examining chaplain to the bishop of Bath and Wells owing to his pronounced eucharistic views. A suit on the complaint of a neighbouring clergyman ensued and after various complications Denison was condemned by the archbishops’ court at Bath (1856); but on appeal the court of Arches and the privy council quashed this judgment on a technical plea. The result was to make Denison a keen champion of the ritualistic school. He edited The Church and State Review (1862-1865). Secular state education and the “conscience clause” were anathema to him. Until the end of his life he remained a protagonist in theological controversy and a keen fighter against latitudinarianism and liberalism; but the sharpest religious or political differences never broke his personal friendships and his Christian charity. Among other things for which he will be remembered was his origination of harvest festivals. He died on the 21st of March 1896.

DENISON, GEORGE TAYLOR (1839- ), Canadian soldier and publicist, was born in Toronto on the 31st of August 1839. In 1861 he was called to the bar, and was from 1865-1867 a member of the city council. From the first he took a prominent part in the organization of the military forces of Canada, becoming a lieutenant-colonel in the active militia in 1866. He saw active service during the Fenian raid of 1866, and during the rebellion of 1885. Owing to his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Conservative ministry during the Red River Rebellion in 1869-70, he abandoned that party, and in 1872 unsuccessfully contested Algoma in the Liberal interest. Thereafter he remained free from party ties. In 1877 he was appointed police magistrate of Toronto. Colonel Denison was one of the founders of the “Canada First” party, which did much to shape the national aspirations from 1870 to 1878, and was a consistent supporter of imperial federation and of preferential trade between Great Britain and her colonies. He became a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and was president of the section dealing with English history and literature. The best known of his military works is his History of Modern Cavalry (London, 1877), which was awarded first prize by the Russian government in an open competition and has been translated into German, Russian and Japanese. In 1900 he published his reminiscences under the title of Soldiering in Canada.

DENISON, a city of Grayson county, Texas, U.S.A., about 2½ m. from the S. bank of the Red river, about 70 m. N. of Dallas. Pop. (1890) 10,958; (1900) 11,807, of whom 2251 were negroes; (1910 census) 13,632. It is served by the Houston & Texas Central, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the Texas & Pacific, and the St Louis & San Francisco (’Frisco System) railways, and is connected with Sherman, Texas, by an electric line. Denison is the seat of the Gate City business college (generally known as Harshaw Academy), and of St Xavier’s academy (Roman Catholic). It is chiefly important as a railway centre, as a collecting and distributing point for the fruit, vegetables, hogs and poultry, and general farming products of the surrounding region, and as a wholesale and jobbing market for the upper Red river valley. It has railway repair shops, and among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, cotton, machinery and foundry products, flour, wooden-ware, and dairy products. In 1905 its factory products were valued at $1,234,956, 47.0% more than in 1900. Denison was settled by Northerners at the time of the construction of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway to this point in 1872, and was named in honour of George Denison (1822-1876), a director of the railway; it became a city in 1891, and in 1907 adopted the commission form of government.

DENIZEN (derived through the Fr. from Lat. de intus, “from within,” i.e. as opposed to “foreign”), an alien who obtains by letters patent (ex donatione regis) certain of the privileges of a British subject. He cannot be a member of the privy council or of parliament, or hold any civil or military office of trust, or take a grant of land from the crown. The Naturalization Act 1870 provides that nothing therein contained shall affect the grant of any letters of denization by the sovereign.

DENIZLI (anc. [Laodicea] (q.v.) ad Lycum), chief town of a sanjak of the Aidin vilayet of Asia Minor, altitude 1167 ft. Pop. about 17,000. It is beautifully situated at the foot of Baba Dagh (Mt. Salbacus), on a tributary of the Churuk Su (Lycus), and is connected by a branch line with the station of Gonjeli on the Smyrna-Dineir railway. It took the place of Laodicea when that town was deserted during the wars between the Byzantines and Seljuk Turks, probably between 1158 and 1174. It had become a fine Moslem city in the 14th century, and was then called Ladik, being famous for the woven and embroidered products of its Greek inhabitants. The delightful gardens of Denizli have obtained for it the name of the “Damascus of Anatolia.”

DENMAN, THOMAS, 1st Baron (1779-1854), English judge, was born in London, the son of a well-known physician, on the 23rd of July 1779. He was educated at Eton and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1800. Soon after leaving Cambridge he married; and in 1806 he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, and at once entered upon practice. His success was rapid, and in a few years he attained a position at the bar second only to that of Brougham and Scarlett (Lord Abinger). He distinguished himself by his eloquent defence of the Luddites; but his most brilliant appearance was as one of the counsel for Queen Caroline. His speech before the Lords was very powerful, and some competent judges even considered it not inferior to Brougham’s. It contained one or two daring passages, which made the king his bitter enemy, and retarded his legal promotion. At the general election of 1818 he was returned M.P. for Wareham, and at once took his seat with the Whig opposition. In the following year he was returned for Nottingham, for which place he continued to sit till his elevation to the bench in 1832. His liberal principles had caused his exclusion from office till in 1822 he was appointed common serjeant by the corporation of London. In 1830 he was made attorney-general under Lord Grey’s administration. Two years later he was made lord chief justice of the King’s Bench, and in 1834 he was raised to the peerage. As a judge he is most celebrated for his decision in the important privilege case of Stockdale v. Hansard (9 Ad. & El. I.; 11 Ad. & El. 253), but he was never ranked as a profound lawyer. In 1850 he resigned his chief justiceship and retired into private life. He died on the 26th of September 1854, his title continuing in the direct line.

The Hon. George Denman (1819-1896), his fourth son, was also a distinguished lawyer, and a judge of the Queen’s Bench from 1872 till his death in 1896.

See Memoir of Thomas, first Lord Denman, by Sir Joseph Arnould (2 vols., 1873); E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904).

DENMARK (Danmark), a small kingdom of Europe, occupying part of a peninsula and a group of islands dividing the Baltic and North Seas, in the middle latitudes of the eastern coast. The kingdom lies between 54° 33′ and 57° 45′ N. and between 8° 4′ 54″ and 12° 47′ 25″ E., exclusive of the island of Bornholm, which, as will be seen, is not to be included in the Danish archipelago. The peninsula is divided between Denmark and Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). The Danish portion is the northern and the greater, and is called Jutland (Dan. Jylland). Its northern part is actually insular, divided from the mainland by the Limfjord or Liimfjord, which communicates with the North Sea to the west and the Cattegat to the east, but this strait, though broad and possessing lacustrine characteristics to the west, has only very narrow entrances. The connexion with the North Sea dates from 1825. The Skagerrack bounds Jutland to the north and north-west. The Cattegat is divided from the Baltic by the Danish islands, between the east coast of the Cimbric peninsula in the neighbourhood of the German frontier and south-western Sweden.

There is little variety in the surface of Denmark. It is uniformly low, the highest elevation in the whole country, the Himmelbjerg near Aarhus in eastern Jutland, being little more than 500 ft. above the sea. Denmark, however, is nowhere low in the sense in which Holland is; the country is pleasantly diversified, and rises a little at the coast even though it remains flat inland. The landscape of the islands and the south-eastern part of Jutland is rich in beech-woods, corn fields and meadows, and even the minute islets are green and fertile. In the western and northern districts of Jutland this condition gives place to a wide expanse of moorland, covered with heather, and ending towards the sea in low whitish-grey cliffs. There is a certain charm even about these monotonous tracts, and it cannot be said that Denmark is wanting in natural beauty of a quiet order. Lakes, though small, are numerous; the largest are the Arresö and the Esromsö in Zealand, and the chain of lakes in the Himmelbjerg region, which are drained by the largest river in Denmark, the Gudenaa, which, however, has a course not exceeding 80 m. Many of the meres, overhung with thick beech-woods, are extremely beautiful. The coasts are generally low and sandy; the whole western shore of Jutland is a succession of sand ridges and shallow lagoons, very dangerous to shipping. In many places the sea has encroached; even in the 19th century entire villages were destroyed, but during the last twenty years of the century systematic efforts were made to secure the coast by groynes and embankments. A belt of sand dunes, from 500 yds. to 7 m. wide, stretches along the whole of this coast for about 200 m. Skagen, or the Skaw, a long, low, sandy point, stretches far into the northern sea, dividing the Skagerrack from the Cattegat. On the western side the coast is bolder and less inhospitable; there are several excellent havens, especially on the islands. The coast is nowhere, however, very high, except at one or two points in Jutland, and at the eastern extremity of Möen, where limestone cliffs occur.

Continental Denmark is confined wholly to Jutland, the geographical description of which is given under that heading. Out of the total area of the kingdom, 14,829 sq. m., Jutland, including the small islands adjacent to it, covers 9753 sq. m., and the insular part of the kingdom (including Bornholm), 5076 sq. m. The islands may be divided into two groups, consisting of the two principal islands Fünen and Zealand, and the lesser islands attendant on each. Fünen (Dan. Fyen), in form roughly an oval with an axis from S.E. to N.W. of 53 m., is separated from Jutland by a channel not half a mile wide in the north, but averaging 10 m. between the island and the Schleswig coast, and known as the Little Belt. Fünen, geologically a part of southern Jutland, has similar characteristics, a smiling landscape of fertile meadows, the typical beech-forests clothing the low hills and the presence of numerous erratic blocks, are the superficial signs of likeness. Several islands, none of great extent, lie off the west coast of Fünen in the Little Belt; off the south, however, an archipelago is enclosed by the long narrow islands of Aerö (16 m. in length) and Langeland (32 m.), including in a triangular area of shallow sea the islands of Taasinge, Avernakö, Dreiö, Turö and others. These are generally fertile and well cultivated. Aeröskjöbing and Rudkjöbing, on Aerö and Langeland respectively, are considerable ports. On Langeland is the great castle of Tranekjaer, whose record dates from the 13th century. The chief towns of Fünen itself are all coastal. Odense is the principal town, lying close to a great inlet behind the peninsula of Hindsholm on the north-east, known as Odense Fjord. Nyborg on the east is the port for the steam-ferry to Korsör in Zealand; Svendborg picturesquely overlooks the southern archipelago; Faaborg on the south-west lies on a fjord of the same name; Assens, on the west, a port for the crossing of the Little Belt into Schleswig, still shows traces of the fortifications which were stormed by John of Ranzau in 1535; Middelfart is a seaside resort near the narrowest reach of the Little Belt; Bogense is a small port on the north coast. All these towns are served by railways radiating from Odense. The strait crossed by the Nyborg-Korsör ferry is the Great Belt which divides the Fünen from the Zealand group, and is continued south by the Langelands Belt, which washes the straight eastern shore of that island, and north by the Samso Belt, named from an island 15 m. in length, with several large villages, which lies somewhat apart from the main archipelago.

