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 The popularity which Cartesianism thus gained in the social and literary circles of the capital was largely increased by the labours of Pierre-Sylvain Regis (1632–1707). On his visit to Toulouse in 1665, with a mission from the Cartesian chiefs, his lectures excited boundless interest; ladies threw themselves with zeal and ability into the study of philosophy; and Regis himself was made the guest of the civic corporation. In 1671 scarcely less enthusiasm was roused in Montpellier; and in 1680 he opened a course of lectures at Paris, with such acceptance that hearers had to take their seats in advance. Regis, by removing the paradoxes and adjusting the metaphysics to the popular powers of apprehension, made Cartesianism popular, and reduced it to a regular system.

But a check was at hand. Descartes, in his correspondence with the Jesuits, had shown an almost cringing eagerness to have their powerful organization on his side. Especially he had written to Père Mesland, one of the order, to show how the Catholic doctrine of the eucharist might be made compatible with his theories of matter. But his undue haste to arrange matters with the church only served to compromise him more deeply. Unwise admirers and malicious opponents exaggerated the theological bearings of his system in this detail; and the efforts of the Jesuits succeeded in getting the works of Descartes, in November 1663, placed upon the index of prohibited books,—donec corrigantur. Thereupon the power of church and state enforced by positive enactments the passive resistance of old institutions to the novel theories. In 1667, the oration at the interment was forbidden by royal order. In 1669, when the chair of philosophy at the Collège Royal fell vacant, one of the four selected candidates had to sustain a thesis against “the pretended new philosophy of Descartes.” In 1671 the archbishop of Paris, by the king’s order, summoned the heads of the university to his presence, and enjoined them to take stricter measures against philosophical novelties dangerous to the faith. In 1673 a decree of the parlement against Cartesian and other unlicensed theories was on the point of being issued, and was only checked in time by the appearance of a burlesque mandamus against the intruder Reason, composed by Boileau and some of his brother-poets. Yet in 1675 the university of Angers was empowered to repress all Cartesian teaching within its domain, and actually appointed a commission charged to look for such heresies in the theses and the students’ note-books of the college of Anjou belonging to the Oratory. In 1677 the university of Caen adopted not less stringent measures against Cartesianism. And so great was the influence of the Jesuits, that the congregation of St Maur, the canons of Ste Geneviève, and the Oratory laid their official ban on the obnoxious doctrines. From the real or fancied rapprochements between Cartesianism and Jansenism, it became for a while impolitic, if not dangerous, to avow too loudly a preference for Cartesian theories. Regis was constrained to hold back for ten years his System of Philosophy; and when it did appear, in 1690, the name of Descartes was absent from the title-page. There were other obstacles besides the mild persecutions of the church. Pascal and other members of Port Royal openly expressed their doubts about the place allowed to God in the system; the adherents of Gassendi met it by resuscitating atoms; and the Aristotelians maintained their substantial forms as of old; the Jesuits argued against the arguments for the being of God, and against the theory of innate ideas; whilst Pierre Daniel Huet (1630–1721), bishop of Avranches, once a Cartesian himself, made a vigorous onslaught on the contempt in which his former comrades held literature and history, and enlarged on the vanity of all human aspirations after rational truth.

The greatest and most original of the French Cartesians was (q.v.). His Recherche de la vérité, in 1674, was the baptism of the system into a theistic religion which borrowed its imagery from Augustine; it brought into prominence the metaphysical base which Louis Delaforge, Jacques Rohault and Regis had neither cared for nor understood. But this doctrine was a criticism and a divergence, no less than a consequence, from the principles in Descartes; and it brought upon Malebranche the opposition, not merely of the Cartesian physicists, but also of Arnauld, Fénelon and Bossuet, who found, or hoped to find, in the Meditations, as properly understood, an ally for theology. Popular enthusiasm, however, was with Malebranche, as twenty years before it had been with Descartes; he was the fashion of the day; and his disciples rapidly increased both in France and abroad.

In 1705 Cartesianism was still subject to prohibitions from the authorities; but in a project of new statutes, drawn up for the faculty of arts at Paris in 1720, the Method and Meditations of Descartes were placed beside the Organon and the Metaphysics of Aristotle as text-books for philosophical study. And before 1725, readings, both public and private, were given from Cartesian texts in some of the Parisian colleges. But when this happened, Cartesianism was no longer either interesting or dangerous; its theories, taught as ascertained and verified truths, were as worthless as the systematic verbiage which preceded them. Already antiquated, it could not resist the wit and raillery with which Voltaire, in his Lettres sur les Anglais (1728), brought against it the principles and results of Locke and Newton. The old Cartesians, Jean Jacques Dortous de Mairan (1678–1771) and especially Fontenelle, with his Théorie des tourbillons (1752), struggled in vain to refute Newton by styling attraction an occult quality. Fortunately the Cartesian method had already done its service, even where the theories were rejected. The Port Royalists, Pierre Nicole (1625–1695) and Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694), had applied it to grammar and logic; Jean Domat or Daumat (1625–1696) and Henri François Daugesseau (1668–1751) to jurisprudence; Fontenelle, Charles Perrault (1628–1703) and Jean Terrasson (1670–1750) to literary criticism, and a worthier estimate of modern literature. Though it never ceased to influence individual thinkers, it had handed on to Condillac its popularity with the masses. A Latin abridgment of philosophy, dated 1784, tells us that the innate ideas of Descartes are founded on no arguments, and are now universally abandoned. The ghost of innate ideas seems to be all that it had left.

In Germany a few Cartesian lecturers taught at Leipzig and Halle, but the system took no root, any more than in Switzerland, where it had a brief reign at Geneva after 1669. In Italy the effects were more permanent. What is termed the iatro-mechanical school of medicine, with G. A. Borelli (1608–1679) as its most notable name, entered in a way on the mechanical study of anatomy suggested by Descartes, but was probably much more dependent upon the positive researches of Galileo. At Naples there grew up a Cartesian school, of which the best known members are Michel Angelo Fardella (1650–1708) and Cardinal Gerdil (1718–1802), both of whom, however, attached themselves to the characteristic views of Malebranche.

In England Cartesianism took but slight hold. Henry More, who had given it a modified sympathy in the lifetime of the author, became its opponent in later years; and Cudworth differed from it in most essential points. Antony Legrand, from Douai, attempted to introduce it into Oxford, but failed. He is the author of several works, amongst others a system of Cartesian philosophy, where a chapter on “Angels” revives the methods of the schoolmen. His chief opponent was Samuel Parker (1640–1688), bishop of Oxford, who, in his attack on the irreligious novelties of the Cartesian, treats Descartes as a fellow-criminal in infidelity with Hobbes and Gassendi. Rohault’s version of the Cartesian physics was translated into English; and Malebranche found an ardent follower in John Norris (1667–1711). Of Cartesianism towards the close of the 17th century the only remnants were an overgrown theory of vortices, which received its death-blow from Newton, and a dubious phraseology anent innate ideas, which found a witty executioner in Locke.

For an account of the metaphysical doctrines of Descartes, in their connexions with Malebranche and Spinoza, see.

.—I. Editions and Translations.—The collected works of Descartes were published in Latin in 8 vols. at Amsterdam (1670–1683), in 7 vols. at Frankfort (1697) and in 9 vols. by Elzevir

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 (1713); in French in 13 vols. (Paris, 1724–1729), republished by Victor Cousin (Paris, 1824–1826) in 11 vols., and again under the authority of the minister of public instruction by C. Adam and P. Tannery (1897 foll.). These include his so-called posthumous works. The Rules for the Direction of the Mind, The Search for Truth by the Light of Nature, and other unimportant fragments, published (in Latin) in 1701. In 1859–1860 Foucher de Careil published in two parts some unedited writings of Descartes from copies taken by Leibnitz from the original papers. Six editions of the Opera philosophica appeared at Amsterdam between 1650 and 1678; a two-volume edition at Leipzig in 1843; there are also French editions, Œuvres philosophiques, by A. Garnier, 3 vols. (1834–1835), and L. Aimé-Martin (1838) and Œuvres morales et philosophiques by Aimé-Martin with an introduction on life and works by Amedée Prévost (Paris, 1855); Œuvres choisies (1850) by Jules Simon. A complete French edition of the collected works was begun in the Romance Library (1907 foll.). German translations by J. H. von Kirchmann under the title Philosophische Werke (with biography, &c., Berlin, 1868; 2nd ed., 1882–1891), by Kuno Fischer, Die Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung seiner Philosophie (1863), with introduction by Ludwig Fischer (1892). There are also numerous editions and translations of separate works, especially the Method, in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Hungarian. There are English translations by J. Veitch, Method, Meditations and Selections from the Principles (1850–1853; 11th ed., 1897; New York, 1899); by H. A. P. Torrey (New York, 1892).

II. Biographical.—A. Baillet, La Vie de M. Des Cartes (Paris, 1691; Eng. trans., 1692), exhaustive but uncritical; notices in the editions of Garnier and Aimé-Martin; A. Hoffmann, René Descartes (1905); Elizabeth S. Haldane, Descartes, his Life and Times (1905), containing full bibliography; A. Barbier, René Descartes, sa famille, son lieu de naissance, &c. (1901); Richard Lowndes, René Descartes, his Life and Meditations (London, 1878); J. P. Mahaffy, Descartes (1902), with an appendix on Descartes’s mathematical work by Frederick Purser; Victor de Swarte, Descartes directeur spirituel (Paris, 1904), correspondence with the Princess Palatine; C. J. Jeannel, Descartes et la princesse palatine (Paris, 1869); Lettres de M. Descartes, ed. Claude Clerselier (1657). A useful sketch of recent biographies is to be found in The Edinburgh Review (July 1906).

