VOLUME

SANIZED OWLEDGE

PETER'S PENCE, thame applied in the Roman Catholic Church voluntary offerings for the support of the pe. It is of medieval origin, said to have origted in England, from which it spread to the atinent. The Seventh Provincial Council (Bimore, 1849) approved the collection of Pets pence in the United States.

PETER THE HEFIT (about 1050-1115), a monk of Amiens, t famous preacher of the first of the Crusade primarily responsible for one of the most gintic religious movements the world ever sawsee illustration, page 1651). He was born in thdiocese of Amiens, but little is known of life from that time until 1095, when he ben in his preaching to declare the necessity of crusade to wrest the Holy Land from the jidel.

Convinced th it was his mission to inspire men to regain ossession of Palestine, he rode about France mule back, dressed in a monk's loak of roughcloth and bearing in his hand a crucifix. In 996 he set out toward Palestine with about 30,000 undisciplined followers, mostly fromhe poorer classes. They straggled on through Europe, but after crossing the Bosporus into Asia Minor proved so unruly that Peter left tem and joined the army of Godfrey de Bouilla. He had a part in the capture of Jerusalem and in July, 1099, preached on the Mount of Olives.

Consu Goodsell's Peter the Hermit.

PETTION, pe tish'un, a formal written request sliciting some right, grant or favor, made to a Igislative body or to an official who has power to grant such request. Petitions were first presented to secure purely private ends, bat sich requests are now frequently presented to the courts to bring attention to special matters. In such cases it is a rule that an affidavit must also be made that the facts presented are true as far as known to the petitioner. The night of petition is one of the fundamental privileges of a free people, and is regarded by them as a national right. It lies within the discretion of the executive or legislative body to 289

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decide how such petitions shall be received, as no formal method has ever been provided for their reception.

PETITION OF RIGHT, a petition presented by the English Parliament in 1628 to Charles I, demanding that the king cease the practices of taxing the people without consent of Parliament, quartering soldiers in private houses, establishing martial law and imprisoning citizens without legal proceedings. Accustomed as all citizens of the United States and Canada are to-day to constitutional government, the great importance of this petition is not realized unless one calls to mind the long conflict between Charles I and Parliament, which ended with the execution of the king in 1649. Imbued wish ideas of absolutism and the divine right kings, Charles endeavored to make Parliament an instrument to accomplish his autocratic purposes. Had he succeeded, constitutional gove ernment, as now known, might not exist to-day. He dissolved one Parliament and adjouri another because of their refusal to vote suppes unless he would promise to consider their grie‚ ances and grant redress.

In the meantime, he attempted to impose hi own will in government matters, command Parliament not to meddle in affairs of state, and asserted that parliaments existed only the pleasure of the king. But the king neediol money to conduct affairs, and the only way! could raise the necessary funds was to get the Commons to vote appropriations. Aecordingly Parliament met in adjourned session early r 1628. Again there was refusal to vote supplies until the king would promise redress of gr ances. To make its position clear the Pal ment drew up a petition to the king. It was a restatement of official and public rights, !... same principles that had been set forth Magna Charta, that had received the sancti of centuries of use and found expression in merous acts of Parliament. The necessities the king were so great that he ultimately cepted and signed the petition, but he had intention of adhering to its provisions. petition served to solidify sentiment in

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PETRARCH

land, gave the opposition a rallying point, and thus hastened the triumph of constitutional rule, which was absolutely established in 1689, when William III signed the Bill of Rights (which see).

PETRARCH, pe'trahrk, FRANCESCO (13041374), an Italian poet and classical scholar, born at Arezzo. His father was a political exile from Florence, and consequently the boy spent much of his childhood wandering from city to city. He was sent to Montpelier, Italy, in 1319, to study law, and four years later to Bologna for advanced study in the same subject, but his secret intention was to devote his life to literary work. His father opposed this love

PETRARCH .

of writing and on one occasion burned all the son's books on poetry and the manuscripts which the young man had written. The father died in 1326, and Petrarch henceforth gave most of his time to literary pursuits.

While at Avignon, Italy, in 1327, he saw the woman Laura, in whose honor he wrote nearly every poem for which he is now remembered. The rather unpoetic facts about her seem to be that she was Laura de Noves, wife of an Avignon citizen, that she was mother of eleven children, and that she died of the plague in 1348. Nevertheless she inspired the writing of some of the noblest lyrics in all literature and achieved for herself an immortal name. The poet seems never to have known her intimately, and his verses deal more with the ideal qualities of woman in general than with one in particular.

