PRUDENTIUS, AURELIUS CLEMENS, a Christian versewriter, apparently a native of Spain, who flourished during the latter half of the 4th century and in the beginting of the 5th. According to the meagre and vague autobiographical notices given by himself in the preface to his poems he was born in the year 348, and, after receiving a liberal education, practised at the bar and subsequently held judicial office in two important cities. At the time of the publication of his poems in 405 he held from the emperor a high military appointment at court. Of his subsequent history nothing is known.

His extant works, besides the preface already referred to and an epilogue, are the following:-(1) Cathemerinon Liber, a series of twelve hymns (xa@nueper) in various metres to be repeated or sung at particular periods of the day or seasons of the year; (2) Apotheosis, a poem of 1085 hexameter verses on the divinity of Christ; (3) Hamartigenia (967 hexameter verses) on the origin of evil and sin; (4) Psychomachia, or the conflict between virtue and vice for the soul (915 hexameter verses); (5) Contra Symmachum, two books, of 658 and 1131 hexameter verses respectively, directed against the petition of Symmachus to the emperor for the restoration of the altar and statue of Victory which Gratian had cast down; (6) Peristephanon Liber, fourteen poems in various metres, in honour of certain saints who had won the crown of martyrdom hence the name, Tepi σrepávwv),—these, which are often vigorous and graphic, are generally considered to show Prudentius at his best; (7) Diptychon or Dittochason, a series of forty-nine hexameter tetrastichs on various events and characters mentioned in Scripture. The editio princeps appeared at Deventer in 1472; among modern elitions may be named those of Faustus Arevalus (2 vols., Rome, 1788-89), Obbarius (Tübingen, 1845), and Dressel (Leipsic, 1860). PRUD'HON, PIERRE (1758-1823), French painter, born at Cluny on the 4th of April 1758, was the third son of a son. The monks of the abbey undertook his education. The paintings which decorated the monastery excited his emulation and by the aid of Moreau, bishop of Mâcon, he was placed with Devosges, director of the art school at Dijon. In 1778 Prud'hon went to Paris armed with a letter to Wille, the celebrated engraver, and three years later he obtained the triennial prize of the states of Burgundy, which enabled him to go to Rome, where he became intimate with Canova. He returned to Paris in 1787, and led for some time a precarious existence, paint ing portraits and making designs for booksellers. The illustrations which he executed for the Daphnis and Chloe published by Didot brought him into notice, and his reputation was extended by the success of his decorations

in the Hôtel de Landry (now Rothschild), his ceiling painting of Truth and Wisdom for Versailles (Louvre), and of Diana and Jupiter for the Gallery of Antiquities in the Louvre. In 1808 he exhibited Crime pursued by Vengeance and Justice (Louvre, engraved by Royer), which had been commissioned for the assize courts, and Psyche carried off by Zephyrs (engraved by Massard). These two remarkable compositions brought Prud'hon the Legion of Honour; his merit was widely recognized; he received innumerable orders, and in 1816 entered the Institute. Easy as to fortune, and consoled for the misery of his marriage by the devoted care of his excellent and charming pupil, Mademoiselle Mayer, Prud'hon's situation seemed enviable; but Ma emoiselle Mayer's tragical suicide on 26th May 1821 brought ruin to his home, and two years later (16th February 1823) Prud'hon followed her to the grave. The classic revival which set in towards the close of the 18th century, and of which Louis David was the academic chief, found in Prud'hon an interpreter whose gifts of grace and naiveté tempered by seriousness atoned by the personal charm which they imparted to all he did for the want of severity and correctness in his execution. Mademoiselle Mayer (1778-1821) was his ablest pupil. Her Abandoned Mother and Happy Mother are in the Louvre.

Voiart, Notice historique de la vic et œuvres de P. Prud'hon; Arch. de l'art français; Qu. de Quincy, Discours prononcé sur la tombe de Prud'hon, Fev. 1823; Eugène Delacroix, Rev. des Deux Mondes, 1846; Charles Blanc, Hist. des peintres français.

PRÚSSIA (Ger., Preussen; Lat., Borussia), a kingdom of northern Europe and by far the most important member of the German empire, occupies almost the whole of northern Germany, between 5° 52′ and 22° 53′ E. long. and 49° 7′ and 55° 53′ N. lat. It now forms a tolerably compact mass of territory, with its longest axis from southwest to north-east; but within the limits just indicated lie the "enclaves" Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Brunswick, and other small German states, while beyond them it possesses Hohenzollern, in the south of Würtemberg, and other "exclaves" of minor importance. On the N. Prussia is bounded by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic; on the E. by Russia and Poland; on the S. by Austrian Silesia, Moravia, Bohemia, Saxony, the Thuringian states, Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, the Khenish Palatinate, and Lorraine; and on the W. by Luxemburg, Belgium, and XX. - I

the Netherlands. With the exception of the sea on the north and the mountain-barrier on the south-east, the frontiers are political rather than geographical, a fact that has always been characteristic of Prussia's limits and that has had considerable influence in determining its history. The Prussian monarchy, with an area of 134,490 square miles, comprises nearly two-thirds of the entire extent of the German empire. Its kernel is the Mark of Brandenburg, round which the rest of the state has been built up gradually, not without costly and exhausting wars. The territory ruled over by the first Hohenzollern elector (1415-40) did not exceed 11,400 square miles, an area that had been quadrupled before the death of the first king in 1713. Frederick the Great left behind him a realm of 75,000 square miles, and the following two monarchs, by their Polish and Westphalian acquisitions, brought it to a size not far short of its present extent (122,000 square miles in 1803). After the disastrous war of 1806 Prussia shrank to something smaller than the kingdom of Frederick the Great (61,000 square miles), and the readjustment of Europe in 1815 still left it short by 14,000 square miles of its extent in 1803. Fully one-fifth of its present area is due to the war of 1866, which added Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and the city of Frankfort-on-the-Main to the Prussian dominions.