Zealand, or Sealand (Dan. Sjaelland), measuring 82 m. N. to S. by 68 E. to W. (extremes), with its fantastic coast-line indented by fjords and projecting into long spits or promontories, may be considered as the nucleus of the kingdom, inasmuch as it contains the capital, Copenhagen, and such important towns as Roskilde, Slagelse, Korsör, Naestved and Elsinore (Helsingör). Its topography is described in detail under [Zealand]. Its attendant islands lie mainly to the south and are parts of itself, only separated by geologically recent troughs. The eastern coast of Möen is rocky and bold. It is recorded that this island formed three separate isles in 1100, and the village of Borre, now 2 m. inland, was the object of an attack by a fleet from Lübeck in 1510. On Falster is the port of Nykjöbing, and from Gjedser, the extreme southern point of Denmark, communication is maintained with Warnemünde in Germany (29 m.). From Nykjöbing a bridge nearly one-third of a mile long crosses to Laaland, at the west of which is the port of Nakskov; the other towns are the county town of Maribo with its fine church of the 14th century, Saxkjöbing and Rödby. The island of Bornholm lies 86 m. E. of the nearest point of the archipelago, and as it belongs geologically to Sweden (from which it is distant only 22 m.) must be considered to be physically an appendage rather than an internal part of the kingdom of Denmark.

Geology.—The surface in Denmark is almost everywhere formed by the so-called Boulder Clay and what the Danish geologists call the Boulder Sand. The former, as is well known, owes its origin to the action of ice on the mountains of Norway in the Glacial period. It is unstratified; but by the action of water on it, stratified deposits have been formed, some of clay, containing remains of arctic animals, some, and very extensive ones, of sand and gravel. This boulder sand forms almost everywhere the highest hills, and besides, in the central part of Jutland, a wide expanse of heath and moorland apparently level, but really sloping gently towards the west. The deposits of the boulder formation rest generally on limestone of the Cretaceous period, which in many places comes near the surface and forms cliffs on the sea-coast. Much of the Danish chalk, including the well-known limestone of Faxe, belongs to the highest or “Danian” subdivision of the Cretaceous period. In the south-western parts a succession of strata, described as the Brown Coal or Lignite formations, intervenes between the chalk and the boulder clay; its name is derived from the deposits of lignite which occur in it. It is only on the island of Bornholm that older formations come to light. This island agrees in geological structure with the southern part of Sweden, and forms, in fact, the southernmost portion of the Scandinavian system. There the boulder clay lies immediately on the primitive rock, except in the south-western corner of the island, where a series of strata appear belonging to the Cambrian, Silurian, Jurassic and Cretaceous formations, the true Coal formation, &c., being absent. Some parts of Denmark are supposed to have been finally raised out of the sea towards the close of the Cretaceous period; but as a whole the country did not appear above the water till about the close of the Glacial period. The upheaval of the country, a movement common to a large part of the Scandinavian peninsula, still continues, though slowly, north-east of a line drawn in a south-easterly direction from Nissumfjord on the west coast of Jutland, across the island of Fyen, a little south of the town of Nyborg. Ancient sea-beaches, marked by accumulations of seaweed, rolled stones, &c., have been noticed as much as 20 ft. above the present level. But the upheaval does not seem to affect all parts equally. Even in historic times it has vastly changed the aspect and configuration of the country.

Climate, Flora, Fauna.—The climate of Denmark does not differ materially from that of Great Britain in the same latitude; but whilst the summer is a little warmer, the winter is colder, so that most of the evergreens which adorn an English garden in the winter cannot be grown in the open in Denmark. During thirty years the annual mean temperature varied from 43.88° F. to 46.22° in different years and different localities, the mean average for the whole country being 45.14°. The islands have, upon the whole, a somewhat warmer climate than Jutland. The mean temperatures of the four coldest months, December to March, are 33.26°, 31.64°, 31.82°, and 33.98° respectively, or for the whole winter 32.7°; that of the summer, June to August, 59.2°, but considerable irregularities occur. Frost occurs on an average on twenty days in each of the four winter months, but only on two days in either October or May. A fringe of ice generally lines the greater part of the Danish coasts on the eastern side for some time during the winter, and both the Sound and the Great Belt are at times impassable on account of ice. In some winters the latter is sufficiently firm and level to admit of sledges passing between Copenhagen and Malmö. The annual rainfall varies between 21.58 in. and 27.87 in. in different years and different localities. It is highest on the west coast of Jutland; while the small island of Anholt in the Cattegat has an annual rainfall of only 15.78 in. More than half the rainfall occurs from July to November, the wettest month being September, with an average of 2.95 in.; the driest month is April, with an average of 1.14 in. Thunderstorms are frequent in the summer. South-westerly winds prevail from January to March, and from September to the end of the year. In April the east wind, which is particularly searching, is predominant, while westerly winds prevail from May to August. In the district of Aalborg, in the north of Jutland, a cold and dry N.W. wind called skai prevails in May and June, and is exceedingly destructive to vegetation; while along the west coast of the peninsula similar effects are produced by a salt mist, which carries its influence from 15 to 30 m. inland.

The flora of Denmark presents greater variety than might be anticipated in a country of such simple physical structure. The ordinary forms of the north of Europe grow freely in the mild air and protected soil of the islands and the eastern coast; while on the heaths and along the sandhills on the Atlantic side there flourish a number of distinctive species. The Danish forest is almost exclusively made up of beech, a tree which thrives better in Denmark than in any other country of Europe. The oak and ash are now rare, though in ancient times both were abundant in the Danish islands. The elm is also scarce. The almost universal predominance of the beech is by no means of ancient origin, for in the first half of the 17th century the oak was still the characteristic Danish tree. No conifer grows in Denmark except under careful cultivation, which, however, is largely practised in [Jutland] (q.v.). But again, abundant traces of ancient extensive forests of fir and pine are found in the numerous peat bogs which supply a large proportion of the fuel locally used. In Bornholm, it should be mentioned, the flora is more like that of Sweden; not the beech, but the pine, birch and ash are the most abundant trees.

The wild animals and birds of Denmark are those of the rest of central Europe. The larger quadrupeds are all extinct; even the red deer, formerly so abundant that in a single hunt in Jutland in 1593 no less than 1600 head of deer were killed, is now only to be met with in preserves. In the prehistoric “kitchen-middens” (kjökkenmödding) and elsewhere, however, vestiges are found which prove that the urochs, the wild boar, the beaver, the bear and the wolf all existed subsequently to the arrival of man. The usual domestic animals are abundantly found in Denmark, with the exception of the goat, which is uncommon. The sea fisheries are of importance. Oysters are found in some places, but have disappeared from many localities, where their abundance in ancient times is proved by their shell moulds on the coast. The Gudenaa is the only salmon river in Denmark.

Population.—The population of Denmark in 1901 was 2,449,540. It was 929,001 in 1801, showing an increase during the century in the proportion of 1 to 2.63. In 1901 the average density of the population of Denmark was 165.2 to the square mile, but varied much in the different parts. Jutland showed an average of only 109 inhabitants per square mile, whilst on the islands, which had a total population of 1,385,537, the average stood at 272.95, owing, on the one hand, to the fact that large tracts in the interior of Jutland are almost uninhabited, and on the other to the fact that the capital of the country, with its proportionately large population, is situated on the island of Zealand. The percentages of urban and rural population are respectively about 38 and 62. A notable movement of the population to the towns began about the middle of the 19th century, and increased until very near its end. It was stronger on the islands, where the rural population increased by 5.3% only in eleven years, whereas in Jutland the increase of the rural population between 1890 and 1901 amounted to 12.0%. Here, however, peculiar circumstances contributed to the increase, as successful efforts have been made to render the land fruitful by artificial means. The Danes are a yellow-haired and blue-eyed Teutonic race of middle stature, bearing traces of their kinship with the northern Scandinavian peoples. Their habits of life resemble those of the North Germans even more than those of the Swedes. The independent tenure of the land by a vast number of small farmers, who are their own masters, gives an air of carelessness, almost of truculence, to the well-to-do Danish peasants. They are generally slow of speech and manner, and somewhat irresolute, but take an eager interest in current politics, and are generally fairly educated men of extreme democratic principles. The result of a fairly equal distribution of wealth is a marked tendency towards equality in social intercourse. The townspeople show a bias in favour of French habits and fashions. The separation from the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which were more than half German, intensified the national character; the Danes are intensely patriotic; and there is no portion of the Danish dominions except perhaps in the West Indian islands, where a Scandinavian language is not spoken. The preponderance of the female population over the male is approximately as 1052 to 1000. The male sex remains in excess until about the twentieth year, from which age the female sex preponderates in increasing ratio with advancing age. The percentage of illegitimacy is high as a whole, although in some of the rural districts it is very low. But in Copenhagen 20% of the births are illegitimate. Between the middle and the end of the 19th century the rate of mortality decreased most markedly for all ages. During the last decade of the century it ranged between 19.5 per thousand in 1891 and 15.1 in 1898 (17.4 in 1900). Emigration for some time in the 19th century at different periods, both in its early part and towards its close, seriously affected the population of Denmark. But in the last decade it greatly diminished. Thus in 1892 the number of emigrants to Transatlantic places rose to 10,422 but in 1900 it was only 3570. The great bulk of them go to the United States; next in favour is Canada.

Communications.—The roads of Denmark form an extensive and well-maintained system. The railway system is also fairly complete, the state owning about three-fifths of the total mileage, which amounts to some 2000. Two lines enter Denmark from Schleswig across the frontier. The main Danish lines are as follows. From the frontier a line runs east by Fredericia, across the island of Fünen by Odense and Nyborg, to Korsör on Zealand, and thence by Roskilde to Copenhagen. The straits between Fredericia and Middelfart and between Nyborg and Korsör are crossed by powerful steam-ferries which are generally capable of conveying a limited number of railway wagons. This system is also in use on the line which runs south from Roskilde to the island of Falster, from the southernmost point of which, Gjedser, ferry-steamers taking railway cars serve Warnemünde in Germany. The main lines in Jutland run (a) along the eastern side north from Fredericia by Horsens, Aarhus, Randers, Aalborg and Hjörring, to Frederikshavn, and (b) along the western side from Esbjerg by Skjerne and Vemb, and thence across the peninsula by Viborg to Langaa on the eastern line. The lines are generally of standard gauge (4 ft. 8½ in.), but there is also a considerable mileage of light narrow-gauge railways. Besides the numerous steam-ferries which connect island and island, and Jutland with the islands, and the Gjedser-Warnemünde route, a favourite passenger line from Germany is that between Kiel and Korsör, while most of the German Baltic ports have direct connexion with Copenhagen. With Sweden communications are established by ferries across the Sound between Copenhagen and Malmö and Landskrona, and between Elsinore (Helsingör) and Helsingborg. The postal department maintains a telegraph and telephone service.

Industries.—The main source of wealth in Denmark is agriculture, which employs about two-fifths of the entire population. Most of the land is freehold and cultivated by the owner himself, and comparatively little land is let on lease except very large holdings and glebe farms. The independent small farmer (bönder) maintains a hereditary attachment to his ancestral holding. There is also a class of cottar freeholders (junster). Fully 74% of the total area of the country is agricultural land. Of this only about one-twelfth is meadow land. The land under grain crops is not far short of one-half the remainder, the principal crops being oats, followed by barley and rye in about equal quantities, with wheat about one-sixth that of barley and hardly one-tenth that of oats. Beet is extensively grown. During the last forty years of the 19th century dairy-farming was greatly developed in Denmark, and brought to a high degree of perfection by the application of scientific methods and the best machinery, as well as by the establishment of joint dairies. The Danish government has assisted this development by granting money for experiments and by a rigorous system of inspection for the prevention of adulteration. The co-operative system plays an important part in the industries of butter-making, poultry-farming and the rearing of swine.