III. Philosophy.—Beside the histories of philosophy, the article, and the above works, consult J. B. Bordas-Demoulini Le Cartésianisme (2nd ed., Paris, 1874); J. P. Damiron, Histoire de la philosophie du XVII e siècle (Paris, 1846); C. B. Renouvier, Manuel de philosophie moderne (Paris, 1842); V. Cousin, Fragments philosophiques, vol. ii. (3rd ed., Paris, 1838), Fragments de philosophie cartésienne (Paris, 1845), and in the Journal des savants (1860–1861); F. Bouillier, ''Hist. de la philosophie cartésienne (Paris, 1854), 2 vols., and Hist. et critique de la révolution cartésienne (Paris, 1842); J. Millet, Descartes, sa vie, ses travaux, ses découvertes avant 1637 (Paris, 1867), and Hist. de Descartes depuis 1637 (Paris, 1870); L. Liard, Descartes (Paris, 1882); A. Fouillée, Descartes (Paris, 1893); Revue de métaphysique et de morale (July, 1896, Descartes number); Norman Smith, Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy (1902); R. Keussen, Bewusstsein und Erkenntnis bei Descartes (1906); A. Kayserling, Die Idee der Kausalität in den Lehren der Occasionalisten (1896); J. Iverach, Descartes, Spinoza and the New Philosophy (1904); R. Joerges, Die Lehre von den Empfindungen bei Descartes (1901); Kuno Fischer, Hist. of Mod. Phil. Descartes and his School (Eng. trans., 1887); B. Christiansen, Das Urteil bei Descartes (1902); E. Boutroux, “Descartes and Cartesianism” in Cambridge Modern History'', vol. iv. (1906), chap. 27, with a very full bibliography, pp. 950-953; P. Natorp, Descartes’ Erkenntnisstheorie (Marburg, 1882); L. A. Prévost-Paradol, Les Moralistes français (Paris, 1865); C. Schaarschmidt, Descartes und Spinoza (Bonn, 1850); R. Adamson, The Development of Modern Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1903); J. Müller, Der Begriff der sittlichen Unvollkommenheit bei Descartes und Spinoza (1890); J. H. von Kirchmann, R. Descartes’ Prinzipien der Philos. (1863); G. Touchard, La Morale de Descartes (1898); Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, ''Hist. of Mod. Philos. in France'' (Eng. trans., 1899), pp. 1-76.

IV. Science and Mathematics.—F. Cajori, History of Mathematics (London, 1894); M. Cantor, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Mathematik (Leipzig, 1894–1901); Sir Michael Foster, ''Hist. of Physiol. during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1901); Duboux, La Physique de Descartes (Lausanne, 1881); G. H. Zeuthen, Geschichte der Mathematik im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1903); Chasles, Aperçu historique sur l’origine et le développement des méthodes en géométrie'' (3rd ed., 1889).

 DESCHAMPS, ÉMILE (1791–1871), French poet and man of letters, was born at Bourges on the 20th of February 1791. The son of a civil servant, he adopted his father’s career, but as early as 1812 he distinguished himself by an ode, La Paix conquise, which won the praise of Napoleon. In 1818 he collaborated with Henri de Latouche in two verse comedies, Selmours de Florian and Le Tour de faveur. He and his brother were among the most enthusiastic disciples of the cénacle gathered round Victor Hugo, and in July 1823 Émile founded with his master the Muse française, which during the year of its existence was the special organ of the romantic party. His Études françaises et étrangères (1828) were preceded by a preface which may be regarded as one of the manifestos of the romanticists. The versions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1839) and of Macbeth (1844), important as they were in the history of the romantic movement, were never staged. He was the author of several libretti, among which may be mentioned the Roméo et Juliette of Berlioz. The list of his more important works is completed by his two volumes of stories, Contes physiologiques (1854) and Réalités fantastiques (1854). He died at Versailles in April 1871. His Œuvres complètes were published in 1872–1874 (6 vols.).

His brother, Antoine François Marie, known as, was born in Paris on the 12th of March 1800 and died at Passy on the 29th of October 1869. Like his brother, he was an ardent romanticist, but his production was limited by a nervous disorder, which has left its mark on his melancholy work. He translated the Divina Commedia in 1829, and his poems, Dernières Paroles and Résignation, were republished with his brother’s in 1841.

 DESCHAMPS, EUSTACHE, called (1346?–1406?), French poet, was born at Vertus in Champagne about 1346. He studied at Reims, where he is said to have received some lessons in the art of versification from Guillaume de Machaut, who is stated to have been his uncle. From Reims he proceeded about 1360 to the university of Orleans to study law and the seven liberal arts. He entered the king’s service as royal messenger about 1367, and was sent on missions to Bohemia, Hungary and Moravia. In 1372 he was made huissier d’armes to Charles V. He received many other important offices, was bailli of Valois, and afterwards of Senlis, squire to the Dauphin, and governor of Fismes. In 1380 his patron, Charles V., died, and in the same year the English burnt down his house at Vertus. In his childhood he had been an eye-witness of the English invasion of 1358; he had been present at the siege of Reims and seen the march on Chartres; he had witnessed the signing of the treaty of Bretigny; he was now himself a victim of the English fury. His violent hatred of the English found vent in numerous appeals to carry the war into England, and in the famous prophecy that England would be destroyed so thoroughly that no one should be able to point to her ruins. His own misfortunes and the miseries of France embittered his temper. He complained continually of poverty, railed against women and lamented the woes of his country. His last years were spent on his Miroir de mariage, a satire of 13,000 lines against women, which contains some real comedy. The mother-in-law of French farce has her prototype in the Miroir.

The historical and patriotic poems of Deschamps are of much greater value. He does not, like Froissart, cast a glamour over the miserable wars of the time but gives a faithful picture of the anarchy of France, and inveighs ceaselessly against the heavy taxes, the vices of the clergy and especially against those who enrich themselves at the expense of the people. The terrible ballad with the refrain “Sà, de l’argent; sà, de l’argent” is typical of his work. Deschamps excelled in the use of the ballade and the chant royal. In each of these forms he was the greatest master of his time. In ballade form he expressed his regret for the death of Du Guesclin, who seems to have been the only man except his patron, Charles V., for whom he ever felt any admiration. One of his ballades (No. 285) was sent with a copy of his works to Geoffrey Chaucer, whom he addresses with the words:—

Deschamps was the author of an Art poétique, with the title of L’Art de dictier et de fere chancons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx. Besides giving rules for the composition of the kinds of verse mentioned in the title he enunciates some curious theories on poetry. He divides music into music proper and poetry. Music proper he calls artificial on the ground that everyone could by dint of study become a musician; poetry he calls natural because

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 he says it is not an art that can be acquired but a gift. He lays immense stress on the harmony of verse, because, as was the fashion of his day, he practically took it for granted that all poetry was to be sung.

The work of Deschamps marks an important stage in the history of French poetry. With him and his contemporaries the long, formless narrations of the trouvères give place to complicated and exacting kinds of verse. He was perhaps by nature a moralist and satirist rather than a poet, and the force and truth of his historical pictures gives him a unique place in 14th-century poetry. M. Raynaud fixes the date of his death in 1406, or at latest, 1407. Two years earlier he had been relieved of his charge as bailli of Senlis, his plain-spoken satires having made him many enemies at court.

 DESCHANEL, PAUL EUGÈNE LOUIS (1856–), French statesman, son of Émile Deschanel (1819–1904), professor at the Collège de France and senator, was born at Brussels, where his father was living in exile (1851–1859), owing to his opposition to Napoleon III. Paul Deschanel studied law, and began his career as secretary to Deshayes de Marcère (1876), and to Jules Simon (1876–1877). In October 1885 he was elected deputy for Eure and Loire. From the first he took an important place in the chamber, as one of the most notable orators of the Progressist Republican group. In January 1896 he was elected vice-president of the chamber, and henceforth devoted himself to the struggle against the Left, not only in parliament, but also in public meetings throughout France. His addresses at Marseilles on the 26th of October 1896, at Carmaux on the 27th of December 1896, and at Roubaix on the 10th of April 1897, were triumphs of clear and eloquent exposition of the political and social aims of the Progressist party. In June 1898 he was elected president of the chamber, and was re-elected in 1901, but rejected in 1902. Nevertheless he came forward brilliantly in 1904 and 1905 as a supporter of the law on the separation of church and state. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1899, his most notable works being Orateurs et hommes d’état (1888), Figures de femmes (1889), La Décentralization (1895), La Question sociale (1898).

 DES CLOIZEAUX, ALFRED LOUIS OLIVIER LEGRAND (1817–1897), French mineralogist, was born at Beauvais, in the department of Oise, on the 17th of October 1817. He became professor of mineralogy at the École Normale Supérieure and afterwards at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He studied the geysers of Iceland, and wrote also on the classification of some of the eruptive rocks; but his main work consisted in the systematic examination of the crystals of numerous minerals, in researches on their optical properties and on the subject of polarization. He wrote specially on the means of determining the different felspars. He was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London in 1886. He died in May 1897. His best-known books are Leçons de cristallographie (1861); Manuel de minéralogie (2 vols., Paris, 1862, 1874 and 1893).

 DESCLOIZITE, a rare mineral species consisting of basic lead and zinc vanadate, (Pb, Zn)2(OH)V04, crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with olivenite. It was discovered by A. Damour in 1854, and named by him in honour of the French mineralogist Des Cloizeaux. It occurs as small prismatic or pyramidal crystals, usually forming drusy crusts and stalactitic aggregates; also as fibrous encrusting masses with a mammillary surface. The colour is deep cherry-red to brown or black, and the crystals are transparent or translucent with a greasy lustre; the streak is orange-yellow to brown; specific gravity 5.9 to 6.2; hardness 3. A variety known as cuprodescloizite is dull green in colour; it contains a considerable amount of copper replacing zinc and some arsenic replacing vanadium. Descloizite occurs in veins of lead ores in association with pyromorphite, vanadinite, wulfenite, &c. Localities are the Sierra de Cordoba in Argentina, Lake Valley in Sierra county, New Mexico, Arizona, Phoenixville in Pennsylvania, and Kappel (Eisen-Kappel) near Klagenfurt in Carinthia.

