The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 452

WESTKAPPEL d.y.k.e, one of the strongest d.y.k.es in the Netherlands; protects the W. coast of Walcheren; is 4000 yards long, and surmounted by a railway line.

WESTMACOTT, SIR RICHARD, sculptor, born in London; studied at Rome under Canova; acquired great repute as an artist on his return to England, and succeeded Flaxman as professor of Sculpture in the Royal Academy; he executed statues of Pitt, Addison, and others, and a number of monuments in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's; his latest work was the sculptured pediment of the British Museum (1775-1856).

WESTMACOTT, RICHARD, sculptor and writer on art, born in London, son of preceding; was distinguished for the grace, simplicity, and purity of his style as an artist; succeeded his father as professor of Sculpture in the Royal Academy, and wrote a "Handbook of Sculpture" (1799-1872).

WESTMEATH (71), an inland county in Leinster, Ireland; is mostly level and gently undulating; the soil in many parts is good, but little cultivated; the only cereal crop raised is oats, but the herbage it yields supplies food for fattening cattle, which is a chief industry.

WESTMINSTER, a city of Middles.e.x, on the N. bank of the Thames, and comprising a great part of the West End of London; originally a village, it was raised to the rank of a city when it became the seat of a bishop in 1451, but it was as the seat of the abbey that it developed into a bishop's see; the abbey, for which it is so famous, was erected as it now exists at the same period, during 1245-72, on the site of one founded by Edward the Confessor during 1045-65; in Westminster Parliaments were held as early as the 13th century, and it is as the seat of the legislative and legal authority of the country that it figures most in modern times, though the most interesting chapters in its history are connected with the abbey round which it sprang up. See Dean Stanley's "Memorials of Westminster."

WESTMINSTER a.s.sEMBLY OF DIVINES, a convocation of divines a.s.sembled under authority of Parliament, at which delegates from England and Scotland adopted the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT (q. v.), fixed the establishment of the Presbyterian form of Church government in the three kingdoms, drew up the "Confession of Faith," the "Directory of Public Wors.h.i.+p," and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms; it held its first meeting on 1st July 1643, and did not break up till 22nd February 1649.

WESTMINSTER HALL, a structure attached to the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, built by King William Rufus, and roofed and remodelled by Richard II.; was the scene of the trials of Wallace, Sir Thomas More, Strafford, Charles I., Warren Hastings, and others, as well as the installation of Cromwell as Lord Protector, and till 1883 the seat of the High Courts of Justice; is a place of great historic interest; has a roof composed of 13 great timber beams, and one of the largest in the world to be unsupported.

WESTMORLAND (i. e. westmoorland) (60), a northern county of England, 32 m. from N. to S. and 40 m. from E. to W.; is in the Lake District, and mountainous, with tracts of fertile land and forest land, as well as rich pasture lands.

WESTON-SUPER-MARE (15), a watering-place in Somersets.h.i.+re, on the Bristol Channel, looking across it towards Wales.

WESTPHALIA, a German duchy, now a Prussian province; made with other territories in 1807 into a kingdom by Napoleon for his brother Jerome, and designed to be the centre of the Confederation of the Rhine; was a.s.signed to Prussia in 1813 according to the Treaty of Vienna.

WETSTEIN, JOHANN JACOB, biblical scholar, born at Basel; was devoted to the study of the New Testament text; published a Greek Testament with his emendations and "Prolegomena" connected therewith; his emendations, one in particular, brought his orthodoxy under suspicion for a time (1693-1754).

WETTE, DE. See DE WETTE.

WETTER, LAKE, one of the largest lakes in Sweden, 70 m. long, 13 m.

broad, and 270 ft. above the sea-level; its clear blue waters are fed by hidden springs, it rises and falls periodically, and is sometimes subject to sudden agitations during a calm.

WETTERHORN (i. e. peak of tempests), a high mountain of the Bernese Oberland, with three peaks each a little over 12,000 ft. in height.

WEXFORD (111), a maritime county in Leinster, Ireland; is an agricultural county, and exports large quant.i.ties of dairy produce; has a capital (11) of the same name, a seaport at the mouth of the river Slaney.

WEYDEN, ROGER VAN DER, Flemish painter, born at Tourney; was trained in the school of Van Eyck, whose style he contributed to spread; his most famous work, a "Descent from the Cross," now in Madrid (1400-1464).

WEYMOUTH (13), a market-town and watering-place in Dorsets.h.i.+re, 8 m.

S. of Dorchester; has a fine beach and an esplanade over a mile in length; it came into repute from the frequent visits of George III.

WHARTON, PHILIP, DUKE OF, an able man, but unprincipled, who led a life of extravagance; professed loyalty to the existing government in England; intrigued with the Stuarts, and was convicted of high-treason, and died in Spain in a miserable condition (1698-1731).

WHATELY, RICHARD, archbishop of Dublin, born in London; studied at Oriel College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow, and had Arnold, Keble, Newman, Pusey, and other eminent men as contemporaries; was a man of liberal views and sympathies, and much regarded for his sagacity and his skill in dialectics; his post as archbishop was no enviable one; is best known by his "Logic," for a time the standard work of the subject; he opposed the Tractarian movement, but was too lat.i.tudinarian for the evangelical party (1787-1863).