His Latin poems and prose had made him so famous by 1340 that both the University of Paris and the University of Rome offered him the laurel crown for poetry, and, choosing the honor from the latter institution, he was publicly crowned on Easter Sunday, 1341. He afterwards wandered over Italy, serving various important Church and State patrons, and in his investigations discovered several letters and two orations of Cicero. From time to time he went back to Avignon to be near Laura, and

PETREL death caused n to write his Triumphs, among the most beauul love poems in any language. After 1360 hepent his remaining years at Argua, near Pan, Italy, busy with his beloved books and mancripts.

He prided hielf on his Latin poetry, especially an epicfrica, dealing with the adventures of Afrinus; but these works are almost forgotten, hile his Italian verses bid fair to outlast til From that day in 1470 when his Canzoni, or collection of songs, was published at Vice, his influence over the poets of Europe haseen too great to be estimated adequately. gave the sonnet a dignified position in letry, with new vigor, warmth and nobility, hile his refinement and art gave to Italian ve an importance it had never before enjoyed.

Consult Jerrold's Franco Petrarch, Poet and Humanist; Calthrop's Prarch: His Life and Times.

PET REL, the name aplied to a group of water birds, the smallest those which make their home far out on the a. They are swift fliers, and are often seen in the wake of ships. The name petrel, meaning ittle peter, refers

Up and down! Up and down!

From the base of the wave to the billow's crown; And amidst the flashing and feathery foam

The Stormy Petrel finds a home

A home, if such a place may be,
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,
And only seeketh her rocky lair

To warm her young and to teach them spring
At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!
-CORNWALL: The Stormy Petrel.

to their quick, graceful movements over the tops of the waves, suggesting the act of walking on the water. A distinguishing peculiarity of these birds is the tubular nostril. Petrels are found in both the northern and the southern hemispheres, but are most nu

petrel and the stormy petrel, or Mother Carey's chicken, of which Kingsley's Water Babies has such interesting stories to tell.

Wilson's petrel, a bird seven inches in length, nests in the Antarctic regions, but wings its way into the northern hemisphere on the approach of winter. Its plumage is a mixture of sooty-black, gray and white; the feet and bill are black, and there are webs of yellow between the toes. The long wings of this petrel, which are sixteen inches in extent, and its long legs, make it seem larger than it is. Leach's petrel is very similar in size and coloring, but it has a forked tail, while that of Wilson's petrel is square. Leach's petrels breed chiefly on the islands in the Bay of Fundy, and are not found farther south than Virginia or California. The stormy petrel is a tiny bird not much more than five inches long, with a sootyblack coat relieved only by touches of white near the tail and on the wings. It bears the distinction of being the smallest web-footed bird known. It is a habitant of the Atlantic Ocean, and is rarely seen near shore.

The petrels are very interesting birds. They are fond of oily and fat foods, and flocks of them will follow a ship for many miles for particles of refuse. At night, wearied with

the long journey, they nestle down upon the water and rest with the head under a wing. A single white egg is laid; the nests are usually made in holes or crevices of rocks, but sometimes a hole is burrowed in the ground near shore, and the egg placed at the end of the tunnel. The petrels, like the albatross, are regarded by sailors as birds of ill omen and as harbingers of stormy weather.

Consult Baird's Water Birds of North America; Godman's A Monograph of the Petrels.

PETRIE, pe' tri, WILLIAM MATTHEW FLINDERS (1853- ), an English archaeologist who has made several remarkable discoveries in connection with Egyptian antiquities. His excavations in the Nile delta (1884-1886) brought to light the lost Greek city of Naucratis and the site of ancient Daphnae; in later investigations he recovered from the ruins of Kahun and Gurob a valuable collection of papyrus rolls. At Nagada he discovered the traces of a prehistoric people. Egyptologists value highly the published accounts of his investigations. Among his books are The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, The History of Egypt, Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty, Tarkhan I (1913) and Tarkhan II (1914). See EXCAVATIONS IN ANCIENT LANDS.

P

ETROGRAD, pet'ro grahd, the "City of Peter," until 1914 known as SAINT PETERSBURG, is the capital of Russia. It was founded by Peter the Great in 1703. No other city except Chicago has had such a rapid growth. In 1700 the site was a dreary, marshy waste, inhabited by a few Finnish fishermen; to-day Petrograd is the fifth city in Europe and the eighth in the world, and one of the largest and most magnificent of capitals. As the seat of government of the nation and the center of its greatest educational institutions, Petrograd is sometimes called the "head of Russia." It was in this city that the revolution of 1917, which

resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II, had its center (see RUSSIA, subtitle History of Russia).

Population. The population of the city and suburbs in 1914 was 2,949,000; of the city proper, 2,019,000. About seven-eighths of the inhabitants are Russians; the others are largely Germans, Poles, Finns and Jews.

Location and Plan. Petrograd, which occupies the delta of the Neva River, is located at the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland, 400 miles northwest of Moscow. The principal part of the city lies on the left bank of the Neva River, the remainder occupying the several