Other names which have been applied to this species are vanadite, tritochorite and ramirite; the uncertain vanadates eusynchite, araeoxene and dechenite are possibly identical with it.

 DESCRIPTIVE POETRY, the name given to a class of literature, which may be defined as belonging mainly to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. From the earliest times, all poetry which was not subjectively lyrical was apt to indulge in ornament which might be named descriptive. But the critics of the 17th century formed a distinction between the representations of the ancients and those of the moderns. We find Boileau emphasizing the statement that, while Virgil paints, Tasso describes. This may be a useful indication for us in defining not what should, but what in practice has been called “descriptive poetry.” It is poetry in which it is not imaginative passion which prevails, but a didactic purpose, or even something of the instinct of a sublimated auctioneer. In other words, the landscape, or architecture, or still life, or whatever may be the object of the poet’s attention, is not used as an accessory, but is itself the centre of interest. It is, in this sense, not correct to call poetry in which description is only the occasional ornament of a poem, and not its central subject, descriptive poetry. The landscape or still life must fill the canvas, or, if human interest is introduced, that must be treated as an accessory. Thus, in the Hero and Leander of Marlowe and in the Alastor of Shelley, description of a very brilliant kind is largely introduced, yet these are not examples of what is technically called “descriptive poetry,” because it is not the strait between Sestos and Abydos, and it is not the flora of a tropical glen, which concentrates the attention of the one poet or of the other, but it is an example of physical passion in the one case and of intellectual passion in the other, which is diagnosed and dilated on. On the other hand Thomson’s Seasons, in which landscape takes the central place, and Drayton’s Polyolbion, where everything is sacrificed to a topographical progress through Britain, are strictly descriptive.

It will be obvious from this definition that the danger ahead of all purely descriptive poetry is that it will lack intensity, that it will be frigid, if not dead. Description for description’s sake, especially in studied verse, is rarely a vitalized form of literature. It is threatened, from its very conception, with languor and coldness; it must exercise an extreme art or be condemned to immediate sterility. Boileau, with his customary intelligence, was the first to see this, and he thought that the danger might be avoided by care in technical execution. His advice to the poets of his time was:—

and:—

and in verses of brilliant humour he mocked the writer who, too full of his subject, and describing for description’s sake, will never quit his theme until he has exhausted it:—

This is excellent advice, but Boileau’s humorous sallies do not quite meet the question whether such purely descriptive poetry as he criticizes is legitimate at all.

In England had appeared the famous translation (1592–1611), by Josuah Sylvester, of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, containing such lines as those which the juvenile Dryden admired so much:—

There was also the curious physiological epic of Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island (1633). But on the whole it was not until French influences had made themselves felt on English poetry,

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 that description, as Boileau conceived it, was cultivated as a distinct art. The Cooper’s Hill (1642) of Sir John Denham may be contrasted with the less ambitious Penshurst of Ben Jonson, and the one represents the new no less completely than the other does the old generation. If, however, we examine Cooper’s Hill carefully, we perceive that its aim is after all rather philosophical than topographical. The Thames is described indeed, but not very minutely, and the poet is mainly absorbed in moral reflections. Marvell’s long poem on the beauties of Nunappleton comes nearer to the type. But it is hardly until we reach the 18th century that we arrive, in English literature, at what is properly known as descriptive poetry. This was the age in which poets, often of no mean capacity, began to take such definite themes as a small country estate (Pomfret’s Choice, 1700), the cultivation of the grape (Gay’s Wine, 1708), a landscape (Pope’s Windsor Forest, 1713), a military manœuvre (Addison’s Campaign, 1704), the industry of an apple-orchard (Philip’s Cyder, 1708) or a piece of topography (Tickell’s Kensington Gardens, 1722), as the sole subject of a lengthy poem, generally written in heroic or blank verse. These tours de force were supported by minute efforts in miniature-painting, by touch applied to touch, and were often monuments of industry, but they were apt to lack personal interest, and to suffer from a general and deplorable frigidity. They were infected with the faults which accompany an artificial style; they were monotonous, rhetorical and symmetrical, while the uniformity of treatment which was inevitable to their plan rendered them hopelessly tedious, if they were prolonged to any great extent.

This species of writing had been cultivated to a considerable degree through the preceding century, in Italy and (as the remarks of Boileau testify) in France, but it was in England that it reached its highest importance. The classic of descriptive poetry, in fact, the specimen which the literature of the world presents which must be considered as the most important and the most successful, is The Seasons (1726–1730) of (q.v.). In Thomson, for the first time, a poet of considerable eminence appeared, to whom external nature was all sufficient, and who succeeded in conducting a long poem to its close by a single appeal to landscape, and to the emotions which it directly evokes. Coleridge, somewhat severely, described The Seasons as the work of a good rather than of a great poet, and it is an indisputable fact that, at its very best, descriptive poetry fails to awaken the highest powers of the imagination. A great part of Thomson’s poem is nothing more nor less than a skilfully varied catalogue of natural phenomena. The famous description of twilight in “the fading many-coloured woods” of autumn may be taken as an example of the highest art to which purely descriptive poetry has ever attained. It is obvious, even here, that the effect of these rich and sonorous lines, in spite of the splendid effort of the artist, is monotonous, and leads us up to no final crisis of passion or rapture. Yet Thomson succeeds, as few other poets of his class have succeeded, in producing nobly-massed effects and comprehensive beauties such as were utterly unknown to his predecessors. He was widely imitated in England, especially by Armstrong, by Akenside, by Shenstone (in The Schoolmistress, 1742), by the anonymous author of Albania, 1737, and by Goldsmith (in The Deserted Village, 1770). No better example of the more pedestrian class of descriptive poetry could be found than the last-mentioned poem, with its minute and Dutch-like painting:—

On the continent of Europe the example of Thomson was almost immediately fruitful. Four several translations of The Seasons into French contended for the suffrages of the public, and J. F. de Saint-Lambert (1716–1803) imitated Thomson in Les Saisons (1769), a poem which enjoyed popularity for half a century, and of which Voltaire said that it was the only one of its generation which would reach posterity. Nevertheless, as Madame du Deffand told Walpole, Saint-Lambert is “froid, fade et faux,” and the same may be said of J. A. Roucher (1745–1794), who wrote Les Mois in 1779, a descriptive poem famous in its day. The Abbé Jacques Delille (1738–1813), perhaps the most ambitious descriptive poet who has ever lived, was treated as a Virgil by his contemporaries; he published Les Géorgiques in 1769, Les Jardins in 1782, and L’Homme des champs in 1803, but he went furthest in his brilliant, though artificial, Trois règnes de la nature (1809), which French critics have called the masterpiece of this whole school of descriptive poetry. Delille, however, like Thomson before him, was unable to avoid monotony and want of coherency. Picture follows picture, and no progress is made. The satire of Marie Joseph Chénier, in his famous and witty Discours sur les poèmes descriptifs, brought the vogue of this species of poetry to an end.

In England, again, Wordsworth, who treated the genius of Thomson with unmerited severity, revived descriptive poetry in a form which owed more than Wordsworth realized to the model of The Seasons. In The Excursion and The Prelude, as well as in many of his minor pieces, Wordsworth’s philosophical and moral intentions cannot prevent us from perceiving the large part which pure description takes; and the same may be said of much of the early blank verse of S. T. Coleridge. Since their day, however, purely descriptive poetry has gone more and more completely out of fashion, and its place has been taken by the richer and directer effects of such prose as that of Ruskin in English, or of Fromentin and Pierre Loti in French. It is almost impossible in descriptive verse to obtain those vivid and impassioned appeals to the imagination which are of the very essence of genuine poetry, and it is unlikely that descriptive poetry, as such, will again take a prominent place in living literature.

 DESERT, a term somewhat loosely employed to describe those parts of the land surface of the earth which do not produce sufficient vegetation to support a human population. Few areas of large extent in any part of the world are absolutely devoid of vegetation, and the transition from typical desert conditions is often very gradual and ill-defined. (“Desert” comes from Lat. deserere, to abandon; distinguish “desert,” merit, and “dessert,” fruit eaten after dinner, from de and servier, to serve.)

Deserts are conveniently divided into two classes according to the causes which give rise to the desert conditions. In “cold deserts” the want of vegetation is wholly due to the prevailing low temperature, while in “hot deserts” the surface is unproductive because, on account of high temperature and deficient rainfall, evaporation is largely in excess of precipitation. Cold deserts accordingly occur in high latitudes (see and ). Hot desert conditions are primarily found along the tropical belts of high atmospheric pressure in which the conditions of warmth and dryness are most fully realized, and on their equatorial sides, but the zonal arrangement is considerably modified in some regions by the monsoonal influence of elevated land. Thus we have in the northern hemisphere the Sahara desert, the deserts of Arabia, Iran, Turan, Takla Makan and Gobi, and the desert regions of the Great Basin in North America; and in the southern hemisphere the Kalahari desert in Africa, the desert of Australia, and the desert of Atacama in South America. Where the line of elevated land runs east and west, as in Asia, the desert belt tends to be displaced into higher latitudes, and where the line runs north and south, as in Africa, America and Australia, the desert zone is cut through on the windward side of the elevation and the arid conditions intensified on the lee side. Desert conditions also arise from local causes, as in the case of the Indian desert situated in a region inaccessible to either of the two main branches of the south-west monsoon.