Rabbits, which are not found wild in Denmark, are bred for export. Woods cover fully 7% of the area, and their preservation is considered of so much importance that private owners are under strict control as regards cutting of timber. The woods consist mostly of beech, which is principally used for fuel, but pines were extensively planted during the 19th century. Allusion has been made already to the efforts to plant the extensive heaths in [Jutland] (q.v.) with pine-trees.

Agriculture.—Rates and taxes on land are mostly levied according to a uniform system of assessment, the unit of which is called a Tonde Hartkorn. The Td. Htk., as it is usually abbreviated, has further subdivision, and is intended to correspond to the same value of land throughout the country. The Danish measure for land is a Tonde Land (Td. L.), which is equal to 1.363 statute acres. Of the best ploughing land a little over 6 Td. L., or about 8 acres, go to a Td. Htk., but of unprofitable land a Td. Htk. may represent 300 acres or more. On the islands and in the more fertile part of Jutland the average is about 10 Td. L., or 13½ acres. Woodland, tithes, &c., are also assessed to Td. Htk. for fiscal purposes. In the island of Bornholm, the assessment is somewhat different, though the general state of agricultural holdings is the same as in other parts. The selling value of land has shown a decrease in modern times on account of the agricultural depression. A homestead with land assessed less than 1 Td. Htk. is legally called a Huus or Sted, i.e. cottage, whilst a farm assessed at 1 Td. Htk. or more is called Gaard, i.e. farm. Farms of between 1 and 12 Td. Htk. are called Bondergaarde, or peasant farms, and are subject to the restriction that such a holding cannot lawfully be joined to or entirely merged into another. They may be subdivided, and portions may be added to another holding, but the homestead, with a certain amount of land, must be preserved as a separate holding for ever. The seats of the nobility and landed gentry are called Herregaarde. The peasants hold about 73% of all the land according to its value. As regards their size about 30% are assessed from 1 to 4 Td. Htk.; about 33% from 4 to 8 Td. Htk.; the remainder at about 8 Td. Htk. An annual sum is voted by parliament out of which loans are granted to cottagers who desire to purchase small freehold plots.

The fishery along the coasts of Denmark is of some importance both on account of the supply of food obtained thereby for the population of the country, and on account of the export; but the good fishing grounds, not far from the Danish coast, particularly in the North Sea, are mostly worked by the fishing vessels of other nations, which are so numerous that the Danish government is obliged to keep gun-boats stationed there in order to prevent encroachments on territorial waters.

Other Industries.—The mineral products of Denmark are unimportant. It is one of the poorest countries of Europe in this particular. It is rich, however, in clays, while in the island of Bornholm there are quarries of freestone and marble. The factories of Denmark supply mainly local needs. The largest are those engaged in the construction of engines and iron ships. The manufacture of woollens and cotton, the domestic manufacture of linen in Zealand, sugar refineries, paper mills, breweries, and distilleries may also be mentioned. The most notable manufacture is that of porcelain. The nucleus of this industry was a factory started in 1772, by F. H. Müller, for the making of china out of Bornholm clay. In 1779 it passed into the hands of the state, and has remained there ever since, though there are also private factories. Originally the Copenhagen potters imitated the Dresden china made at Meissen, but they later produced graceful original designs. The creations of Thorvaldsen have been largely repeated and imitated in this ware. Trade-unionism flourishes in Denmark, and strikes are of frequent occurrence.

Commerce.—Formerly the commercial legislation of Denmark was to such a degree restrictive that imported manufactures had to be delivered to the customs, where they were sold by public auction, the proceeds of which the importer received from the custom-houses after a deduction was made for the duty. To this restriction, as regards foreign intercourse, was added a no less injurious system of inland duties impeding the commerce of the different provinces with each other. The want of roads also, and many other disadvantages, tended to keep down the development of both commerce and industry. During the 19th century, however, several commercial treaties were concluded between Denmark and the other powers of Europe, which made the Danish tariff more regular and liberal.

The vexed question, of many centuries’ standing, concerning the claim of Denmark to levy dues on vessels passing through the [Sound] (q.v.), was settled by the abolition of the dues in 1857. The commerce of Denmark is mainly based on home production and home consumption, but a certain quantity of goods is imported with a view to re-exportation, for which the free port and bonded warehouses at Copenhagen give facilities. In modern times the value of Danish commerce greatly increased, being doubled in the last twenty years of the 19th century, and exceeding a total of fifty millions sterling. The value of export is exceeded as a whole by that of import in the proportion, roughly, of 1 to 1.35. By far the most important articles of export may be classified as articles of food of animal origin, a group which covers the vast export trade in the dairy produce, especially butter, for which Denmark is famous. The value of the butter for export reaches nearly 40% of the total value of Danish exports. A small proportion of the whole is imported chiefly from Russia (also Siberia) and Sweden and re-exported as of foreign origin. The production of margarine is large, but not much is exported, margarine being largely consumed in Denmark instead of butter, which is exported. Next to butter the most important article of Danish export is bacon, and huge quantities of eggs are also exported. Exports of less value, but worthy of special notice, are vegetables and wool, bones and tallow, also dairy machinery, and finally cement, the production of which is a growing industry. The classes of articles of food of animal origin, and living animals, are the only ones of which the exportation exceeds the importation; with regard to all other goods, the reverse is the case. In the second of these classes the most important export is home-bred horned cattle. The trade in live sheep and swine, which was formerly important, has mostly been converted into a dead-meat trade. A proportionally large importation of timber is caused by the scarcity of native timber suitable for building purposes, the plantations of firs and pines being insufficient to produce the quantity required, and the quality of the wood being inferior beyond the age of about forty years. The large importation of coal, minerals and metals, and goods made from them is likewise caused by the natural poverty of the country in these respects.

Denmark carries on its principal import trade with Germany, Great Britain and the United States of America, in this order, the proportions being about 30, 20 and 16% respectively of the total. Its principal export trade is with Great Britain, Germany and Sweden, the percentage of the whole being 60, 18 and 10. With Russia, Norway and France (in this order) general trade is less important, but still large. A considerable proportion of Denmark’s large commercial fleet is engaged in the carrying trade between foreign, especially British, ports.

Under a law of the 4th of May 1907 it was enacted that the metric system of weights and measures should come into official use in three years from that date, and into general use in five years.

Money and Banking.—The unit of the Danish monetary system, as of the Swedish and Norwegian, is the krone (crown), equal to 1s. 11⁄3d., which is divided into 100 öre; consequently 7½ öre are equal to one penny. Since 1873 gold has been the standard, and gold pieces of 20 and 10 kroner are coined, but not often met with, as the public prefers bank-notes. The principal bank is the National Bank at Copenhagen, which is the only one authorized to issue notes. These are of the value of 10, 50, 100 and 500 kr. Next in importance are the Danske Landmands Bank, the Handels Bank and the Private Bank, all at Copenhagen. The provincial banks are very numerous; many of them are at the same time savings banks. Their rate of interest, with few exceptions, is 3½ to 4%. There exist, besides, in Denmark several mutual loan associations (Kreditforeninger), whose business is the granting of loans on mortgage. Registration of mortgages is compulsory in Denmark, and the system is extremely simple, a fact which has been of the greatest importance for the improvement of the country. There are comparatively large institutions for insurance of all kinds in Denmark. The largest office for life insurance is a state institution. By law of the 9th of April 1891 a system of old-age pensions was established for the benefit of persons over sixty years of age.

Government.—Denmark is a limited monarchy, according to the law of 1849, revised in 1866. The king shares his power with the parliament (Rigsdag), which consists of two chambers, the Landsthing and the Folkething, but the constitution contains no indication of any difference in their attributes. The Landsthing, or upper house, however, is evidently intended to form the conservative element in the constitutional machinery. While the 114 members of the Folkething (House of Commons) are elected for three years in the usual way by universal suffrage, 12 out of the 66 members of the Landsthing are life members nominated by the crown. The remaining 54 members of the Landsthing are returned for eight years according to a method of proportionate representation by a body of deputy electors. Of these deputies one-half are elected in the same way as members of the Folkething, without any property qualification for the voters; the other half of the deputy electors are chosen in the towns by those who during the last preceding year were assessed on a certain minimum of income, or paid at least a certain amount in rates and taxes. In the rural districts the deputy electors returned by election are supplemented by an equal number of those who have paid the highest amounts in taxes and county rates together. In this manner a representation is secured for fairly large minorities, and what is considered a fair share of influence on public affairs given to those who contribute the most to the needs of the state. The franchise is held by every male who has reached his thirtieth year, subject to independence of public charity and certain other circumstances. A candidate for either house of the Rigsdag must have passed the age of twenty-five. Members are paid ten kroner each day of the session and are allowed travelling expenses. The houses meet each year on the first Monday in October. The constitutional theory of the Folkething is that of one member for every 16,000 inhabitants. The Faeröe islands, which form an integral part of the kingdom of Denmark in the wider sense, are represented in the Danish parliament, but not the other dependencies of the Danish crown, namely Iceland, Greenland and the West Indian islands of St Thomas, St John and St Croix. The budget is considered by the Folkething at the beginning of each session. The revenue and expenditure average annually about £4,700,000. The principal items of revenue are customs and excise, land and house tax, stamps, railways, legal fees, the state lottery and death duties. A considerable reserve fund is maintained to meet emergencies. The public debt is about £13,500,000 and is divided into an internal debt, bearing interest generally at 3½%, and a foreign debt (the larger), with interest generally at 3%. The revenue and expenditure of the Faeröes are included in the budget for Denmark proper, but Iceland and the West Indies have their separate budgets. The Danish treasury receives nothing from these possessions; on the contrary, Iceland receives an annual grant, and the West Indian islands have been heavily subsidized by the Danish finances to assist the sugar industry. The administration of [Greenland] (q.v.) entails an annual loss which is posted on the budget of the ministry of finances. The state council (Statsraad) includes the presidency of the council and ministries of war, and marine, foreign affairs, the interior, justice, finance, public institution and ecclesiastical, agriculture and public works.

Local Government.—For administrative purposes the country is divided into eighteen counties (Amter, singular Amt), as follows. (1) Covering the islands of Zealand and lesser adjacent islands, Copenhagen, Frederiksborg, Holbaek, Sorö, Praestö. (2) Covering the islands of Laaland and Falster, Maribo. (3) Covering Fünen, Langeland and adjacent islets, Svendborg, Odense. (4) On the mainland, Hjörring, Aalborg, Thisted, Ringkjöbing, Viborg, Randers, Aarhus, Vejle, Ribe. (5) Bornholm. The principal civil officer in each of these is the Amtmand. Local affairs are managed by the Amstraad and Sogneraad, corresponding to the English county council and parish council. These institutions date from 1841, but they have undergone several modifications since. The members of these councils are elected on a system similar to that applied to the elections for the Landsthing. The same is the case with the provincial town councils. That of Copenhagen is elected by those who are rated on an income of at least 400 kroner (£22). The burgomasters are appointed by the crown, except at Copenhagen, where they are elected by the town council, subject to royal approbation. The financial position of the municipalities in Denmark is generally good. The ordinary budget of Copenhagen amounts to about £1,100,000 a year.