WHEATSTONE, SIR CHARLES, celebrated physicist and electrician, born near Gloucester; was a man of much native ingenuity, and gave early proof of it; was appointed professor of Experimental Philosophy in King's College, London, and distinguished himself by his inventions in connection with telegraphy; the stereoscope was of his invention (1802-1875).

WHEEL, BREAKING ON THE, a very barbarous mode of inflicting death at one time, in which the limbs of the victim were stretched along the spokes of a wheel, and the wheel being turned rapidly round, the limbs were broken by repeated blows from an iron bar; this is what the French _roue_ means, applied figuratively to a person broken with dissipation, or what we call a rake.

WHEELING (39), largest city in West Virginia, U.S., on the Ohio River, 67 m. SW. of Pittsburg; contains some fine buildings; is a country rich in bituminous coal; has extensive manufactures; is a great railway centre, and carries on an extensive trade.

WHEWELL, WILLIAM, professor of the "science of things in general,"

born at Lancaster, son of a joiner; studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became successively fellow, tutor, professor, and master; was a man of varied attainments, of great intellectual and even physical power, and it was of him Sydney Smith said, "Science was his _forte_ and omniscience his _foible_"; wrote "Astronomy and General Physics in reference to Natural Theology," the "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," the "History of Moral Philosophy," an essay on the "Plurality of Worlds," &c. (1794-1866).

WHICHCOTE, BENJAMIN, Cambridge Platonist, born in Shrops.h.i.+re; was a Fellow and Tutor of Emmanuel College; was distinguished for his personal influence over his pupils, many of them eminent men; he gave a philosophical turn to their theological opinions (1609-1683).

WHIGS, name given at the end of the 17th century to the Covenanters of Scotland, and afterwards extended to the Liberal party in England from the leniency with which they were disposed to treat the whole Nonconformist body, to which the persecuted Scottish zealots were of kin; they respected the const.i.tution, and sought only to reform abuses.

WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOT M'NEILL, painter and etcher, born at Lowell, Ma.s.sachusetts; studied military engineering at WEST POINT (q. v.), and art at Paris, and settled at length as an artist in London, where he has exhibited his paintings frequently; has executed some famous portraits, in especial one of his mother, and a remarkable one of Thomas Carlyle, now the property of Glasgow Corporation; paintings of his exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery, London, provoked a criticism from Ruskin, which was accounted libellous, and as plaintiff he got a farthing damages, without costs; very much, it is understood, to his critic's disgust, and little to his own satisfaction, as is evident from the character of the pamphlet he wrote afterwards in retaliation, ent.i.tled "Whistler _versus_ Ruskin: Art and Art Critics"; _b_. 1834.

WHISTON, WILLIAM, divine and mathematician, born in Leicesters.h.i.+re; educated at Clare College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow; gained reputation from his "Theory of the Earth"; succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Lucasian professor, but was discharged from the office and expelled from the university for Arianism; removed to London, where he lived a separatist from the Church, and died a Baptist; wrote "Primitive Christianity," and translated "Josephus"; he was a crotchety but a conscientious man (1667-1752).

WHITBY, a seaport and famous bathing-place in the North Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re, 54 m. NE. of York; is situated at the mouth of the Esk, and looks N. over the German Ocean; it consists of an old fis.h.i.+ng town sloping upwards, and a fas.h.i.+onable new town above and behind it, with the ruins of an abbey; Captain Cook was a 'prentice here, and it was in Whitby-built s.h.i.+ps, "the best and stoutest bottoms in England," that he circ.u.mnavigated the globe.

WHITBY, DANIEL, English divine, born in Northamptons.h.i.+re; became rector of St. Edmunds, Salisbury; involved himself in ecclesiastical controversy first with the Catholics, then with the High Church party, and got into trouble; had one of his books burned at Oxford; his most important work "Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament"; died an Arian (1638-1726).

WHITE, ALEXANDER, a Scottish divine, born in Kirriemuir, of humble parentage; a man of deep religious sympathies and fervid zeal, with an interest before all in spiritual things; studied the arts in Aberdeen and theology in Edinburgh, in the latter of which cities he ministers to a large attached flock; is the author of books, originally for most part addresses, calculated to awaken in others an interest in divine things akin to his own; _b_. 1837.

WHITE, SIR GEORGE STEWART, English general, has had a brilliant career; entered the army in 1853; won the Victoria Cross twice over; served in the Mutiny, in the Afghan Campaign (1879-1880), in the Nile Expedition (1885), in the Burmese War (1885-1887), and was made Commander-in-Chief in India in 1893, Quartermaster-General in 1898, and is now distinguis.h.i.+ng himself by his generals.h.i.+p and heroism in the South African War; _b_. 1835.

WHITE, GILBERT, English naturalist, born in the village of Selborne, Hants; educated at Oriel College, Oxford, in which he obtained a Fellows.h.i.+p, which he retained all his life; became curate of Selborne, and pa.s.sed an uneventful life studying the habits of the animals around him, where he "had not only no great men to look on, but not even men, only sparrows and c.o.c.kchafers; yet has he left us a 'Biography' of these, which, under the t.i.tle of 'Natural History of Selborne,' still remains valuable to us, which has copied a little sentence or two _faithfully_ from the inspired volume of Nature, and so," adds Carlyle, "is itself not without inspiration" (1720-1793).