Although rivers rising in more favoured regions may traverse deserts on their way to the sea, as in the case of the Nile and the Colorado, the fundamental physical condition of an arid area is that it contributes nothing to the waters of the ocean. The rainfall chiefly occurs in violent cloud-bursts, and the soluble matter in the soil is carried down by intermittent streams to salt lakes

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text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Descriptive Poetry


text:
User talk:HelperMonkey

— billinghurst  sDrewth  10:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC) , often when I am trying to edit a page (no urls or anything, just adding wikilinks, fixing typos, etc) I hit "submit" and it returns me to a "This is just a preview" page...but the field where it should show my changes...shows up blank. I can repaste the information, or not, and hit "Submit" again...exact same problem. My user preferences are not set up to show changes before submitting, and it only does this on occasion (I might make ten edits today, then from the 11th onwards it will give me this looping error and I can't edit anymore and lose whatever work I'd put into the current edit)...I've tried changing my userskins, no avail; tried making simple edits (just adding a blankspace or comma), no avail; tried clearing cache and trying again...still nothing, just a "Warning: This is just a preview, your edits have not been changed" with a blank field showing "my changes". It doesn't matter if I hit Submit again, hit Preview again or hit Show Changes again...it just brings me right back. Line: 15 Char: 21 Error: Unterminated String Constant Code: 0 URL: [current page on which I'm working]

 * I am seeing your contributions of today and yesterday, eg https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/w/index.php?title=Selections_from_Muhammadan_Traditions&diff=prev&oldid=2331805.  In some of those pages you should be populating the pages with the contents of header, and we have a warning set where main namespace pages do not contain such information, however, a second save will override the first warning. With regard to content. Are there scans of the works available?  We much prefer to work from scans as explained at Help:DjVu files and Help:Proofread. — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

 * I have no idea whether there are scans available, I am just clicking the links that Wikisource is giving me for the works. And I'm not sure what the missing header is doing...it is certainly not related to my editing problems (and I believe I have already added it to all my works)...do you have any idea what could be actually causing the problem I described?
 * I found scans on the Internet Archive. Might make it easier to proofread. --Xxagile (talk) 05:37, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I have no idea how to use those scans, it is easier for me to read their text version than manually type out everything in the jpg...though again, none of this is actually helping me with my problem described above... HelperMonkey (talk) 06:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Go to and upload the the file to commons, I'm assuming you know how to do that. The same text is placed against the scanned pages automatically, duplicating the uncorrected text, without the scan, is pointless. cygnis insignis 08:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Will that actually help me with my above problem, or is Wikisource just trying to set a new record for most people who can come onto a talkpage where I've asked for help and tell me to upload files that I have no idea how to upload? I mean that's three people have come to my page telling me I'm doing things wrong and need to somehow download a website and upload it to Wikisource which seems...I have no idea. But it certainly doesn't seem like I'm doing anything wrong and I'm unclear why everybody is refusing to actually even acknowledge my request for help and instead just tells me to upload websites that already exist...I think it's safe to say I'm leaving Wikisource. HelperMonkey (talk) 21:55, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

 * Did you manage to read the two links that I put into my first response? They explain a lot about what and how the site works, and answer the questions that you have been asking.  By reading those two links we are proposing a more robust and authoritative means to have the text and be able to show how it replicates the text, and if we get djvu files, they will have a text layer that is extractable and will save many hours of typing, and allows for someone else to validate the text. — billinghurst  sDrewth  09:26, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Help.
Just noticed your post, from over a week ago, requesting help. The simple fact is that most everyone’s editing time is very limited, and there are no resources to provide for an extensive help course, as well as be on hand to provide responses for the many questions need to be answered.

Having gone through similar issues when I began editing on Wikisource, and since having more time, I gladly spare some and help you step by step what needs to be done - the Commons upload from Internet Archive, creating local Page index, editing, etc. — Ineuw talk 01:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:HelperMonkey


text:
Author:Theodore Leighton Pennell

Works

 * Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier. (1909)
 * Things Seen in Northern India. (1912)
 * Islam in Afghanistan (1912)

title: Author:Theodore Leighton Pennell


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/108

 around which deposits are formed as evaporation takes place. The land forms of a desert are exceedingly characteristic. Surface erosion is chiefly due to rapid changes of temperature through a wide range, and to the action of wind transferring sand and dust, often in the form of “dunes” resembling the waves of the sea. Dry valleys, narrow and of great depth, with precipitous sides, and ending in “cirques,” are probably formed by the intense action of the occasional cloud-bursts.

When water can be obtained and distributed over an arid region by irrigation, the surface as a rule becomes extremely productive. Natural springs give rise to oases at intervals and make the crossing of large deserts possible. Where a river crosses a desert at a level near that of the general surface, irrigation can be carried on with extremely profitable results, as has been done in the valley of the Nile and in parts of the Great Basin of North America; in cases, however, where the river has cut deeply and flows far below the general surface, irrigation is too expensive. Much has been done in parts of Australia by means of artesian wells.

 DESERTION, the act of forsaking or abandoning; more particularly, the wilful abandonment of an employment or of duty, in violation of a legal or moral obligation.

The offence of naval or military desertion is constituted when a man absents himself with the intention either of not returning or of escaping some important service, such as embarkation for foreign service, or service in aid of the civil power. In the United Kingdom desertion has always been recognized by the civil law, and until 1827 (7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 28) was a felony punishable by death. It was subsequently dealt with by the various Mutiny Acts, which were replaced by the Army Act 1881, renewed annually by the Army (Annual) Act. By § 12 of the act every person subject to military law who deserts or attempts to desert, or who persuades or procures any person to desert, shall, on conviction by court martial, if he committed the offence when on active service or under orders for active service, be liable to suffer death, or such less punishment as is mentioned in the act. When the offence is committed under any other circumstances, the punishment for the first offence is imprisonment, and for the second or any subsequent offence penal servitude or such less punishment as is mentioned in the act. § 44 contains a scale of punishments, and §§ 175-184 an enumeration of persons subject to military law. By § 153 any person who persuades a soldier to desert or aids or assists him or conceals him is liable, on conviction, to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for not more than six months. § 154 makes provision for the apprehension of deserters. § 161 lays down that where a soldier has served continuously in an exemplary manner for not less than three years in any corps of regular forces he is not to be tried or punished for desertion which has occurred before the commencement of the three years. Desertion from the regular forces can only be tried by a military court, but in the case of the militia and reserve forces desertion can be tried by a civil court. The Army Act of 1881 made a welcome distinction between actual desertion, as defined at the commencement of this article, and the quitting one regiment in order to enlist in another. This offence is now separately dealt with as fraudulent enlistment; formerly, it was termed “desertion and fraudulent enlistment,” and the statistics of desertion proper were consequently and erroneously magnified. The gross total of desertions in the British Army in an average year (1903–1904) was nearly 4000, or 1.4% of the average strength of the army, but owing to men rejoining from desertion, fraudulent enlistment, &c., the net loss was no more than 1286, i.e. less than .5%. The army of the United States suffers very severely from desertion, and very few deserters rejoin or are recaptured (see Journal of the Roy. United Service Inst., December 1905, p. 1469). In the year 1900–1901, 3110 men deserted (4.3% of average strength); in 1901–1902, 4667 (or 5.9%); in 1904–1905, 6553 (or 6.8%); and in 1905–1906, 6258 out of less than 60,000 men, or 7.4%.

In all armies desertion while on active service is punishable by death; on the continent of Europe, owing to the system of compulsory service, desertion is infrequent, and takes place usually when the deserter wishes to leave his country altogether. It was formerly the practice in the English army to punish a man convicted of desertion by tattooing on him the letter “D” to prevent his re-enlistment, but this has been long abandoned in deference to public opinion, which erroneously adopted the idea that the “marking” was effected by red-hot irons or in some other manner involving torture. The Navy Discipline Act 1866, and the Naval Deserters Act 1847, contain similar provisions to the Army Act of 1881 for dealing with desertions from the navy. In the United States navy the term “straggling” is applied to absence without leave, where the probability is that the person does not intend to desert. The United States government offers a monetary reward of between $20 and $30 for the arrest and delivery of deserters from the army and navy.

In the British merchant service the offence of desertion is defined as the abandonment of duty by quitting the ship before the termination of the engagement, without justification, and with the intention of not returning.

Desertion is also the term applied to the act by which a man abandons his wife and children, or either of them. Desertion of a wife is a matrimonial offence; under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, a decree of judicial separation may be obtained in England by either husband or wife on the ground of desertion, without cause, for two years and upwards (see also ).

 DES ESSARTS, EMMANUEL ADOLPHE (1839–), French poet and man of letters, was born at Paris on the 5th of February 1839. His father, Alfred Stanislas Langlois des Essarts (d. 1893), was a poet and novelist of considerable reputation. The son was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, and became a teacher of rhetoric and finally professor of literature at Dijon and at Clermont. His works are: Poésies parisiennes (1862), a volume of light verse on trifling subjects; Les Élévations (1864), philosophical poems; Origines de la poésie lyrique en France au XVI e siècle (1873); Du génie de Chateaubriand (1876); Poèmes de la Révolution (1879); Pallas Athéné (1887); Portraits de maîtres (1888), &c.

 DESFONTAINES, RENÉ LOUICHE (1750–1833), French botanist, was born at Tremblay (Île-et-VilaineIlle-et-Vilaine [sic]) on the 14th of February 1750. After graduating in medicine at Paris, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1783. In the same year he set out for North Africa, on a scientific exploring expedition, and on his return two years afterwards brought with him a large collection of plants, animals, &c., comprising, it is said, 1600 species of plants, of which about 300 were described for the first time. In 1786 he was nominated to the post of professor at the Jardin des Plantes, vacated in his favour by his friend, L. G. Lemonnier. His great work, Flora Atlantica sive historia plantarum quae in Atlante, agro Tunetano el Algeriensi crescunt, was published in 2 vols. 4to in 1798, and he produced in 1804 a Tableau de l’école botanique du muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris, of which a third edition appeared in 1831, under the new title Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis. He was also the author of many memoirs on vegetable anatomy and physiology, descriptions of new genera and species, &c., one of the most important being a “Memoir on the Organization of the Monocotyledons.” He died at Paris on the 16th of November 1833. His Barbary collection was bequeathed to the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, and his general collection passed into the hands of the English botanist, Philip Barker Webb.

