The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 259

ITHACA (10), one of the Ionian Islands, and one of the smallest, known now under the name Thiaki; it was the home of Ulysses, and his domain as king when he set out for the Trojan War, and which he did not see again till his return after twenty years. Also a town (11) in New York State, U.S., seat of CORNELL UNIVERSITY (q. v.).

ITHURIEL, an angel whom Milton represents as sent by Gabriel to search for Satan in Paradise, who had found entrance by eluding the vigilance of the guard; he was armed with a _spear_, the touch of which could unmask any disguise, and by means of which he discovered Satan lurking in the garden in the form of a toad.

ITINERARY, a name given among the Romans to an account or a map of the princ.i.p.al routes through the empire and the stations along them.

ITURBIDE, AUGUSTINE DE, a Mexican general, emanc.i.p.ated Mexico from the yoke of Spain; seized the crown and was proclaimed emperor in 1822, was obliged to abdicate next year and leave the country, but returning, was immediately arrested, and shot (1783-1824).

IVAN (i. e. John), the name of two grand-dukes and four czars of Russia; the two grand-dukes were Ivan I., grand-duke from 1328 to 1340, and Ivan II., his son, grand-duke from 1353 to 1359.

IVAN III., surnamed The Threatening, sought to free Russia from the yoke of the Tartars who had held it tributary for two centuries; gained victories over the Tartars and the Poles, and was the first to receive at Moscow amba.s.sadors from other Powers of Europe; reigned from 1462 to 1505.

IVAN IV., surnamed The Terrible, grandson of the preceding, a.s.sumed the sovereignty at 14, had himself crowned in 1545, and took the t.i.tle of Czar; his first great ambition was to destroy the Tartar power, which he did at Kasan and Astrakhan, receiving homage thereafter from almost all the Tartar chiefs; on the death of his wife in 1563 he lost all self-restraint, and by the ferocity of his wars provoked hostility which the Pope, who had been appealed to, interposed to appease; in a fit of pa.s.sion he killed his eldest son, whom he loved, remorse for which embittered his last days and hastened his end (1530-1584).

IVANHOE, the hero of Sir Walter Scott's novel of the name, the disinherited son of Cedric of Rotherwood, who falls in love with Rowena, a ward of his father, but by the exhibition of his prowess as a knight is at the intercession of King Richard, reconciled to his father, with the result that he marries Rowena.

IVANOVA (32), a Russian town in Vladimir, 210 m. NE. of Moscow, engaged in the manufacture of cotton, and known as the "Manchester of Russia."

IVANOVITCH, IVAN, a lazy, good-natured impersonation of the typical Russian, as John Bull is of the Englishman, and Brother Jonathan of the American.

IVES, ST., a town on the Ouse, in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, 50 m. N. of London, where Oliver Cromwell resided from 1631 to 1635; the chief industries are malting and brewing.

IVIZA (22), the most westerly of the Balearic Isles, is hilly and well wooded, with fertile valleys and important fisheries.

IVORY COAST, a territory on the K. of the Gulf of Guinea, belonging partly to Liberia and partly to France and Britain.

IVORY GATE, the gate spoken of in Virgil through which dreams pa.s.s that do not turn out true. See HORN GATE.

IVRY, a village in the dep. of Eure, NE. of Dreux, famous for the victory of Henry of Navarre over the Leaguers in 1590.

IXION, the king of the LAPITHae (q. v.), who being admitted to heaven attempted to do violence to Hera, and whom Zeus deluded to embrace a phantom image of her instead, whereby he became the father of the Centaurs, and whom Zeus thereafter punished by fastening him hands and feet to an eternally revolving wheel in h.e.l.l.

IZALIO, a volcano in the republic of San Salvador, which first announced its existence by a fissure opening in 1798 on the plain that now surrounds it, from which there vomited lava and cinders, accompanied with earthquake.

J

JABALPUR (84), a town, district, and one of the four divisions of the Central Provinces, India; the town is an important commercial and railway centre, situated 228 m. SW. of Allahabad; cotton and carpets are amongst its chief manufactures.

JACK, a familiar form of John, the most widely spread of Christian names, and said to be derived from the French JACQUES or, as others maintain, from JANKIN, a distinctive form of JOHAN or JOHN; JOHNKIN gives us JOCK and JOCKEY; from its extreme commonness it has acquired that slightly contemptuous signification observable in such compounds as "every man JACK," "JACK-of-all-trades," "JACK-an-apes," and the name as applied to the _knaves_ in playing-cards, and to the small white ball used as a mark in the game of bowls is an example of its transferred sense.