Justice.—For the administration of justice Denmark is divided into herreds or hundreds; as, however, they are mostly of small extent, several are generally served by one judge (herredsfoged); the townships are likewise separate jurisdictions, each with a byfoged. There are 126 such local judges, each of whom deals with all kinds of cases arising in his district, and is also at the head of the police. There are two intermediary Courts of Appeal (Overret), one in Copenhagen, another in Viborg; the Supreme Court of Appeal (Höjesteret) sits at Copenhagen. In the capital the different functions are more divided. There is also a Court of Commerce and Navigation, on which leading members of the trading community serve as assessors. In the country, Land Commissions similarly constituted deal with many questions affecting agricultural holdings. A peculiarity of the Danish system is that, with few exceptions, no civil cause can be brought before a court until an attempt has been made at effecting an amicable settlement. This is mostly done by so-called Committees of Conciliation, but in some cases by the court itself before commencing formal judicial proceedings. In this manner three-fifths of all the causes are settled, and many which remain unsettled are abandoned by the plaintiffs. Sanitary matters are under the control of a Board of Health. The whole country is divided into districts, in each of which a medical man is appointed with a salary, who is under the obligation to attend to poor sick and assist the authorities in medical matters, inquests, &c. The relief of the poor is well organized, mostly on the system of out-door relief. Many workhouses have been established for indigent persons capable of work. There are also many almshouses and similar institutions.

Army and Navy.—The active army consists of a life guard battalion and 10 infantry regiments of 3 battalions each, infantry, 5 cavalry regiments of 3 squadrons each, 12 field batteries (now re-armed with a Krupp Q.F. equipment), 3 battalions of fortress artillery and 6 companies of engineers, with in addition various local troops and details. The peace strength of permanent troops, without the annual contingent of recruits, is about 13,500 officers and men, the annual contingent of men trained two or three years with the colours about 22,500, and the annual contingent of special reservists (men trained for brief periods) about 17,000. Thus the number of men maintained under arms (without calling up the reserves) is as high as 75,000 during certain periods of the year and averages nearly 60,000. Reservists who have definitively left the colours are recalled for short refresher trainings, the number of men so trained in 1907 being about 80,000. The field army on a war footing, without depot troops, garrison troops and reservists, would be about 50,000 strong, but by constituting new cadres at the outbreak of war and calling up the reserves it could be more than doubled, and as a matter of fact nearly 120,000 men were with the colours in the manœuvre season in 1907. The term of service is eight years in the active army and its reserves and eight years in the second line. The armament of the infantry is the Krag-jorgensen of .314 in. calibre, model 1889, that of the field artillery a 7.5 cm. Krupp Q.F. equipment, model 1902. The navy consists of 6 small battleships, 3 coast defence armour-clads, 5 protected cruisers, 5 gun-boats, and 24 torpedo craft.

Religion.—The national or state church of Denmark is officially styled “Evangelically Reformed,” but is popularly described as Lutheran. The king must belong to it. There is complete religious toleration, but though most of the important Christian communities are represented their numbers are very small. The Mormon apostles for a considerable time made a special raid upon the Danish peasantry and a few hundreds profess this faith. There are seven dioceses, Fünen, Laaland and Falster, Aarhus, Aalborg, Viborg and Ribe, while the primate is the bishop of Zealand, and resides at Copenhagen, but his cathedral is at Roskilde. The bishops have no political function by reason of their office, although they may, and often do, take a prominent part in politics. The greater part of the pastorates comprise more than one parish. The benefices are almost without exception provided with good residences and glebes, and the tithes, &c., generally afford a comfortable income. The bishops have fixed salaries in lieu of tithes appropriated by the state.

Education and Arts.—The educational system of Denmark is maintained at a high standard. The instruction in primary schools is gratuitous. Every child is bound to attend the parish school at least from the seventh to the thirteenth year, unless the parents can prove that it receives suitable instruction in other ways. The schools are under the immediate control of school boards appointed by the parish councils, but of which the incumbent of the parish is ex-officio member; superior control is exercised by the Amtmand, the rural dean, and the bishop, under the Minister for church and education. Secondary public schools are provided in towns, in which moderate school fees are paid. There are also public grammar-schools. Nearly all schools are day-schools. There are only two public schools, which, though on a much smaller scale, resemble the great English schools, namely, those of Sorö and Herlufsholm, both founded by private munificence. Private schools are generally under a varying measure of public control. The university is at [Copenhagen] (q.v.). Amongst numerous other institutions for the furtherance of science and training of various kinds may be mentioned the large polytechnic schools; the high school for agriculture and veterinary art; the royal library; the royal society of sciences; the museum of northern antiquities; the society of northern antiquaries, &c. The art museums of Denmark are not considerable, except the museum of Thorvaldsen, at Copenhagen, but much is done to provide first-rate training in the fine arts and their application to industry through the Royal Academy of Arts, and its schools. Finally, it may be mentioned that a sum proportionately large is available from public funds and regular parliamentary grants for furthering science and arts by temporary subventions to students, authors, artists and others of insufficient means, in order to enable them to carry out particular works, to profit by foreign travel, &c. The principal scientific societies and institutions are detailed under Copenhagen. During the earlier part of the 19th century not a few men could be mentioned who enjoyed an exceptional reputation in various departments of science, and Danish scientists continue to contribute their full share to the advancement of knowledge. The society of sciences, that of northern antiquaries, the natural history and the botanical societies, &c., publish their transactions and proceedings, but the Naturhistorisk Tidsskrift, of which 14 volumes with 259 plates were published (1861-1884), and which was in the foremost rank in its department, ceased with the death in 1884 of the editor, the distinguished zoologist, I. C. Schiödte. Another extremely valuable publication of wide general interest, the Meddelelser om Grönland, is published by the commission for the exploration of Greenland. What may be called the modern “art” current, with its virtues and vices, is as strong in Denmark as in England. Danish sculpture will be always famous, if only through the name of Thorvaldsen. In architecture the prevailing fashion is a return to the style of the first half of the 17th century, called the Christian IV. style; but in this branch of art no marked excellence has been obtained.

Authorities.—J. P. Trap, Statistisk Topographisk Beskrivelse af Kongeriget Danmark (Copenhagen, 1859-1860, 3 vols., 2nd ed., 1872-1879); V. Falbe-Hansen and W. Scharling, Danmarks Statistik (Copenhagen, 1878-1891, 6 vols.). (Various writers) Vort Folk i det nittende Aarhundrede (Copenhagen, 1899 et seq.), illustrated; J. Carlsen, H. Olrik and C. N. Starcke, Le Danemark (Copenhagen, 1900), 700 pp.; illustrated, published in connexion with the Paris Exhibition. Statistisk Aarbog (1896, &c.). Annual publication, and other publications of Statens Statistiske Bureau, Copenhagen; Annuaire météorologique, Danish Meteorological Institution, Copenhagen; E. Löffler, Dänemarks Natur and Volk (Copenhagen, 1905); Margaret Thomas, Denmark Past and Present (London, 1902).

(C. A. G.; O. J. R. H.)

History

Ancient.—Our earliest knowledge of Denmark is derived from Pliny, who speaks of three islands named “Skandiai,” a name which is also applied to Sweden. He says nothing about the inhabitants of these islands, but tells us more about the Jutish peninsula, or Cimbric Chersonese as he calls it. He places the Saxons on the neck, above them the Sigoulones, Sabaliggoi and Kobandoi, then the Chaloi, then above them the Phoundousioi, then the Charondes and finally the Kimbroi. He also mentions the three islands called Alokiai, at the northern end of the peninsula. This would point to the fact that the Limfjord was then open at both ends, and agree with Adam of Bremen (iv. 16), who also speaks of three islands called Wendila, Morse and Thud. The Cimbri and Charydes are mentioned in the Monumentum Ancyranum as sending embassies to Augustus in A.D. 5. The Promontorium Cimbrorum is spoken of in Pliny, who says that the Sinus Codanus lies between it and Mons Saevo. The latter place is probably to be found in the high-lying land on the N.E. coast of Germany, and the Sinus Codanus must be the S.W. corner of the Baltic, and not the whole sea. Pomponius Mela says that the Cimbri and Teutones dwelt on the Sinus Codanus, the latter also in Scandinavia (or Sweden). The Romans believed that these Cimbri and Teutones were the same as those who invaded Gaul and Italy at the end of the 2nd century B.C. The Cimbri may probably be traced in the province of Aalborg, formerly known as Himmerland; the Teutones, with less certainty, may be placed in Thyth or Thyland, north of the Limfjord. No further reference to these districts is found till towards the close of the migration period, about the beginning of the 6th century, when the [Heruli] (q.v.), a nation dwelling in or near the basin of the Elbe, were overthrown by the Langobardi. According to Procopius (Bellum Gothicum, ii. 15), a part of them made their way across the “desert of the Slavs,” through the lands of the Warni and the Danes to Thoule (i.e. Sweden). This is the first recorded use of the name “Danes.” It occurs again in Gregory of Tours (Historiae Francorum, iii. 3) in connexion with an irruption of a Götish (loosely called Danish) fleet into the Netherlands (c. 520). From this time the use of the name is fairly common. The heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons may carry the name further back, though probably it is not very ancient, at all events on the mainland.

According to late Danish tradition Denmark now consisted of Vitheslaeth (i.e. Zealand, Möen, Falster and Laaland), Jutland (with Fyen) and Skaane. Jutland was acquired by Dan, the eponymous ancestor of the Danes. He also won Skaane, including the modern provinces of Halland, Kristianstad, Malmöhus and Blekinge, and these remained part of Denmark until the middle of the 17th century. These three divisions always remained more or less distinct, and the Danish kings had to be recognized at Lund, Ringsted and Viborg, but Zealand was from time immemorial the centre of government, and Lejre was the royal seat and national sanctuary. According to tradition this dates from the time of Skiöldr, the eponymous ancestor of the Danish royal family of Skiöldungar. He was a son of Othin and husband of the goddess Gefjon, who created Zealand. Anglo-Saxon tradition also speaks of Scyld (i.e. Skiöldr), who was regarded as the ancestor of both the Danish and English royal families, and it represented him as coming as a child of unknown origin in a rudderless boat. There can be little doubt that from a remote antiquity Zealand had been a religious sanctuary, and very probably the god Nerthus was worshipped here by the Angli and other tribes as described in Tacitus (Germania, c. 40). The Lejre sanctuary was still in existence in the time of Thietmar of Merseburg (i. 9), at the beginning of the 11th century.