 DESFORGES, PIERRE JEAN BAPTISTE CHOUDARD (1746–1806), French dramatist and man of letters, natural son of Dr Antoine Petit, was born in Paris on the 15th of September 1746. He was educated at the Collège Mazarin and the Collège de Beauvais, and at his father’s desire began the study of medicine. Dr Petit’s death left him dependent on his own resources, and after appearing on the stage of the Comédie Italienne in Paris he joined a troupe of wandering actors, whom he served in the

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/108


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desert

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desert


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desertion

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desertion


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Des Essarts, Emmanuel Adolphe


text:
User talk:Sotuu

— billinghurst  sDrewth  10:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Sotuu


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, James (1616-1685)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, James (1793-1841)


text:
Author:Octavia Hill

Works

 * Further Account of the Walmer Street Industrial Experiment. London: George Pulman.(1872)
 * Our Common Land (and other short essays). London: Macmillan. (1877)
 * Homes of the London Poor London: Macmillan. (1883)
 * Colour, Space, and Music for the People. London: Kegan Paul, Trench. (1884)
 * Memorandum on the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. London: P.S. King and Son. (1909)
 * Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters, edited by Charles Edmund Maurice

title: Author:Octavia Hill


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desfontaines, René Louiche


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, John (1642-1700?)


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/109

 capacity of playwright. He married an actress, and the two spent three years in St Petersburg, where they were well received. In 1782 he produced at the Comédie Italienne an adaptation of Fielding’s novel with the title Tom Jones à Londres. His first great success was achieved with L’Épreuve villageoise (1785) to the music of Grétry. La Femme jalouse, a five-act comedy in verse (1785), Joconde (1790) for the music of Louis Jaden, Les Époux divorcés (1799), a comedy, and other pieces followed. Desforges was one of the first to avail himself of the new facilities afforded under the Revolution for divorce and re-marriage. The curious record of his own early indiscretions in Le Poète, ou mémoires d’un homme de lettres écrits par lui-même (4 vols., 1798) is said to have been undertaken at the request of Madame Desforges. He died in Paris on the 13th of August 1806.

 DESGARCINS, MAGDELEINE MARIE [] (1769–1797), French actress, was born at Mont Dauphin (Hautes Alpes). In her short career she became one of the greatest of French tragédiennes, the associate of Talma, with whom she nearly always played. Her début at the Comédie Française occurred on the 24th of May 1788, in Bajazet, with such success that she was at once made sociétaire. She was one of the actresses who left the Comédie Française in 1791 for the house in the rue Richelieu, soon to become the Théâtre de la République, and there her triumphs were no less—in King Lear, Othello, La Harpe’s Mélanie et Virginie, &c. Her health, however, failed, and she died insane, in Paris, on the 27th of October 1797.

 DESHAYES, GÉRARD PAUL (1795–1875), French geologist and conchologist, was born at Nancy on the 13th of May 1797, his father at that time being professor of experimental physics in the École Centrale of the department of la Meurthe. He studied medicine at Strassburg, and afterwards took the degree of bachelier ès lettres in Paris in 1821; but he abandoned the medical profession in order to devote himself to natural history. For some time he gave private lessons on geology, and subsequently became professor of natural history in the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. He was distinguished for his researches on the fossil mollusca of the Paris Basin and of other Tertiary areas. His studies on the relations of the fossil to the recent species led him as early as 1829 to conclusions somewhat similar to those arrived at by Lyell, to whom Deshayes rendered much assistance in connexion with the classification of the Tertiary system into Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene. He was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France. In 1839 he began the publication of his Traité élémentaire de conchyliologie, the last part of which was not issued until 1858. In the same year (1839) he went to Algeria for the French Government, and spent three years in explorations in that country. His principal work, which resulted from the collections he made, Mollusques de l’Algérie, was issued (incomplete) in 1848. In 1870 the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society of London was awarded to him. He died at Boran on the 9th of June 1875. His publications included Description des coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris (2 vols. and atlas, 1824–1837); Description des animaux sans vertèbres découverts dans le bassin de Paris (3 vols. and atlas, 1856–1866); Catalogue des mollusques de l’île la Réunion (1863).

 DESHOULIÈRES, ANTOINETTE DU LIGIER DE LA GARDE (1638–1694), French poet, was born in Paris on the 1st of January 1638. She was the daughter of Melchior du Ligier, sieur de la Garde, maître d’hôtel to the queens Marie de’ Medici and Anne of Austria. She received a careful and very complete education, acquiring a knowledge of Latin, Spanish and Italian, and studying prosody under the direction of the poet Jean Hesnault. At the age of thirteen she married Guillaume de Boisguerin, seigneur Deshoulières, who followed the prince of Condé as lieutenant-colonel of one of his regiments to Flanders about a year after the marriage. Madame Deshoulières returned for a time to the house of her parents, where she gave herself to writing poetry and studying the philosophy of Gassendi. She rejoined her husband at Rocroi, near Brussels, where, being distinguished for her personal beauty, she became the object of embarrassing attentions on the part of the prince of Condé. Having made herself obnoxious to the government by her urgent demand for the arrears of her husband’s pay, she was imprisoned in the château of Wilworden. After a few months she was freed by her husband, who attacked the château at the head of a small band of soldiers. An amnesty having been proclaimed, they returned to France, where Madame Deshoulières soon became a conspicuous personage at the court of Louis XIV. and in literary society. She won the friendship and admiration of the most eminent literary men of the age—some of her more zealous flatterers even going so far as to style her the tenth muse and the French Calliope. Her poems were very numerous, and included specimens of nearly all the minor forms, odes, eclogues, idylls, elegies, chansons, ballads, madrigals, &c. Of these the idylls alone, and only some of them, have stood the test of time, the others being entirely forgotten. She wrote several dramatic works, the best of which do not rise to mediocrity. Her friendship for Corneille made her take sides for the Phèdre of Pradon against that of Racine. Voltaire pronounced her the best of women French poets; and her reputation with her contemporaries is indicated by her election as a member of the Academy of the Ricovrati of Padua and of the Academy of Arles. In 1688 a pension of 2000 livres was bestowed upon her by the king, and she was thus relieved from the poverty in which she had long lived. She died in Paris on the 17th February 1694. Complete editions of her works were published at Paris in 1695, 1747, &c. These include a few poems by her daughter, Antoine Thérèse Deshoulières (1656–1718), who inherited her talent.

 DESICCATION (from the Lat. desiccare, to dry up), the operation of drying or removing water from a substance. It is of particular importance in practical chemistry. If a substance admits of being heated to say 100°, the drying may be effected by means of an air-bath, which is simply an oven heated by gas or by steam. Otherwise a desiccator must be employed; this is essentially a closed vessel in which a hygroscopic substance is placed together with the substance to be dried. The process may be accelerated by exhausting the desiccator; this so-called vacuum desiccation is especially suitable for the concentration of aqueous solutions of readily decomposable substances. Of the hygroscopic substances in common use, phosphoric anhydride, concentrated sulphuric acid, and dry potassium hydrate are almost equal in power; sodium hydrate and calcium chloride are not much behind.

Two common types of desiccator are in use. In one the absorbent is placed at the bottom, and the substance to be dried above. Hempel pointed out that the efficiency would be increased by inverting this arrangement, since water vapour is lighter than air and consequently rises. Liquids are dried either by means of the desiccator, or, as is more usual, by shaking with a substance which removes the water. Fused calcium chloride is the commonest absorbent; but it must not be used with alcohols and several other compounds, since it forms compounds with these substances. Quicklime, barium oxide, and dehydrated copper sulphate are especially applicable to alcohol and ether; the last traces of water may be removed by adding metallic sodium and distilling. Gases are dried by leading them through towers or tubes containing an appropriate drying material. The experiments of H. B. Baker on the influence of moisture on chemical combination have shown the difficulty of removing the last traces of water.

In chemical technology, apparatus on the principle of the laboratory air-bath are mainly used. Crystals and precipitates, deprived of as much water as possible by centrifugal machines or filter-presses, are transported by means of a belt, screw, or other form of conveyer, on to trays staged in brick chambers heated directly by flue gases or steam pipes; the latter are easily controlled, and if the steam be superheated a temperature of 300° and over may be maintained. In some cases the material traverses the chamber from the coolest to the hottest part on a conveyer or in wagons. Rotating cylinders are also used; the material to be dried being placed inside, and the cylinder heated by a steam jacket or otherwise.

 DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO (1428–1464), Italian sculptor, was born at Settignano, a village on the southern slope of the hill

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/109


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, John (1741-1801)


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desforges, Pierre Jean Baptiste Choudard


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Joseph (fl.1706)


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desgarcins, Magdeleine Marie


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Joseph (1700-1767)


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Deshayes, Gérard Paul


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Lyde (d.1787)


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Deshoulières, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Lyde (d.1803)


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desiccation


text:
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 of Fiesole, still surrounded by the quarries of sandstone of which the hill is formed, and inhabited by a race of “stone-cutters.” Desiderio was for a short time a pupil of Donatello, whom, according to Vasari, he assisted in the work on the pedestal of David, and he seems to have worked also with Mino da Fiesole, with the delicate and refined style of whose works those of Desiderio seem to have a closer affinity than with the perhaps more masculine tone of Donatello. Vasari particularly extols the sculptor’s treatment of the figures of women and children. It does not appear that Desiderio ever worked elsewhere than at Florence; and it is there that those who are interested in the Italian sculpture of the Renaissance must seek his few surviving decorative and monumental works, though a number of his delicately carved marble busts of women and children are to be found in the museums and private collections of Germany and France. The most prominent of his works are the tomb of the secretary of state, Marsuppini, in Santa Croce, and the great marble tabernacle of the Annunciation in San Lorenzo, both of which belong to the latter period of Desiderio’s activity; and the cherubs’ heads which form the exterior frieze of the Pazzi Chapel. Vasari mentions a marble bust by Desiderio of Marietta degli Strozzi, which for many years was held to be identical with a very beautiful bust bought in 1878 from the Strozzi family for the Berlin Museum. This bust is now, however, generally acknowledged to be the work of Francesco Laurana; whilst Desiderio’s bust of Marietta has been recognized in another marble portrait acquired by the Berlin Museum in 1842. The Berlin Museum also owns a coloured plaster bust of an Urbino lady by Desiderio, the model for which is in the possession of the earl of Wemyss. Other important busts by the master are in the Bargello, Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the collections of M. Figdor and M. Benda in Vienna, and of M. Dreyfus in Paris. Like most of Donatello’s pupils, Desiderio worked chiefly in marble, and not a single work in bronze has been traced to his hand.