JACKAROO, name given in Australia to a green-horn from England inexperienced in bush life.

JACKDAW OF RHEIMS, one of the INGOLDSBY LEGENDS (q. v.).

JACKSON, 1, a prosperous manufacturing city (21) in Michigan, U.S.A., on the Grand River, 70 m. W. of Detroit; has various mills, iron-works, breweries, &c., and bituminous coal-mines on its outskirts.

2, A cotton market-town (10), capital of Madison County, Tennessee, on the South Fork of the Forked Deer River, 107 m. SE. of Cairo, Illinois.

JACKSON, ANDREW, GENERAL, president of the United States, born at Waxhaw, N. Carolina, adopted law as a profession, and in 1788 became public prosecutor at Nashville; took a prominent part in establis.h.i.+ng the State of Tennessee, of which he subsequently became a senator and a, judge; during the war with Britain (1812-14) be came to the front and crowned a series of successes by his great victory over Sir E. Pakenham at New Orleans; for a time he was governor of the newly purchased State of Florida, but resigning, he again entered the U.S. Senate in 1823; five years later he became President, and in 1832 was again elected; his Presidency is a.s.sociated with the readjustment of the tariff on a purely protective basis, which led to disputes with S. Carolina, the sweeping away of the United States Bank, the wiping out of the national debt in 1835, and the vigorous enforcement of claims against the French for damage done during the Napoleonic wars; his imperious yet honest nature led him to make a more frequent use of the President's veto than any of his predecessors (1767-1845).

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN, known as Stonewall Jackson, an American general, born in Virginia; bred for the army; distinguished himself in the Mexican War; retired from the army in 1853, and became a professor in Mathematics and Military Science in Virginia; was appointed brigadier-general in the Confederate army at the outbreak of the Civil War, and earned the _nom de guerre_ of "Stonewall" by his firmness at the battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861; distinguished himself in subsequent engagements; at Chancellorville was by mistake fired at in the dark and mortally wounded by his own men on May 6, 1863; he was a man of the Cromwell stamp, and his death was not only a blow to his own party, but matter of grief to the whole American nation (1824-1863).

JACKSONVILLE, 1, the chief seat of commerce (17) in Florida State, is situated on St. John's River, some 20 m. from its mouth; is a busy railway centre, and has an active river trade in lumber, cotton, fruits, &c., and is a health resort. 2, Capital (13) of Morgan County, Illinois, is pleasantly situated on a fertile plain, 34 m. SW. of Springfield; is noted as an educational centre, and for its many charity asylums; its manufactures embrace woollens, paper, &c.

JACOB, a Hebrew patriarch, younger son of Isaac and Rebecca, the favourite of his mother, and had twelve sons, the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel; his character and the story of his life are navely delineated in the book of Genesis.

JACOB, JEAN CLAUDE, a serf from the Jura Mountains, 120 years old, who was brought from his native place to figure as "dean of the human race" in Paris at the great federation festival of June 1790.

JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH, a German philosopher, born at Dusseldorf; bred for business, and after engaging in it for a time threw it up for a revenue appointment; devoted all his by-hours to philosophy and correspondence with eminent men, and was appointed President of the Academy of Sciences at Munich in 1807; he formed no system and he founded no school; his thoughts present themselves in a detached form, and are to be gathered from letters, dialogues, and imaginative works; he contended for the dogma of "immediate cognition as the special organ of the supersensuous," and failed to see, as SCHWEGLER notes, that said cognition "has already described a series of subjective intermediating movements, and can pretend to immediacy only in entire oblivion of its own nature and origin" (1743-1819).

JACOBI, KARL GUSTAVO, a celebrated German mathematician, born at Potsdam, of Jewish birth; was professor at Konigsberg and Berlin, and one of the founders of the theory of determinants (1801-1851).

JACOBINS, a political club, originally known as the Club Breton, which was founded in Paris during the French Revolution; so called from its place of meeting in the Rue St. Honore, which had previously been a Jacobin friar convent; it exercised a great influence over the course of the Revolution, and had affiliated societies all over the country, working along with it; its members were men of extreme revolutionary views, procured the death of the king, exterminated the Girondists, roused the lowest cla.s.ses against the middle, and were the ruling spirits during the Reign of Terror, of whom Robespierre was the chief, the fall of whom sealed their doom; they were mobbed out of their place of meeting with execrations on Hallow-Eve 1794.

JACOBITES, a name given to certain partisans of Eutychean sect in the 17th century in the East, from the name of their leader.