Part 153 (1/2)

DANAe, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, confined by her father in an inaccessible tower of bra.s.s to prevent the fulfilment of an oracle that she should be the mother of a son who would kill him, but Zeus found access to her in the form of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, by whose hand Acrisius met his fate. See PERSEUS.

DANA'IDES, daughters of Danaus, who, for murdering their husbands on the night after marriage, were doomed in the nether world to the impossible task of filling with water a vessel pierced with holes. See DANAuS.

DANAuS, son of Belus, and twin-brother of aegyptus, whom fearing, he fled from with his fifty daughters to Argos, where he was chosen king; by-and-by the fifty sons of aegyptus, his brother, came to Argos to woo, and were wedded to, their cousins, whom their father provided each with a dagger to murder her husband, which they did, all except Hypermnestra, whose husband, Lynceus, escaping, succeeded her father as king, to the defeat of the old man's purpose in the crime.

DANBY, FRANCIS, painter, born near Wexford; settled for a time in Bristol, then in Switzerland, and finally at Exmouth; his works are mostly landscape, instinct with feeling, but some of them are historical, the subjects being taken from Scripture, as the ”Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea,”

or from pagan sources, as ”Marius among the Ruins of Carthage”

(1793-1861).

DANCE, GEORGE, English architect; was architect to the City of London, and designed the Mansion House, his chief work (1700-1768).

GEORGE, his son, built Newgate Prison (1740-1825).

DANCE OF DEATH, an allegorical representation in a dramatic or pictorial form of Death, figuring, originally as a skeleton, and performing his part as a chief actor all through the drama of life, and often amid the gayest scenes of it; a succession of woodcuts by Holbein in representation of this dance is well known.

DANCING MANIA, an epidemic of frequent occurrence, especially in German towns, during the Middle Ages, of the nature of hysteria, showing itself in convulsive movements beyond the control of the will, and in delirious acts, sometimes violently suicidal; the most signal occurrence of the mania was at Aix-la-Chapelle in July 1374.

DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON, French dramatist, a prolific author; a favourite of Louis XIV.; wrote comedies, chiefly on the follies of the middle cla.s.ses of the time (1661-1725).

DANDIE DINMONT, a humorous, jovial store-farmer in ”Guy Mannering.”

DANDIN, GEORGE, one of Moliere's comedies, ill.u.s.trative of the folly a man commits when he marries a woman of higher rank than his own, George being his impersonation of a husband who has patiently to endure all the extravagant whims and fancies of his dame of a wife.

DANDIN, PERRIN, a simple citizen in the ”Pantagruel” of Rabelais, who seats himself judge-wise on the first stump that offers, and pa.s.ses offhand a sentence in any matter of litigation; a character who figures similarly in a comedy of Racine's, and in a fable of La Fontaine's.

DAN'DOLO, a Venetian family that furnished four Doges to the Republic, ENRICO being the most ill.u.s.trious; chosen Doge in his eighty-fourth year, a.s.sisted the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade with s.h.i.+ps; joined them, when blind and aged 90, in laying siege to Constantinople; led the attack by sea, and was the first to leap ash.o.r.e; was offered the imperial crown, but declined it; died instead ”despot” of Roumania in 1205, at 97.

DANEGELT, originally a tax imposed on land to buy off the Danes from the sh.o.r.es of England, and subsequently for other objects, such as the defence of the coast; abolished by Henry II., though re-imposed subsequently under other names.

DANELAGH, a district in the E. of England, N. of the Thames; dominated at one time more or less by the Danes; of vague extent.

DANGEAU, MARQUIS, author of ”Memoirs” affecting the court of Louis XIV. and its manners (1638-1720).

D'ANGOULeME, d.u.c.h.eSSE, daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; was released from restraint after the execution of her parents in exchange for prisoners in the Royalist's hands; fled to Vienna, where she was driven forth; married her cousin, to whom she was early betrothed; could find no place of safe refuge but in England; returned to France on Napoleon's exile to Elba, and headed a body of troops against him on his return; after Waterloo, returned to France and stayed till July 1830, and lived to see Louis Philippe, in 1848, driven from the throne; Napoleon called her ”the only man of her family”; left ”Memoirs” (1778-1851).

DANGS, THE, a forest district in the N. of the Presidency of Bombay, occupied by fifteen wild tribes, each under a chief.