 DESIDERIUS, the last king of the Lombards, is chiefly known through his connexion with Charlemagne. He was duke of Tuscany and became king of the Lombards after the death of Aistulf in 756. Seeking, like his predecessors, to extend the Lombard power in Italy, he came into collision with the papacy, and about 772 the new pope, Adrian I., implored the aid of Charlemagne against him. Other causes of quarrel already existed between the Frankish and the Lombard kings. In 770 Charlemagne had married a daughter of Desiderius; but he soon put this lady away, and sent her back to her father. Moreover, Gerberga, the widow of Charlemagne’s brother Carloman, had sought the protection of the Lombard king after her husband’s death in 771; and in return for the slight cast upon his daughter, Desiderius had recognized Gerberga’s sons as the lawful Frankish kings, and had attacked Adrian for refusing to crown them. Such was the position when Charlemagne led his troops across the Alps in 773, took the Lombard capital, Ticinum, the modern Pavia, in June 774, and added the kingdom of Lombardy to his own dominions. Desiderius was carried to France, where he died, and his son, Adalgis, spent his life in futile attempts to recover his father’s kingdom. The name of Desiderius appears in the romances of the Carolingian period.

 DESIGN (Fr. dessin, drawing; Lat. designare, to mark out), in the arts, a drawing, more especially when made as a guide for the execution of work; that side of drawing which deals with arrangement rather than representation; and generally, by analogy, a deliberate planning, scheming or purpose. Modern use has tended to associate design with the word “original” in the sense of new or abnormal. The end of design, however, is properly utility, fitness and delight. If a discovery, it should be a discovery of what seems inevitable, an inspiration arising out of the conditions, and parallel to invention in the sciences. The faculty of design has best flourished when an almost spontaneous development was taking place in the arts, and while certain classes of arts, more or less noble, were generally demanded and the demand copiously satisfied, as in the production of Greek vases, Byzantine mosaics, Gothic cathedrals, and Renaissance paintings. Thus where a “school of design” arises there is much general likeness in the products but also a general progress. The common experience—“tradition”—is a part of each artist’s stock in trade; and all are carried along in a stream of continuous exploration. Some of the arts, writing, for instance, have been little touched by conscious originality in design, all has been progress, or, at least, change, in response to conditions. Under such a system, in a time of progress, the proper limitations react as intensity; when limitations are removed the designer has less and less upon which to react, and unconditioned liberty gives him nothing at all to lean on. Design is response to needs, conditions and aspirations. The Greeks so well understood this that they appear to have consciously restrained themselves to the development of selected types, not only in architecture and literature, but in domestic arts, like pottery. Design with them was less the new than the true.

For the production of a school of design it is necessary that there should be a considerable body of artists working together, and a large demand from a sympathetic public. A process of continuous development is thus brought into being which sustains the individual effort. It is necessary for the designer to know familiarly the processes, the materials and the skilful use of the tools involved in the productions of a given art, and properly only one who practises a craft can design for it. It is necessary to enter into the traditions of the art, that is, to know past achievements. It is necessary, further, to be in relation with nature, the great reservoir of ideas, for it is from it that fresh thought will flow into all forms of art. These conditions being granted, the best and most useful meaning we can give to the word design is exploration, experiment, consideration of possibilities. Putting too high a value on originality other than this is to restrict natural growth from vital roots, in which true originality consists. To take design in architecture as an example, we have rested too much on definite precedent (a different thing from living tradition) and, on the other hand, hoped too much from newness. Exploration of the possibilities in arches, vaults, domes and the like, as a chemist or a mathematician explores, is little accepted as a method in architecture at this time, although in antiquity it was by such means that the great master-works were produced: the Pantheon, Santa Sophia, Durham and Amiens cathedrals. The same is true of all forms of design. Of course the genius and inspiration of the individual artist is not here ignored, but assumed. What we are concerned with is a mode of thought which shall make it most fruitful.

 DESIRE, in popular usage, a term for a wishing or longing for something which one has not got. For its technical use see. The word is derived through the French from Lat. desiderare, to long or wish for, to miss. The substantive desiderium has the special meaning of desire for something one has once possessed but lost, hence regret or grief. The usual explanation of the word is to connect it with sidus, star, as in considerare, to examine the stars with attention, hence, to look closely at. If this is so, the history of the transition in meaning is unknown. J. B. Greenough (Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, i. 96) has suggested that the word is a military slang term. According to this theory desiderare meant originally to miss a soldier from the ranks at roll-call, the root being that seen in sedere, to sit, sedes, seat, place, &c.

 DESK (from Lat. discus, quoit, in med. sense of “table,” cf. “dish” and Ger. Tisch, table, from same source), any kind of flat or sloping table for writing or reading. Its earliest shape was probably that with which we are familiar in pictures of the monastic scriptorium—rather high and narrow with a sloping slab. The primitive desk had little accommodation for writing materials, and no storage room for papers; drawers, cupboards and pigeon-holes were the evolution of periods when writing grew common, and when letters and other documents requiring preservation became numerous. It

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text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desiderio da Settignano


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Moses


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desiderius

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desiderius


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Design

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Design


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Patrick


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desire

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desire


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 was long the custom to secure papers in chests or cabinets, whereas the modern desk serves the double purpose of a writing-table and a storehouse for documents. The first development from the early stall-like desk consisted of the addition of a drawer; then the table came to be supported upon legs or columns, which, as in the many beautiful examples constructed by Boulle and his school, were often of elaborate grace. Eventually the legs were replaced by a series of superimposed drawers forming pedestals—hence the familiar pedestal writing-table.

For a long period there were two distinct contemporary forms of desk—the table and the bureau or escritoire. The latter shape attained a popularity so great that, especially in England and America, it was found even in houses in which there was little occasion for writing. The English-speaking people of the 18th century were amazingly fond of pieces of furniture which served a double or triple purpose. The bureau—the word is the French generic appellation for a desk—derives its name from the material with which it was originally covered (Fr. bure, woollen cloth). It consists of an upright carcass sloping inward at the top, and provided with long drawers below. The upper part is fitted with small drawers and pigeon-holes, and often with secret places, and the writing space is formed by a hinged slab supported on runners; when not in use this slab closes up the sloping top. During the 18th century innumerable thousands of these bureaux were made on both sides of the Atlantic—indeed, if we except tables and chairs, no piece of old furniture is more common. In the first part of that period they were usually of oak, but when mahogany was introduced into Europe it speedily ousted the heavier-looking wood. Its deep rich colour and the high polish of which it was capable added appreciably to its ornamental appearance. While the pigeon-holes and small drawers were used for papers, the long drawers were often employed for purposes other than literary. In time the bureau-secretaire became a bureau-bookcase, the glazed shelves, which were often a separate erection, resting upon the top of the bureau. The cabinetmakers of the second half of the 18th century, the period of the greatest floraison of this combination, competed with each other in devising elegant frets for the glass fronts. Solid and satisfying to the eye, if somewhat severe in form, the mahogany bureau was usually an exceedingly presentable piece of furniture. Occasionally it had a bombé front which mitigated its severity; this was especially the case in the Dutch varieties, which were in a measure free adaptations of the French Louis Quinze commode. These Dutch bureaux, and the English ones made in imitation of them, were usually elaborately inlaid with floral designs in coloured woods; but whereas the Batavian marquetry was often rough and crude, the English work was usually of considerable excellence. Side by side with this form of writing apparatus was one variety or another of the writing-table proper. In so far as it is possible to generalize upon such a detail it would appear that the bureau was the desk of the yeoman and what we now call the lower middle class, and that the slighter and more table-like forms were preferred by those higher in the social scale. This probably means no more than that while the one class preserved the old English affection for the solid and heavy furniture which would last for generations, those who were more free to follow the fashions and fancies of their time were, as the pecuniarily easy classes always have been, ready to abandon the old for the new.