In Scandinavian tradition the next great figure is Fróðe the peace-king, but it is not before the 5th century that we meet with the names of any kings which can be regarded as definitely historical. In Beowulf we hear of a Danish king Healfdene, who had three sons, Heorogar, Hrothgar and Halga. The hero Beowulf comes to the court of Hrothgar from the land of the Götar, where Hygelac is king. This Hygelac is undoubtedly to be identified with the Chochilaicus, king of the Danes (really Götar) who, as mentioned above, made a raid against the Franks c. 520. Beowulf himself won fame in this campaign, and by the aid of this definite chronological datum we can place the reign of Healfdene in the last half of the 5th century, and that of Hrothgar’s nephew Hrothwulf, son of Halga, about the middle of the 6th century. Hrothgar and Halga correspond to Saxo’s Hroar and Helgi, while Hrothwulf is the famous Rolvo or Hrólfr Kraki of Danish and Norse saga. There is probably some historical truth in the story that Heoroweard or Hiörvarðr was responsible for the death of Hrólfr Kraki. Possibly a still earlier king of Denmark was Sigarr or Sigehere, who has won lasting fame from the story of his daughter Signy and her lover Hagbarðr.

From the middle of the 6th to the beginning of the 8th century we know practically nothing of Danish history. There are numerous kings mentioned in Saxo, but it is impossible to identify them historically. We have mention at the beginning of the 8th century of a Danish king Ongendus (cf. O. E. Ongenþeow) who received a mission led by St Willibrord, and it was probably about this time that there flourished a family of whom tradition records a good deal. The founder of this line was Ivarr Viðfaðmi of Skaane, who became king of Sweden. His daughter Auðr married one Hroerekr and became the mother of Haraldr Hilditönn. The genealogy of Haraldr is given differently in Saxo, but there can be no doubt of his historical existence. In his time it is said that the land was divided into four kingdoms—Skaane, Zealand, Fyen and Jutland. After a reign of great splendour Haraldr met his death in the great battle of Bråvalla (Bravík in Östergötland), where he was opposed by his nephew Ring, king of Sweden.

The battle probably took place about the year 750. Fifty years later the Danes begin to be mentioned with comparative frequency in continental annals. From 777-798 we have mention of a certain Sigifridus as king of the Danes, and then in 804 his name is replaced by that of one Godefridus, This Godefridus is the Godefridus-Guthredus of Saxo, and is to be identified also with Guðröðr the Yngling, king in Vestfold in Norway. He came into conflict with Charlemagne, and was preparing a great expedition against him when he was killed by one of his own followers (c. 810). He was succeeded by his brother Hemmingus, but the latter died in 812 and there was a disputed succession. The two claimants were “Sigefridus nepos Godefridi regis” and “Anulo nepos Herioldi quondam regis” (i.e. probably Haraldr Hilditönn). A great battle took place in which both claimants were slain, but the party of Anulo (O.N. Áli) were victorious and appointed as kings Anulo’s brothers Herioldus and Reginfridus. They soon paid a visit to Vestfold, “the extreme district of their realm, whose peoples and chief men were refusing to be made subject to them,” and on their return had trouble with the sons of Godefridus. The latter expelled them from their kingdom, and in 814 Reginfridus fell in a vain attempt to regain it. Herioldus now received the support of the emperor, and after several unsuccessful attempts a compromise was effected in 819 when the parties agreed to share the realm. In 820 Herioldus was baptized at Mainz and received from the emperor a grant of Riustringen in N.E. Friesland. In 827 he was expelled from his kingdom, but St Anskar, who had been sent with Herioldus to preach Christianity, remained at his post. In 836 we find one Horic as king of the Danes; he was probably a son of Godefridus. During his reign there was trouble with the emperor as to the overlordship of Frisia. In the meantime Herioldus remained on friendly terms with Lothair and received a further grant of Walcheren and the neighbouring districts. In 850 Horic was attacked by his own nephews and compelled to share the kingdom with them, while in 852 Herioldus was charged with treachery and slain by the Franks. In 854 a revolution took place in Denmark itself. Horic’s nephew Godwin, returning from exile with a large following of Northmen, overthrew his uncle in a three days’ battle in which all members of the royal house except one boy are said to have perished. This boy now became king as “Horicus junior.” Of his reign we know practically nothing. The next kings mentioned are Sigafrid and Halfdane, who were sons of the great Viking leader Ragnarr Loðbrok. There is also mention of a third king named Godefridus. The exact chronology and relationship of these kings it is impossible to determine, but we know that Healfdene died in Scotland in 877, while Godefridus was treacherously slain by Henry of Saxony in 885. During these and the next few years there is mention of more than one king of the names Sigefridus and Godefridus: the most important event associated with their names is that two kings Sigefridus and Godefridus fell in the great battle on the Dyle in 891.

We now have the names of several kings, Heiligo, Olaph (of Swedish origin), and his sons Chnob and Gurth. Then come a Danish ruler Sigeric, followed by Hardegon, son of Swein, coming from Norway. At some date after 916 we find mention of one “Hardecnuth Urm” ruling among the Danes. Adam of Bremen, from whom these details come, was himself uncertain whether “so many kings or rather tyrants of the Danes ruled together or succeeded one another at short intervals.” Hardecnuth Urm is to be identified with the famous Gorm the old, who married Thyra Danmarkarbót: their son was Harold Bluetooth.

(A. Mw.)

Medieval and Modern.—Danish history first becomes authentic at the beginning of the 9th century. The Danes, the southernmost branch of the Scandinavian family, referred to by Alfred (c. 890) as occupying Jutland, the islands and Scania, were, in 777, strong enough to defy the Frank empire by harbouring its fugitives. Five years later we find a Danish king, Sigfrid, among the princes who assembled at Lippe in 782 to make their submission to Charles the Great. About the same time Willibrord, from his see at Utrecht, made an unsuccessful attempt to convert the “wild Danes.” These three salient facts are practically the sum of our knowledge of early Danish history previous to the Viking period. That mysterious upheaval, most generally attributed to a love of adventure, stimulated by the pressure of over-population, began with the ravaging of Lindisfarne in 793, and virtually terminated with the establishment of Rollo in Normandy (911). There can be little doubt that the earlier of these expeditions were from Denmark, though the term Northmen was originally applied indiscriminately to all these terrible visitants from the unknown north. The rovers who first chastened and finally colonized southern England and Normandy were certainly Danes.

The Viking raids were one of the determining causes of the establishment of the feudal monarchies of western Europe, but the untameable freebooters were themselves finally Conversion of the Danes. subdued by the Church. At first sight it seems curious that Christianity should have been so slow to reach Denmark. But we must bear in mind that one very important consequence of the Viking raids was to annihilate the geographical remoteness which had hitherto separated Denmark from the Christian world. Previously to 793 there lay between Jutland and England a sea which no keel had traversed within the memory of man. The few and peaceful traders who explored those northern waters were careful never to lose sight of the Saxon, Frisian and Frankish shores during their passage. Nor was communication with the west by land any easier. For generations the obstinately heathen Saxons had lain, a compact and impenetrable mass, between Scandinavia and the Frank empire, nor were the measures adopted by Charles the Great for the conversion of the Saxons to the true faith very much to the liking of their warlike Danish neighbours on the other side. But by the time that Charles had succeeded in “converting” the Saxons, the Viking raids were already at their height, and though generally triumphant, necessity occasionally taught the Northmen the value of concessions. Thus it was the desire to secure his Jutish kingdom which induced Harold Klak, in 826, to sail up the Rhine to Ingelheim, and there accept baptism, with his wife, his son Godfred and 400 of his suite, acknowledging the emperor as his overlord, and taking back with him to Denmark the missionary monk Ansgar. Ansgar preached in Denmark from 826 to 861, but it was not till after the subsidence of the Viking raids that Adaldag, archbishop of Hamburg, could open a new and successful mission, which resulted in the erection of the bishoprics of Schleswig, Ribe and Aarhus (c. 948), though the real conversion of Denmark must be dated from the baptism of King Harold Bluetooth (960).

Meanwhile the Danish monarchy was attempting to aggrandize itself at the expense of the Germans, the Wends who then occupied the Baltic littoral as far as the Vistula, and Danish expansion. the other Scandinavian kingdoms. Harold Bluetooth (940-986) subdued German territory south of the Eider, extended the Danevirke, Denmark’s great line of defensive fortifications, to the south of Schleswig and planted the military colony of Julin or Jomsborg, at the mouth of the Oder. Part of Norway was first seized after the united Danes and Swedes had defeated and slain King Olaf Trygvessön at the battle of Svolde (1000); and between 1028 and 1035 Canute the Great added the whole kingdom to his own; but the union did not long survive him. Equally short-lived was the Danish dominion in England, which originated in a great Viking expedition of King Sweyn I.

The period between the death of Canute the Great and the accession of Valdemar I. was a troublous time for Denmark. The kingdom was harassed almost incessantly, and Consolidation of the kingdom under the Valdemars, 1157-1251. more than once partitioned, by pretenders to the throne, who did not scruple to invoke the interference of the neighbouring monarchs, and even of the heathen Wends, who established themselves for a time on the southern islands. Yet, throughout this chaos, one thing made for future stability, and that was the growth and consolidation of a national church, which culminated in the erection of the archbishopric of Lund (c. 1104) and the consequent ecclesiastical independence of Denmark. The third archbishop of Lund was Absalon (1128-1201), Denmark’s first great statesman, who so materially assisted Valdemar I. (1157-1182) and Canute VI. (1182-1202) to establish the dominion of Denmark over the Baltic, mainly at the expense of the Wends. The policy of Absalon was continued on a still vaster scale by Valdemar II. (1202-1241), at a time when the German kingdom was too weak and distracted to intervene to save its seaboard; but the treachery of a vassal and the loss of one great battle sufficed to plunge this unwieldy, unsubstantial empire in the dust. (See [Valdemar] I., II., and [Absalon].)

Yet the age of the Valdemars was one of the most glorious in Danish history, and it is of political importance as marking a turning-point. Favourable circumstances had, from the first, given the Danes the lead in Scandinavia. They held the richest and therefore the most populous lands, and geographically they were nearer than their neighbours to western civilization. Under the Valdemars, however, the ancient patriarchal system was merging into a more complicated development, of separate estates. The monarchy, now dominant, and far wealthier than before, rested upon the support of the great nobles, many of whom held their lands by feudal tenure, and constituted the royal Raad, or council. The clergy, fortified by royal privileges, had also risen to influence; but celibacy and independence of the civil courts tended to make them more and more of a separate caste. Education was spreading. Numerous Danes, lay as well as clerical, regularly frequented the university of Paris. There were signs too of the rise of a vigorous middle class, due to the extraordinary development of the national resources (chiefly the herring fisheries, horse-breeding and cattle-rearing) and the foundation of gilds, the oldest of which, the Edslag of Schleswig, dates from the early 12th century. The bonder, or yeomen, were prosperous and independent, with well-defined rights. Danish territory extended over 60,000 sq. kilometres, or nearly double its present area; the population was about 700,000; and 160,000 men and 1400 ships were available for national defence.