Just about the time when the flat table with its drawers in a single row, or in nests serving as pedestals, was finally assuming its familiar modern shape, an invention was introduced which was destined eventually, so far as numbers and convenience go, to supersede all other forms of desk. This was the cylinder-top writing-table. Nothing is known of the originator of this device, but it is certain that if not French himself he worked in France. The historians of French furniture agree in fixing its introduction about the year 1750, and we know that a desk worked on this principle was in the possession of the French crown in the year 1760. Even in its early days the cylinder took more than one form. It sometimes consisted of a solid piece of curved wood, and sometimes of a tambour frame—that is to say, of a series of narrow jointed strips of wood mounted on canvas; the revolving shutters of a shop-front are an adaptation of the idea. For a long period, however, the cylinder was most often solid, and remained so until the latter part of the 19th century, when the “American roll-top desk” began to be made in large numbers. This is indeed the old French form with a tambour cylinder, and it is now the desk that is most frequently met with all over the world for commercial purposes. Its popularity is due to its large accommodation, and to the facility with which the closing of the cylinder conceals all papers, and automatically locks every drawer. To France we owe not only the invention of this ubiquitous form, but the construction of many of the finest and most historic desks that have survived—the characteristic marquetry writing-tables of the Boulle period, and the gilded splendours of that of Louis Quinze have never been surpassed in the history of furniture. Indeed, the “Bureau du roi” which was made for Louis XV. is the most famous and magnificent piece of furniture that, so far as we know, was ever constructed. This desk, which is now one of the treasures of the Louvre, was the work of several artist-artificers, chief among whom were Oeben and Riesener—Oeben, it may be added here as a matter of artistic interest, became the grandfather of Eugene Delacroix. The bureau is signed “Riesener fa. 1769 à l’Arsenal de Paris,” but it has been established that, however great may have been the share of its construction which fell to him, the conception was that of Oeben. The work was ordered in 1760; it would thus appear that nine years were consumed in perfecting it, which is not surprising when we learn from the detailed account of its construction that the work began with making a perfect miniature model followed by one of full size. The “bureau du roi” is a large cylinder desk elaborately inlaid in marquetry of woods, and decorated with a wonderful and ornate series of mounts consisting of mouldings, plaques, vases and statuettes of gilt bronze cast and chased. These bronzes are the work of Duplessis, Winant and Hervieux. The desk, which shows plainly the transition between the Louis Quinze and Louis Seize styles, is as remarkable for the boldness of its conception as for the magnificent finish of its details. Its lines are large, flowing and harmonious, and although it is no longer exactly as it left the hands of its makers (Oeben died before it was finished) the alterations that have been made have hardly interfered with the general effect. For the head of the king for whom it was made that of Minerva in a helmet was substituted under his successor. The ciphers of Louis XV. have been removed and replaced by Sèvres plaques, and even the key which bore the king’s initial crowned with laurels and palm leaves, with his portrait on the one side, and the fleur de lys on the other, has been interfered with by an austere republicanism. Yet no tampering with details can spoil the monumental nobility of this great conception.

 DESLONGCHAMPS, JACQUES AMAND EUDES- (1794–1867), French naturalist and palaeontologist, was born at Caen in Normandy on the 17th of January 1794. His parents, though poor, contrived to give him a good education, and he studied medicine in his native town to such good effect that in 1812 he was appointed assistant-surgeon in the navy, and in 1815 surgeon assistant major to the military hospital of Caen. Soon afterwards he proceeded to Paris to qualify for the degree of doctor of surgery, and there the researches and teachings of Cuvier attracted his attention to subjects of natural history and palaeontology. In 1822 he was elected surgeon to the board of relief at Caen, and while he never ceased to devote his energies to the duties of this post, he sought relaxation in geological studies. Soon he discovered remains of Teleosaurus in one of the Caen quarries, and he became an ardent palaeontologist. He was one of the founders of the museum of natural history at Caen, and acted as honorary curator; he was likewise one of the founders of the Sociétié linnéenne de Normandie (1823), to the transactions of which society he communicated papers on Teleosaurus, Poekilopleuron (Megalosaurus), on Jurassic mollusca and brachiopoda. In 1825 he became professor of zoology to the faculty of sciences, and in 1847, dean. He died on the 17th of January 1867.

His son (1830–1889), French

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 palaeontologist, was born in 1830. He succeeded his father about the year 1856 as professor of zoology at the faculty of sciences at Caen, and in 1861 he became also professor of geology and dean. After the death of his father in 1867, he devoted himself to the completion of a memoir on the Teleosaurs: the joint labours being embodied in his Prodrome des Téléosauriens du Calvados. To the Société Linnéenne de Normandie he contributed memoirs on Jurassic brachiopods, on the geology of the department of La Manche (1856), of Calvados (1856–1863), on the Terrain callovien (1859), on Nouvelle-Calédonie (1864), and Études sur les étages jurassiques inférieurs de la Normandie (1864). His work Le Jura normand was issued in 1877–1878 (incomplete). He died at Château Matthieu, Calvados, on the 21st of December 1889.

 DESMAISEAUX, PIERRE (1673–1745); French writer, was born at Saillat, probably in 1673. His father, a minister of the reformed church, had to leave France on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and took refuge in Geneva, where Pierre was educated. Bayle gave him an introduction to the 3rd Lord Shaftesbury, with whom, in 1699, he came to England, where he engaged in literary work. He remained in close touch with the religious refugees in England and Holland, and constantly in correspondence with the leading continental savants and writers, who were in the habit of employing him to conduct such business as they might have in England. In 1720 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Among his works are Vie de St Evremond (1711), Vie de Boileau-Despréaux (1712), Vie de Bayle (1730). He also took an active part in preparing the Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages de l’Europe (1728–1753), and the Bibliothèque britannique (1733–1747), and edited a selection of St Evremond’s writings (1706). Part of Desmaiseaux’s correspondence is preserved in the British Museum, and other letters are in the royal library at Copenhagen. He died on the 11th of July 1745.

 DESMAREST, NICOLAS (1725–1815), French geologist, was born at Soulaines, in the department of Aube, on the 16th of September 1725. Of humble parentage, he was educated at the college of the Oratorians of Troyes and Paris. Taking full advantage of the instruction he received, he was able to support himself by teaching, and to continue his studies independently. Buffon’s Theory of the Earth interested him, and in 1753 he successfully competed for a prize by writing an essay on the ancient connexion between England and France. This attracted much attention, and ultimately led to his being employed in studying and reporting on manufactures in different countries, and in 1788 to his appointment as inspector-general of the manufactures of France. He utilized his journeys, travelling on foot, so as to add to his knowledge of the earth’s structure. In 1763 he made observations in Auvergne, recognizing that the prismatic basalts were old lava streams, comparing them with the columns of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, and referring them to the operations of extinct volcanoes. It was not, however, until 1774 that he published an essay on the subject, accompanied by a geological map, having meanwhile on several occasions revisited the district. He then pointed out the succession of volcanic outbursts and the changes the rocks had undergone through weathering and erosion. As remarked by Sir A. Geikie, the doctrine of the origin of valleys by the erosive action of the streams which flow through them was first clearly taught by Desmarest. An enlarged and improved edition of his map of the volcanic region of Auvergne was published after his death, in 1823, by his son (1784–1838), who was distinguished as a zoologist, and author of memoirs on recent and fossil crustacea. He died in Paris on the 20th of September 1815.

 DESMARETS (or ), JEAN, (1595–1676), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris in 1595. When he was about thirty he was introduced to Richelieu, and became one of the band of writers who carried out the cardinal’s literary ideas. Desmarets’s own inclination was to novel-writing, and the success of his romance Ariane in 1631 led to his formal admission to the circle that met at the house of Valentine Conrart and later developed into the Académie Française. Desmarets was its first chancellor. It was at Richelieu’s request that he began to write for the theatre. In this kind he produced a comedy long regarded as a masterpiece, Les Visionnaires (1637); a prose-tragedy, Érigone (1638); and Scipion (1639), a tragedy in verse. His success led to official preferment, and he was made conseiller du roi, contrôleur-général de l’extraordinaire des guerres, and secretary-general of the fleet of the Levant. His long epic Clovis (1657) is noteworthy because Desmarets rejected the traditional pagan background, and maintained that Christian imagery should supplant it. With this standpoint he contributed several works in defence of the moderns in the famous quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns. In his later years Desmarets devoted himself chiefly to producing a quantity of religious poems, of which the best-known is perhaps his verse translation of the Office de la Vierge (1645). He was a violent opponent of the Jansenists, against whom he wrote a Réponse à l’insolente apologie de Port-Royal (1666). He died in Paris on the 28th of October 1676.

 DESMARETS, NICOLAS, (1648–1721), French statesman, was born in Paris on the 10th of September 1648. His mother was the sister of J. B. Colbert, who took him into his offices as a clerk. He became counsellor to the parlement in 1672, master of requests in 1674 and intendant of finances in 1678. In these last functions he had to treat with the financiers for the coinage of new silver pieces of four sous. After Colbert’s death he was involved in the legal proceedings taken against those financiers who had manufactured coins of bad alloy. The prosecution, conducted by the members of the family of Le Tellier, rivals of the Colberts, presented no proof against Desmarets. Nevertheless he was stripped of his offices and exiled to his estates by the king, on the 23rd of December 1683. In March 1686 he was authorized to return to Paris, and again entered into relations with the controllers-general of finance, to whom he furnished for more than ten years remarkable memoirs on the economic situation in France. As early as 1687 he showed the necessity for radical reforms in the system of taxation, insisting on the ruin of the people and the excessive expenses of the king. By these memoirs he established his claim to a place among the great economists of the time, Vauban, Boisguilbert and the comte de Boulainvilliers. When in September 1699 Chamillart was named controller-general of finances, he took Desmarets for counsellor; and when he created the two offices of directors of finances, he gave one to Desmarets (October 22, 1703). Henceforth Desmarets was veritable minister of finance. Louis XIV. had long conversations with him. Madame de Maintenon protected him. The economists Vauban and Boisguilbert exchanged long conversations with him. When Chamillart found his double functions too heavy, and retaining the ministry of war resigned that of finance in 1708, Desmarets succeeded him. The situation was exceedingly grave. The ordinary revenues of the year 1708 amounted to 81,977,007 livres, of which 57,833,233 livres had already been spent by anticipation, and the expenses to meet were 200,251,447 livres. In 1709 a famine reduced still more the returns from taxes. Yet Desmarets’s reputation renewed the credit of the state, and financiers consented to advance money they had refused to the king. The emission of paper money, and a reform in the collection of taxes, enabled him to tide over the years 1709 and 1710. Then Desmarets decided upon an “extreme and violent remedy,” to use his own expression,—an income tax. His “tenth” was based on Vauban’s plan; but the privileged classes managed to avoid it, and it proved no better than other expedients. Nevertheless Louis XIV. managed to meet the most urgent expenses, and the deficit of 1715, about 350,000,000 livres, was much less than it would have been had it not been for Desmarets’s reforms. The honourable peace which Louis was enabled to conclude at Utrecht with his enemies was certainly due to the resources which Desmarets procured for him.

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 his estates. To justify his ministry he addressed to the regent a Compte rendu, which showed clearly the difficulties he had to meet. His enemies even, like Saint Simon, had to recognize his honesty and his talent. He was certainly, after Colbert, the greatest finance minister of Louis XIV.