On the death of Valdemar II. a period of disintegration ensued. Valdemar’s son, Eric Plovpenning, succeeded him as king; but his near kinsfolk also received huge appanages, and Period of disintegration. family discords led to civil wars. Throughout the 13th and part of the 14th century, the struggle raged between the Danish kings and the Schleswig dukes; and of six monarchs no fewer than three died violent deaths. Superadded to these troubles was a prolonged struggle for supremacy between the popes and the crown, and, still more serious, the beginning of a breach between the kings and nobles, which had important constitutional consequences. The prevalent disorder had led to general lawlessness, in consequence of which the royal authority had been widely extended; and a strong opposition gradually arose which protested against the abuses of this authority. In 1282 the nobles extorted from King Eric Glipping the first Haandfaestning, or charter, which recognized the Danehof, or national assembly, as a regular branch of the administration and gave guarantees against further usurpations. Christopher II. (1319-1331) was constrained to grant another charter considerably reducing the prerogative, increasing the privileges of the upper classes, and at the same time reducing the burden of taxation. But aristocratic licence proved as mischievous as royal incompetence; and on the death of Christopher II. the whole kingdom was on the verge of dissolution. Eastern Denmark was in the hands of one magnate; another magnate held Jutland and Fünen in pawn; the dukes of Schleswig were practically independent of the Danish crown; the Scandian provinces had (1332) surrendered themselves to Sweden.

It was reserved for another Valdemar ([Valdemar IV]., q.v.) to reunite and weld together the scattered members of his heritage. His long reign (1340-1375) resulted in the re-establishment Valdemar IV., 1340-1375. of Denmark as the great Baltic power. It is also a very interesting period of her social and constitutional development. This great ruler, who had to fight, year after year, against foreign and domestic foes, could, nevertheless, always find time to promote the internal prosperity of his much afflicted country. For the dissolution of Denmark, during the long anarchy, had been internal as well as external. The whole social fabric had been convulsed and transformed. The monarchy had been undermined. The privileged orders had aggrandized themselves at the expense of the community. The yeoman class had sunk into semi-serfdom. In a word, the natural cohesion of the Danish nation had been loosened and there was no security for law and justice. To make an end of this universal lawlessness Valdemar IV. was obliged, in the first place, to re-establish the royal authority by providing the crown with a regular and certain income. This he did by recovering the alienated royal demesnes in every direction, and from henceforth the annual landgilde, or rent, paid by the royal tenants, became the monarch’s principal source of revenue. Throughout his reign Valdemar laboured incessantly to acquire as much land as possible. Moreover, the old distinction between the king’s private estate and crown property henceforth ceases; all such property was henceforth regarded as the hereditary possession of the Danish crown.

The national army was also re-established on its ancient footing. Not only were the magnates sharply reminded that they held their lands on military tenure, but the towns were also made to contribute both men and ships, and peasant levies, especially archers, were recruited from every parish. Everywhere indeed Valdemar intervened personally. The smallest detail was not beneath his notice. Thus he invented nets for catching wolves and built innumerable water-mills, “for he would not let the waters run into the sea before they had been of use to the community.” Under such a ruler law and order were speedily re-established. The popular tribunals regained their authority, and a supreme court of justice, Det Kongelige Retterting, presided over by Valdemar himself, not only punished the unruly and guarded the prerogatives of the crown, but also protected the weak and defenceless from the tyranny of the strong. Nor did Valdemar hesitate to meet his people in public and periodically render an account of his stewardship. He voluntarily resorted to the old practice of summoning national assemblies, the so-called Danehof. At the first of these assemblies held at Nyborg, Midsummer Day 1314, the bishops and councillors solemnly promised that the commonalty should enjoy all the ancient rights and privileges conceded to them by Valdemar II., and the wise provision that the Danehof should meet annually considerably strengthened its authority. The keystone to the whole constitutional system was “King Valdemar’s Charter” issued in May 1360 at the Rigsmöde, or parliament, held at Kalundborg in May 1360. This charter was practically an act of national pacification, the provisions of which king and people together undertook to enforce for the benefit of the commonweal.

The work of Valdemar was completed and consolidated by his illustrious daughter Margaret (1375-1412), whose crowning achievement was the Union of Kalmar (1397), whereby The Union of Kalmar, 1397. she sought to combine the three northern kingdoms into a single state dominated by Denmark. In any case Denmark was bound to be the only gainer by the Union. Her population was double that of the two other kingdoms combined, and neither Margaret nor her successors observed the stipulations that each country should retain its own laws and customs and be ruled by natives only. In both Norway and Sweden, therefore, the Union was highly unpopular. The Norwegian aristocracy was too weak, however, seriously to endanger the Union at any time, but Sweden was, from the first, decidedly hostile to Margaret’s whole policy. Nevertheless during her lifetime the system worked fairly well; but her pupil and successor, Eric of Pomerania, was unequal to the burden of empire and embroiled himself both with his neighbours and his subjects. The Hanseatic League, whose political ascendancy had been shaken by the Union, enraged by Eric’s efforts to bring in the Dutch as commercial rivals, as well as by the establishment of the Sound tolls, materially assisted the Holsteiners in their twenty-five years’ war with Denmark (1410-35), and Eric VII. himself was finally deposed (1439) in favour of his nephew, Christopher of Bavaria.

The deposition of Eric marks another turning-point in Danish history. It was the act not of the people but of the Rigsraad (Senate), which had inherited the authority of the Growth of the power of the nobles. ancient Danehof and, after the death of Margaret, grew steadily in power at the expense of the crown. As the government grew more and more aristocratic, the position of the peasantry steadily deteriorated. It is under Christopher that we first hear, for instance, of the Vornedskab, or patriarchal control of the landlords over their tenants, a system which degenerated into rank slavery. In Jutland, too, after the repression, in 1441, of a peasant rising, something very like serfdom was introduced.

On the death of Christopher III. without heirs, in 1448, the Rigsraad elected his distant cousin, Count Christian of Oldenburg, king; but Sweden preferred Karl Knutsson (Charles Break-up of the Union. “VIII.”), while Norway finally combined with Denmark, at the conference of Halmstad, in a double election which practically terminated the Union, though an agreement was come to that the survivor of the two kings should reign over all three kingdoms. Norway, subsequently, threw in her lot definitively with Denmark. Dissensions resulting in interminable civil wars had, even before the Union, exhausted the resources of the poorest of the three northern realms; and her ruin was completed by the ravages of the Black Death, which wiped out two-thirds of her population. Unfortunately, too, for Norway’s independence, the native gentry had gradually died out, and were succeeded by immigrant Danish fortune-hunters; native burgesses there were none, and the peasantry were mostly thralls; so that, excepting the clergy, there was no patriotic class to stand up for the national liberties.

Far otherwise was it in the wealthier kingdom of Sweden. Here the clergy and part of the nobility were favourable to the Union; but the vast majority of the people hated it as a foreign usurpation. Matters were still further complicated by the continual interference of the Hanseatic League; and Christian I. (1448-1481) and Hans (1481-1513), whose chief merit it is to have founded the Danish fleet, were, during the greater part of their reigns, only nominally kings of Sweden. Hans also received in fief the territory of Dietmarsch from the emperor, but, in attempting to subdue the hardy Dietmarschers, suffered a crushing defeat in which the national banner called “Danebrog” fell into the enemy’s hands (1500). Moreover, this defeat led to a successful rebellion in Sweden, and a long and ruinous war with Lübeck, terminated by the peace of Malmö, 1512. It was during this war that a strong Danish fleet dominated the Baltic for the first time since the age of the Valdemars.

On the succession of Hans’s son, Christian II. (1513-1523), Margaret’s splendid dream of a Scandinavian empire seemed, finally, about to be realized. The young king, a man Christian II., 1513-1523. of character and genius, had wide views and original ideas. Elected king of Denmark and Norway, he succeeded in subduing Sweden by force of arms; but he spoiled everything at the culmination of his triumph by the hideous crime and blunder known as the Stockholm massacre, which converted the politically divergent Swedish nation into the irreconcilable foe of the unional government (see [Christian II.]). Christian’s contempt of nationality in Sweden is the more remarkable as in Denmark proper he sided with the people against the aristocracy, to his own undoing in that age of privilege and prejudice. His intentions, as exhibited to his famous Landelove (National Code), were progressive and enlightened to an eminent degree; so much so, indeed, that they mystified the people as much as they alienated the patricians; but his actions were often of revolting brutality, and his whole career was vitiated by an incurable double-mindedness which provoked general distrust. Yet there is no doubt that Christian II. was a true patriot, whose ideal it was to weld the three northern kingdoms into a powerful state, independent of all foreign influences, especially of German influence as manifested in the commercial tyranny of the Hansa League. His utter failure was due, partly to the vices of an undisciplined temperament, and partly to the extraordinary difficulties of the most inscrutable period of European history, when the shrewdest heads were at fault and irreparable blunders belonged to the order of the day. That period was the period of the Reformation, which profoundly affected the politics of Scandinavia. Christian II. had always subordinated religion to politics, and was Papist or Lutheran according to circumstances. But, though he treated the Church more like a foe than a friend and was constantly at war with the Curia, he retained the Catholic form of church worship and never seems to have questioned the papal supremacy. On the flight of Christian II. and the election of his uncle, Frederick I. (1523-1533), Frederick I., 1523-1533. The Reformation. the Church resumed her jurisdiction and everything was placed on the old footing. The newly elected and still insecure German king at first remained neutral; but in the autumn of 1525 the current of Lutheranism began to run so strongly in Denmark as to threaten to whirl away every opposing obstacle. This novel and disturbing phenomenon was mainly due to the zeal and eloquence of the ex-monk Hans Tausen and his associates, or disciples, Peder Plad and Sadolin; and, in the autumn of 1526, Tausen was appointed one of the royal chaplains. The three ensuing years were especially favourable for the Reformation, as during that time the king had unlooked-for opportunities for filling the vacant episcopal sees with men after his own heart, and at heart he was a Lutheran. The reformation movement in Denmark was further promoted by Schleswig-Holstein influence. Frederick’s eldest son Duke Christian had, since 1527, resided at Haderslev, where he collected round him Lutheran teachers from Germany, and made his court the centre of the propaganda of the new doctrine. On the other hand, the Odense Recess of the 20th of August 1527, which put both confessions on a footing of equality, remained unrepealed; and so long as it remained in force, the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops, and, consequently, their authority over the “free preachers” (whose ambition convulsed all the important towns of Denmark and aimed at forcibly expelling the Catholic priests from their churches) remained valid, to the great vexation of the reformers. The inevitable ecclesiastical crisis was still further postponed by the superior stress of two urgent political events—Christian II.’s invasion of Norway (1531) and the outbreak, in 1533, of The Count’s War, 1533-36. “Grevens fejde,” or “The Count’s War” (1534-36), the count in question being Christopher of Oldenburg, great-nephew of King Christian I., whom Lübeck and her allies, on the death of Frederick I., raised up against Frederick’s son Christian III. The Catholic party and the lower orders generally took the part of Count Christopher, who acted throughout as the nominee of the captive Christian II., while the Protestant party, aided by the Holstein dukes and Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, sided with Christian III. The war ended with the capture of Copenhagen by the forces of Christian III., on the 29th of July 1536, and the triumph of so devoted a Lutheran sealed the fate of the Roman Catholic Church in Denmark, though even now it was necessary for the victorious king to proceed against the bishops and their friends by a coup d’état, engineered by his German generals the Rantzaus. The Recess of 1536 enacted that the bishops should forfeit their temporal and spiritual authority, and that all their property should be transferred to the crown for the good of the commonwealth. In the following year a Church ordinance, based upon the canons of Luther, Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, was drawn up, submitted to Luther for his approval, and promulgated on the 2nd of September 1537. On the same day seven “superintendents,” including Tausen and Sadolin, all of whom had worked zealously for the cause of the Reformation, were consecrated in place of the dethroned bishops. The position of the superintendents and of the reformed church generally was consolidated by the Articles of Ribe in 1542, and the constitution of the Danish church has practically continued the same to the present day. But Catholicism could not wholly or immediately be dislodged by the teaching of Luther. It had struck deep roots into the habits and feelings of the people, and traces of its survival were distinguishable a whole century after the triumph of the Reformation. Catholicism lingered longest in the cathedral chapters. Here were to be found men of ability proof against the eloquence of Hans Tausen or Peder Plad and quite capable of controverting their theories—men like Povl Helgesen, for instance, indisputably the greatest Danish theologian of his day, a scholar whose voice was drowned amidst the clash of conflicting creeds.