 DES MOINES, the capital and the largest city of Iowa, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Polk county, in the south central part of the state, at the confluence of the Raccoon with the Des Moines river. Pop. (1890) 50,093; (1900) 62,139, of whom 7946 were foreign-born, including 1907 from Sweden and 1432 from Germany; (1910 census) 86,368. Des Moines is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago Great Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Wabash, the Minneapolis & St Louis, and the Des Moines, Iowa Falls & Northern railways; also by several interurban electric lines. The chief building in Des Moines is the State Capitol, erected at a cost of about $3,000,000; other important buildings are the public library (containing, in 1908, 40,415 volumes), the court house, the post office, the Iowa State Historical building, a large auditorium and two hospitals. As a manufacturing centre the city has considerable importance. Among the leading products are those of the furnaces, foundries and machine shops, flour and grist mills, planing mills, creameries, bridge and iron works, publishing houses and a packing house; and brick, tile, pottery, patent medicines, furniture, caskets, tombstones, carriages, farm machinery, Portland cement, glue, gloves and hosiery. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $15,084,958, an increase of 79.7% in five years. The city is in one of the most productive coal regions of the state, has a large jobbing trade, and is an important centre for the insurance business. The Iowa state fair is held here annually. In 1908 this city had a park system of 750 acres. Des Moines is the seat of Des Moines College, a Baptist institution, co-educational, founded in 1865 (enrolment, 1907–1908, 214); of Drake University (co-educational; founded in 1881 by the Disciples of Christ; now non-sectarian), with colleges of liberal arts, law, medicine, dental surgery and of the Bible, a conservatory of music, and a normal school, in which are departments of oratory and commercial training, and having in 1907–1908 1764 students, of whom 520 were in the summer school only; of the Highland Park College, founded in 1890; of Grand View College (Danish Lutheran), founded in 1895; and of the Capital City commercial college (founded 1884). A new city charter, embodying what has become known as the “Des Moines Plan” of municipal government, was adopted in 1907. It centralizes power in a council of five (mayor and four councilmen), nominated at a non-partisan primary and voted for on a non-partisan ticket by the electors of the entire city, ward divisions having been abolished. Elections are biennial. Other city officers are chosen by the council, and city employees are selected by a civil service commission of three members, appointed by the council. The mayor is superintendent of the department of public affairs, and each of the other administrative departments (accounts and finances, public safety, streets and public improvements, and parks and public property) is under the charge of one of the councilmen. After petition signed by a number of voters not less than 25% of the number voting at the preceding municipal election, any member of the council may be removed by popular vote, to which all public franchises must be submitted, and by which the council may be compelled to pass any law or ordinance.

A fort called Fort Des Moines was established on the site of the city in 1843 to protect the rights of the Sacs and Foxes. In 1843 the site was opened to settlement by the whites; in 1851 Des Moines was incorporated as a town; in 1857 it was first chartered as a city, and, for the purpose of a more central location, the seat of government was removed hither from Iowa City. A fort was re-established here by act of Congress in 1900 and named Fort Des Moines. It is occupied by a full regiment of cavalry. The name of the city was taken from that of the river, which in turn is supposed to represent a corruption by the French of the original Indian name, Moingona,—the French at first using the abbreviation “moin,” and calling the river “la rivière des moins” and then, the name having become associated with the Trappist monks, changing it into “la rivière des moines.”

 DESMOND, GERALD FITZGERALD, (d. 1583), Irish leader, was son of James, 14th earl, by his second wife More O’Carroll. His father had agreed in January 1541, as one of the terms of his submission to Henry VIII., to send young Gerald to be educated in England. At the accession of Edward VI. proposals to this effect were renewed; Gerald was to be the companion of the young king. Unfortunately for the subsequent peace of Munster these projects were not carried out. The Desmond estates were held by a doubtful title, and claims on them were made by the Butlers, the hereditary enemies of the Geraldines, the 9th earl of Ormonde having married Lady Joan Fitzgerald, daughter and heiress-general of the 11th earl of Desmond. On Ormonde’s death she proposed to marry Gerald Fitzgerald, and eventually did so, after the death of her second husband, Sir Francis Bryan. The effect of this marriage was a temporary cessation of open hostility between the Desmonds and her son, Thomas Butler, 10th earl of Ormonde.

Gerald succeeded to the earldom in 1558; he was knighted by the lord deputy Sussex, and did homage at Waterford. He soon established close relations with his namesake Gerald Fitzgerald, 11th earl of Kildare (1525–1585), and with Shane O’Neill. In spite of an award made by Sussex in August 1560 regulating the matters in dispute between Ormonde and the Fitzgeralds, the Geraldine outlaws were still plundering their neighbours. Desmond neglected a summons to appear at Elizabeth’s court for some time on the plea that he was at war with his uncle Maurice. When he did appear in London in May 1562 his insolent conduct before the privy council resulted in a short imprisonment in the Tower. He was detained in England until 1564, and soon after his return his wife’s death set him free from such restraint as was provided by her Butler connexion. He now raided Thomond, and in Waterford he sought to enforce his feudal rights on Sir Maurice Fitzgerald of Decies, who invoked the help of Ormonde. The two nobles thereupon resorted to open war, fighting a battle at Affane on the Blackwater, where Desmond was defeated and taken prisoner. Ormonde and Desmond were bound over in London to keep the peace, being allowed to return early in 1566 to Ireland, where a royal commission was appointed to settle the matters in dispute between them. Desmond and his brother Sir John of Desmond were sent over to England, where they surrendered their lands to the queen after a short experience of the Tower. In the meanwhile Desmond’s cousin, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, caused himself to be acclaimed captain of Desmond in defiance of Sidney, and in the evident expectation of usurping the earldom. He sought to give the movement an ultra-Catholic character, with the idea of gaining foreign assistance, and allied himself with John Burke, son of the earl of Clanricarde, with Connor O’Brien, earl of Thomond, and even secured Ormonde’s brother, Sir Edmund Butler, whom Sidney had offended. Piers and Edward Butler also joined the rebellion, but the appearance of Sidney and Ormonde in the south-west was rapidly followed by the submission of the Butlers. Most of the Geraldines were subjugated by Humphrey Gilbert, but Fitzmaurice remained in arms, and in 1571 Sir John Perrot undertook to reduce him. Perrot hunted him down, and at last on the 23rd of February 1573 he made formal submission at Kilmallock, lying prostrate on the floor of the church by way of proving his sincerity.

Against the advice of the queen’s Irish counsellors Desmond was allowed to return to Ireland in 1573, the earl promising not to exercise palatinate jurisdiction in Kerry until his rights to it were proved. He was detained for six months in Dublin, but in November slipped through the hands of the government, and

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text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desk

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desk


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Deslongchamps, Jacques Amand Eudes-


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desmaiseaux, Pierre


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desmarest, Nicolas


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desmarets, Jean


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Desmarets, Nicolas


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 xl to leave it to them to make what profits they chose in disposing of the books to their customers. Smith was not averse to make the experiment which Ruskin desired, but the booksellers did not welcome the new plan of sale, and the circulation of Ruskin's books declined. Further difficulties followed in regard to reprints of his early masterpieces, 'Modern Painters' and the 'Stones of Venice.' Many of the plates were worn out, and Ruskin hesitated to permit them to be replaced or retouched now that their original engraver, Thomas Lupton, was dead. He desired to limit very strictly the number of copies in the new editions; he announced that the time had come for issuing a final edition of his early works, and pledged himself to suffer no reprint hereafter. These conditions also failed to harmonise with the habitual methods of the publishing business. A breach proved inevitable, and finally Ruskin made other arrangements for the production and publication of his writings. In 1871 he employed Mr. George Allen to aid him personally in preparing and distributing them, and during the course of the next six years gradually transferred to Mr. Allen all the work that Smith, Elder, & Co. had previously done for him. On 5 Sept. 1878 Ruskin wholly severed his connection with his old publisher by removing all his books from his charge.

Despite many external calls on Smith's attention, the normal work of the publishing firm during the seventies and eighties well maintained its character. The 'Cornhill' continued to prove a valuable recruiting ground for authors. Mr. Leslie Stephen, after he became editor of the magazine in 1871, welcomed to its pages the early work of many writers who were in due time to add to the stock of permanent English literature. John Addington Symonds wrote many essays and sketches for the magazine, and his chief writings were afterwards published by Smith, Elder, & Co., notably his 'History of the Renaissance,' which came out in seven volumes between 1875 and 1886. Mr. Leslie Stephen himself contributed the critical essays, which were collected under the title of 'Hours in a Library;' and his 'History of Thought in the Eighteenth Century,' 1876, was among the firm's more important publications. Robert Louis Stevenson was a frequent contributor. Miss Thackeray's 'Old Kensington' and 'Miss Angel,' Blackmore's 'Erema,' Black's 'Three Feathers' and 'White Wings,' Mrs. Oliphant's 'Carità' and 'Within the Precincts,' Mr. W. E. Norris's 'Mdlle. de Mersac,' Mr. Henry James's 'Washington Square,' Mr. Thomas Hardy's 'Far from the Madding Crowd' and 'The Hand of Ethelberta,' and Mr. James Payn's 'Grape from a Thorn' were 'Cornhill' serials while Mr. Stephen guided the fortunes of the periodical, and the majority of them were afterwards issued by Smith, Elder, & Co. in book form. Another change in the personnel of the office became necessary on the retirement of Smith Williams in 1875. On the recommendation of Mr. Leslie Stephen, his intimate friend, James Payn the novelist, who had previously edited 'Chambers's Journal,' joined the staff at Waterloo Place as literary adviser in Williams's place. Payn's taste lay in the lighter form of literature. Among the most successful books that he accepted for the firm was F. Anstey's 'Vice Versa.' In 1882, when other duties caused


text: Author:Edmond Esmonin

title: Author:Edmond Esmonin