Though the Reformation at first did comparatively little for education,[1] and the whole spiritual life of Denmark was poor and feeble in consequence for at least a generation afterwards, Effects of the Reformation. the change of religion was of undeniable, if temporary, benefit to the state from the political point of view. The enormous increase of the royal revenue consequent upon the confiscation of the property of the Church could not fail to increase the financial stability of the monarchy. In particular the suppression of the monasteries benefited the crown in two ways. The old church had, indeed, frequently rendered the state considerable financial aid, but such voluntary assistance was, from the nature of the case, casual and arbitrary. Now, however, the state derived a fixed and certain revenue from the confiscated lands; and the possession of immense landed property at the same time enabled the crown advantageously to conduct the administration. The gross revenue of the state is estimated to have risen threefold. Before the Reformation the annual revenue from land averaged 400,000 bushels of corn; after the confiscations of Church property it averaged 1,200,000 bushels. The possession of a full purse materially assisted the Danish government in its domestic administration, which was indeed epoch-making. It enabled Christian III. to pay off his German mercenaries immediately after the religious coup d’état of 1536. It enabled him to prosecute shipbuilding with such energy that, by 1550, the royal fleet numbered at least thirty vessels, which were largely employed as a maritime police in the pirate-haunted Baltic and North Seas. It enabled him to create and remunerate adequately a capable official class, which proved its efficiency under the strictest supervision, and ultimately produced a whole series of great statesmen and admirals like Johan Friis, Peder Oxe, Herluf Trolle and Peder Skram. It is not too much to say that the increased revenue derived from the appropriation of Church property, intelligently applied, gave European influence of Denmark, 1544-1626. Denmark the hegemony of the North during the latter part of Christian III.’s reign, the whole reign of Frederick II. and the first twenty-five years of the reign of Christian IV., a period embracing, roughly speaking, eighty years (1544-1626). Within this period Denmark was indisputably the leading Scandinavian power. While Sweden, even after the advent of Gustavus Vasa, was still of but small account in Europe, Denmark easily held her own in Germany and elsewhere, even against Charles V., and was important enough, in 1553, to mediate a peace between the emperor and Saxony. Twice during this period Denmark and Sweden measured their strength in the open field, on the first occasion in the “Scandinavian Seven Years’ War” (1562-70), on the second in the “Kalmar War” (1611-13), and on both occasions Denmark prevailed, though the temporary advantage she gained was more than neutralized by the intense feeling of hostility which the unnatural wars, between the two kindred peoples of Scandinavia, left behind them. Still, the fact remains that, for a time, Denmark was one of the great powers of Europe. Frederick II., in his later years (1571-1588), aspired to the dominion of all the seas which washed the Scandinavian coasts, and before he died he was able to enforce the rule that all foreign ships should strike their topsails to Danish men-of-war as a token of his right to rule the northern seas. Favourable political circumstances also contributed to this general acknowledgment of Denmark’s maritime greatness. The power of the Hansa had gone; the Dutch were enfeebled by their contest with Spain; England’s sea-power was yet in the making; Spain, still the greatest of the maritime nations, was exhausting her resources in the vain effort to conquer the Dutch. Yet more even than to felicitous circumstances, Denmark owed her short-lived greatness to the great statesmen and administrators whom Frederick II. succeeded in gathering about him. Never before, since the age of Margaret, had Denmark been so well governed, never before had she possessed so many political celebrities nobly emulous for the common good.

Frederick II. was succeeded by his son Christian IV. (April 4, 1588), who attained his majority on the 17th of August 1596, at the age of nineteen. The realm which Christian IV. was Denmark at the accession of Christian IV., 1588. to govern had undergone great changes within the last two generations. Towards the south the boundaries of the Danish state remained unchanged. Levensaa and the Eider still separated Denmark from the Empire. Schleswig was recognized as a Danish fief, in contradistinction to Holstein, which owed vassalage to the Empire. The “kingdom” stretched as far as Kolding and Skedborg, where the “duchy” began; and this duchy since its amalgamation with Holstein by means of a common Landtag, and especially since the union of the dual duchy with the kingdom on almost equal terms in 1533, was, in most respects, a semi-independent state, Denmark, moreover, like Europe in general, was, politically, on the threshold of a transitional period. During the whole course of the 16th century the monarchical form of government was in every large country, with the single exception of Poland, rising on the ruins of feudalism. The great powers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries were to be the strong, highly centralized, hereditary monarchies, like France, Spain and Sweden. There seemed to be no reason why Denmark also should not become a powerful state under the guidance of a powerful monarchy, especially as the sister state of Sweden was developing into a great power under apparently identical conditions. Yet, while Sweden was surely ripening into the dominating power of northern Europe, Denmark had as surely entered upon a period of uninterrupted and apparently incurable decline. What was the cause of this anomaly? Something of course must be allowed for the superior and altogether extraordinary genius of the great princes of the house of Vasa; yet the causes of the decline of Denmark lay far deeper than this. They may roughly be summed up under two heads: the inherent weakness of an elective monarchy, and the absence of that public spirit which is based on the intimate alliance of ruler and ruled. Whilst Gustavus Vasa had leaned upon the Swedish peasantry, in other words upon the bulk of the Swedish nation, which was and continued to be an integral part of the Swedish body-politic, Christian III. on his accession had crushed the middle and lower classes in Denmark and reduced them to political insignificance. Yet it was not the king who benefited by this blunder. The Danish monarchy since the days of Margaret had continued to be purely elective; and a purely elective monarchy at that stage of the political development of Europe was a mischievous anomaly. It signified in the first place that the crown was not the highest power in the state, but was subject to the aristocratic Rigsraad, or council of state. The Rigsraad was the permanent owner of the realm and the crown-lands; the king was only their temporary administrator. If the king died before the election of his successor, the Rigsraad stepped into the king’s place. Moreover, an elective monarchy implied that, at every fresh succession, the king was liable to be bound by a new Haandfaestning, or charter. The election itself might, and did, become a mere formality; but the condition precedent of election, the acceptance of the charter, invariably limiting the royal authority, remained a reality. This period of aristocratic rule, which dates practically from the accession of Frederick I. (1523), and lasted for nearly a century and a half, is known in Danish history as Adelsvaelde, or rule of the nobles.

Again, the king was the ruler of the realm, but over a very large portion of it he had but a slight control. The crown-lands and most of the towns were under his immediate jurisdiction, but by the side of the crown-lands lay the estates of the nobility, which already comprised about one-half of the superficial area of Denmark, and were in many respects independent of the central government both as regards taxation and administration. In a word, the monarchy had to share its dominion with the nobility; and the Danish nobility in the 16th century was one of the most exclusive and selfish aristocracies in Europe, and already far advanced in decadence. Hermetically sealing itself from any intrusion from below, it deteriorated by close and constant intermarriage; and it was already, both morally and intellectually, below the level of the rest of the nation. Yet this very aristocracy, whose claim to consideration was based not upon its own achievements but upon the length of its pedigrees, insisted upon an amplification of its privileges which endangered the economical and political interests of the state and the nation. The time was close at hand when a Danish magnate was to demonstrate that he preferred the utter ruin of his country to any abatement of his own personal dignity.

All below the king and the nobility were generally classified together as “subjects.” Of these lower orders the clergy stood first in the social scale. As a spiritual estate, indeed, it had ceased to exist at the Reformation, though still represented in the Rigsdag or diet. Since then too it had become quite detached from the nobility, which ostentatiously despised the teaching profession. The clergy recruited themselves therefore from the class next below them, and looked more and more to the crown for help and protection as they drew apart from the gentry, who, moreover, as dispensers of patronage, lost no opportunity of appropriating church lands and cutting down tithes.

The burgesses had not yet recovered from the disaster of “Grevens fejde”; but while the towns had become more dependent on the central power, they had at the same time been released from their former vexatious subjection to the local magnates, and could make their voices heard in the Rigsdag, where they were still, though inadequately, represented. Within the Estate of Burgesses itself, too, a levelling process had begun. The old municipal patriciate, which used to form the connecting link between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, had disappeared, and a feeling of common civic fellowship had taken its place. All this tended to enlarge the political views of the burgesses, and was not without its influence on the future. Yet, after all, the prospects of the burgesses depended mainly on economic conditions; and in this respect there was a decided improvement, due to the increasing importance of money and commerce all over Europe, especially as the steady decline of the Hanse towns immediately benefited the trade of Denmark-Norway; Norway by this time being completely merged in the Danish state, and ruled from Copenhagen. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Danish and Norwegian merchants at the end of the 16th century flourished exceedingly, despite the intrusion and competition of the Dutch and the dangers to neutral shipping arising from the frequent wars between England, Spain and the Netherlands.

At the bottom of the social ladder lay the peasants, whose condition had decidedly deteriorated. Only in one respect had they benefited by the peculiar conditions of the 16th century: the rise in the price of corn without any corresponding rise in the land-tax must have largely increased their material prosperity. Yet the number of peasant-proprietors had diminished, while the obligations of the peasantry generally had increased; and, still worse, their obligations were vexatiously indefinite, varying from year to year and even from month to month. They weighed especially heavily on the so-called Ugedasmaend, who were forced to work two or three days a week in the demesne lands. This increase of villenage morally depressed the peasantry, and widened still further the breach between the yeomanry and the gentry. Politically its consequences were disastrous. While in Sweden the free and energetic peasant was a salutary power in the state, which he served with both mind and plough, the Danish peasant was sinking to the level of a bondman. While the Swedish peasants were well represented in the Swedish Riksdag, whose proceedings they sometimes dominated, the Danish peasantry had no political rights or privileges whatever.

Such then, briefly, was the condition of things in Denmark when, in 1588, Christian IV. ascended the throne. Where so much was necessarily uncertain and fluctuating, there was Christian IV., 1588-1648. room for an almost infinite variety of development. Much depended on the character and personality of the young prince who had now taken into his hands the reins of government, and for half a century was to guide the destinies of the nation. In the beginning of his reign the hand of the young monarch, who was nothing if not energetic, made itself felt in every direction. The harbours of Copenhagen, Elsinore and other towns were enlarged; many decaying towns were abolished and many new ones built under more promising conditions, including Christiania, which was founded in August 1624, on the ruins of the ancient city of Oslo. Various attempts were also made to improve trade and industry by abolishing the still remaining privileges of the Hanseatic towns, by promoting a wholesale immigration of skilful and well-to-do Dutch traders and handicraftsmen into Denmark under most favourable conditions, by opening up the rich fisheries of the Arctic seas, and by establishing joint-stock chartered companies both in the East and the West Indies. Copenhagen especially benefited by Christian IV.’s commercial policy. He enlarged and embellished it, and provided it with new harbours and fortifications; in short, did his best to make it the worthy capital of a great empire. But it was in the foreign policy of the government that the royal influence was most perceptible. Unlike Sweden, Denmark had remained outside the great religious-political movements which were the outcome of the Catholic reaction; and the peculiarity of her position made her rather hostile than friendly to the other Protestant states. The possession of the Sound enabled her to close the Baltic against the Western powers; the possession of Norway carried along with it the control of the rich fisheries which were Danish monopolies, and therefore a source of irritation to England and Holland. Denmark, moreover, was above all things a Scandinavian power. While the territorial expansion of Sweden in the near future was a matter of necessity, Denmark had not only attained, but even exceeded, her natural limits. Aggrandizement southwards, at the expense of the German empire, was becoming every year more difficult; and in every other direction she had nothing more to gain. Nay, more, Denmark’s possession of the Scanian provinces deprived Sweden of her proper geographical frontiers. Clearly it was Denmark’s wisest policy to seek a close alliance with Sweden in their common interests, and after the conclusion of the “Kalmar War” the two countries did remain at peace for the next thirty-one years. But the antagonistic interests of the two countries in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War precipitated a fourth contest between them (1643-45), in which Denmark would have been utterly ruined but for the heroism of King Christian IV. and his command of the sea during the crisis of the struggle. Even so, First losses of territory. by the peace of Brömsebro (February 8, 1645) Denmark surrendered the islands of Oesel and Gotland and the provinces of Jemteland and Herjedal (in Norway) definitively, and Halland for thirty years. The freedom from the Sound tolls was by the same treaty also extended to Sweden’s Baltic provinces.

The peace of Brömsebro was the first of the long series of treaties, extending down to our own days, which mark the progressive shrinkage of Danish territory into an irreducible minimum. Sweden’s appropriation of Danish soil had begun, and at the same time Denmark’s power of resisting the encroachments of Sweden was correspondingly reduced. The Danish national debt, too, had risen enormously, while the sources of future income and consequent recuperation had diminished or disappeared. The Sound tolls, for instance, in consequence of the treaties of Brömsebro and Kristianopel (by the latter treaty very considerable concessions were made to the Dutch) had sunk from 400,000 to 140,000 rix-dollars. The political influence of the crown, moreover, had inevitably been weakened, and the conduct of foreign affairs passed from the hands of the king Frederick III., 1648-1670. into the hands of the Rigsraad. On the accession of Frederick III. (1648-1670) moreover, the already diminished royal prerogative was still further curtailed by the Haandfaestning, or charter, which he was compelled to sign. Fear and hatred of Sweden, and the never abandoned hope of recovering the lost provinces, animated king and people alike; but it was Denmark’s crowning misfortune that she possessed at this difficult crisis no statesman of the first rank, no one even approximately comparable with such competitors as Charles X. of Sweden or the “Great Elector” Frederick William of Brandenburg. From the very beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark to the very verge of ruin. The extraordinary details of this dramatic struggle will be found elsewhere (see [Frederick III.], king of Denmark, and [Charles X.], king of Sweden); Peace of Roskilde, 1658. suffice it to say that by the peace of Roskilde (February 26, 1658), Denmark consented to cede the three Scanian provinces, the island of Bornholm and the Norwegian provinces of Baahus and Trondhjem; to renounce all anti-Swedish alliances and to exempt all Swedish vessels, even when carrying foreign goods, from all tolls. These terrible losses were somewhat retrieved by the subsequent treaty of Copenhagen (May 27, 1660) concluded by the Swedish regency with Frederick III. after the failure of Charles X.’s second war against Denmark, a failure chiefly owing to the heroic defence of the Danish capital (1658-60). By this treaty Treaty of Copenhagen, 1660. Sweden gave back the province of Trondhjem and the isle of Bornholm and released Denmark from the most onerous of the obligations of the treaty of Roskilde. In fact the peace of Copenhagen came as a welcome break in an interminable series of disasters and humiliations. Anyhow, it confirmed the independence of the Danish state. On the other hand, if Denmark had emerged from the war with her honour and dignity unimpaired, she had at the same time tacitly surrendered the dominion of the North to her Scandinavian rival.

But the war just terminated had important political consequences, which were to culminate in one of the most curious and interesting revolutions of modern history. In the first Hereditary monarchy established, 1660. place, it marks the termination of the Adelsvaelde, or rule of the nobility. By their cowardice, incapacity, egotism and treachery during the crisis of the struggle, the Danish aristocracy had justly forfeited the respect of every other class of the community, and emerged from the war hopelessly discredited. On the other hand, Copenhagen, proudly conscious of her intrinsic importance and of her inestimable services to the country, whom she had saved from annihilation by her constancy, now openly claimed to have a voice in public affairs. Still higher had risen the influence of the crown. The courage and resource displayed by Frederick III. in the extremity of the national danger had won for “the least expansive of monarchs” an extraordinary popularity.

On the 10th of September 1660, the Rigsdag, which was to repair the ravages of the war and provide for the future, was opened with great ceremony in the Riddersaal of the castle of Copenhagen. The first bill laid before the Estates by the government was to impose an excise tax on the principal articles of consumption, together with subsidiary taxes on cattle, poultry, &c., in return for which the abolition of all the old direct taxes was promised. The nobility at first claimed exemption from taxation altogether, while the clergy and burgesses insisted upon an absolute equality of taxation. There were sharp encounters between the presidents of the contending orders, but the position of the Lower Estates was considerably prejudiced by the dissensions of its various sections. Thus the privileges of the bishops and of Copenhagen profoundly irritated the lower clergy and the unprivileged towns, and made a cordial understanding impossible, till Hans Svane, bishop of Copenhagen, and Hans Nansen the burgomaster, who now openly came forward as the leader of the reform movement, proposed that the privileges which divided the non-noble Estates should be abolished. In accordance with this proposal, the two Lower Estates, on the 16th of September, subscribed a memorandum addressed to the Rigsraad, declaring their willingness to renounce their privileges, provided the nobility did the same; which was tantamount to a declaration that the whole of the clergy and burgesses had made common cause against the nobility. The opposition so formed took the name of the “Conjoined Estates.” The presentation of the memorial provoked an outburst of indignation. But the nobility soon perceived the necessity of complete surrender. On the 30th of September the First Estate abandoned its former standpoint and renounced its privileges, with one unimportant reservation.

The struggle now seemed to be ended, and the financial question having also been settled, the king, had he been so minded, might have dismissed the Estates. But the still more important question of reform was now raised. On the 17th of September the burgesses introduced a bill proposing a new constitution, which was to include local self-government in the towns, the abolition of serfdom, and the formation of a national army. It fell to the ground for want of adequate support; but another proposition, the fruit of secret discussion between the king and his confederates, which placed all fiefs under the control of the crown as regards taxation, and provided for selling and letting them to the highest bidder, was accepted by the Estate of burgesses. The significance of this ordinance lay in the fact that it shattered the privileged position of the nobility, by abolishing the exclusive right to the possession of fiefs. What happened next is not quite clear. Our sources fail us, and we are at the mercy of doubtful rumours and more or less unreliable anecdotes. We have a vision of intrigues, mysterious conferences, threats and bribery, dimly discernible through a shifting mirage of tradition.

The first glint of light is a letter, dated the 23rd of September, from Frederick III. to Svane and Nansen, authorizing them to communicate the arrangements already made to reliable men, and act quickly, as “if the others gain time they may possibly gain more.” The first step was to make sure of the city train-bands: of the garrison of Copenhagen the king had no doubt. The headquarters of the conspirators was the bishop’s palace near Vor Frue church, between which and the court messages were passing continually, and where the document to be adopted by the Conjoined Estates took its final shape. On the 8th of October the two burgomasters, Hans Nansen and Kristoffer Hansen, proposed that the realm of Denmark should be made over to the king as a hereditary kingdom, without prejudice to the privileges of the Estates; whereupon they proceeded to Brewer’s Hall, and informed the Estate of burgesses there assembled of what had been done. A fiery oration from Nansen dissolved some feeble opposition; and simultaneously Bishop Svane carried the clergy along with him. The so-called “Instrument,” now signed by the Lower Estates, offered the realm to the king and his house as a hereditary monarchy, by way of thank-offering mainly for his courageous deliverance of the kingdom during the war; and the Rigsraad and the nobility were urged to notify the resolution to the king, and desire him to maintain each Estate in its due privileges, and to give a written counter-assurance that the revolution now to be effected was for the sole benefit of the state. Events now moved forward rapidly. On the 10th of October a deputation from the clergy and burgesses proceeded to the Council House where the Rigsraad were deliberating, to demand an answer to their propositions. After a tumultuous scene, the aristocratic Raad rejected the “Instrument” altogether, whereupon the deputies of the commons proceeded to the palace and were graciously received by the king, who promised them an answer next day. The same afternoon the guards in the streets and on the ramparts were doubled; on the following morning the gates of the city were closed, powder and bullets were distributed among the city train-bands, who were bidden to be in readiness when the alarm bell called them, and cavalry was massed on the environs of the city. The same afternoon the king sent a message to the Rigsraad urging them to declare their views quickly, as he could no longer hold himself responsible for what might happen. After a feeble attempt at a compromise the Raad gave way. On the 13th of October it signed a declaration to the effect that it associated itself still with the Lower Estates in the making over of the kingdom, as a hereditary monarchy, to his majesty and his heirs male and female. The same day the king received the official communication of this declaration and the congratulation of the burgomasters. Thus the ancient constitution was transformed; and Denmark became a monarchy hereditary in Frederick III. and his posterity.

But although hereditary sovereignty had been introduced, the laws of the land had not been abolished. The monarch was specifically now a sovereign overlord, but he had not been absolved from his obligations towards his subjects. Hereditary sovereignty per se was not held to signify unlimited dominion, still less absolutism. On the contrary, the magnificent gift of the Danish nation to Frederick III. was made under express conditions. The “Instrument” drawn up by the Lower Estates implied the retention of all their rights; and the king, in accepting the gift of a hereditary crown, did not repudiate the implied inviolability of the privileges of the donors. Unfortunately everything had been left so vague, that it was an easy matter for ultra-royalists like Svane and Nansen to ignore the privileges of the Estates, and even the Estates themselves.

On the 14th of October a committee was summoned to the palace to organize the new government. The discussion turned mainly upon two points, (1) whether a new oath of homage should be taken to the king, and (2) what was to be done with the Haandfaestning or royal charter. The first point was speedily decided in the affirmative, and, as to the second, it was ultimately decided that the king should be released from his oath and the charter returned to him; but a rider was added suggesting that he should, at the same time, promulgate a Recess providing for his own and his people’s welfare. Thus Frederick III. was not left absolutely his own master; for the provision regarding a Recess, or new constitution, showed plainly enough that such a constitution was expected, and, once granted, would of course have limited the royal power.