HISTORY.

The claims which Prussian history makes upon our attention are based neither upon venerable antiquity nor upon uniformity of origin. The territorial and political development of the country has taken place wholly within the last thousand years; and the materials out of which it has been built up-marquisates and duchies, ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities-are of the most heterogeneous description. The history of Prussia acquires its primary significance from the fact that this state was the instrument by which the political regeneration of Germany was ultimately effected from within, and the unity and coherence of the narrative are best observed when we consider it as a record of the training that fitted the country for this task. This role was forced upon Prussia rather by the exigencies of its geographical position | than by its title to be racially the most representative German state. The people who have established the power of Germany cannot rank in purity of Teutonic blood with the inhabitants of the central, western, and southern parts of the empire. The conquest of the Slavonic regions that form so great a part of modern Prussia did not occur without a considerable intermingling of race, and Prussia may perhaps be added to the list of great nations that seem to owe their pre-eminence to the happy blending of their composite parts. It is perhaps also worthy of remark that this state, like its great rival, was developed from a marchland of the German empire,-Prussia arising from the North Mark erected against the Wends, and Austria from the East Mark erected against the Hungarians.

In tracing the early development of Prussia three main currents have to be noticed, even in a short sketch like the present, which do not completely unite until the beginning of the 17th century; indeed many writers begin the history of modern Prussia with the accession of the Great Elector in 1640. We have (1) the history of the Mark of Brandenburg, the true political kernel of the modern state; (2) the history of the district of Preussen or Prussia, which gave name and regal title to the monarchy; and (3) the history of the family of Hohenzollern, from which sprang the line of vigorous rulers who practically determined the fortunes of the country.

Mark of Brandenburg. Whether Teutons or Slavs were the earlier inhabitants of the district extending from the

Elbe on the west to the Oder and the Vistula on the east is a question mainly of antiquarian interest and one upon which authorities are not wholly agreed. In the opening centuries of the Christian era we find it occupied by Slavonic tribes, whose boundaries reach even to the west of the Elbe, and the conquest and absorption of these by the growing German power form the subject of the early history of Brandenburg. Hand in hand with the territorial extension of the Germans went the spread of Christianity, which, indeed, often preceded the arms of the conquering race. The Slavs to the east of the Elbe were left unmolested down to the foundation of the German monarchy, established by the successors of Charlemagne about the middle of the 9th century. Then ensued the period of formation of the German "marks" or marches, which served at once as bulwarks against the encroachments of external enemies and as nuclei of further conquest. The North Mark of Saxony, corresponding roughly to the northern part of the present province of Saxony, to the west of the Elbe, was established by the emperor Henry I. about the year 930, and formed the beginning of the Prussian state. The same energetic monarch extended his career of conquest considerably to the east of the Elbe, obtaining more or less firm possession of Priegnitz, Ruppin, and the district round the sources of the Havel, and even carried his arms to the banks of the Oder. His son Otho I. (936973) followed in his father's footsteps and founded the bishoprics of Havelberg and Brandenburg, the latter taking its name from the important Wendish fortress of Brannibor. Towards the end of the 10th century, however, the Wendish flood again swept over the whole territory to the east of the Elbe, and the Germans were confined to the original limits of the North Mark. Christianity was rooted out and the bishop of Brandenburg reduced to an episcopus in partibus. The history of the next century and a half is simply a record of a series of desultory struggles between the margraves of the North Mark and the encompassing Wends, in which the Germans did no more than hold their own on the left bank of the Elbe.

Things begin to grow a little clearer in 1134, when the emperor Lothair rewarded the services of Albert the Bear, a member of the house of Anhalt and one of the most powerful princes of the empire, by investing him with the North Mark. Albert seems to have been a man of great vigour and considerable administrative talent, and by a mixture of hard fighting and skilful policy he extended his power over the long-lost territories of Priegnitz, Ruppin, the Havelland, and the Zauche. He also shifted the centre of power to the marshy district last-mentioned and changed his title to margrave of Brandenburg. The North Mark henceforth began to be known as the Altmark, or Old Mark, while the territory round Brandenburg was for a short time called the New Mark, but more permanently the Mittelmark, or Middle Mark. The soil of Albert's new possessions was for the most part poor and unpromising, but he peopled it with industrious colonists from Holland and elsewhere, and began that system of painstaking husbandry and drainage which has gradually converted the sandy plains and marshes of Brandenburg into agricultural land of comparative fertility. The clergy were among his most able assistants in reclaiming waste land and spreading cultivation, and through them Christianity was firmly established among the conquered and Germanized Slavs. Albert's descendants, generally known as the Ascanian line from the Latinized form of the name of their ancestral castle of Aschersleben, ruled in Brandenburg for nearly two hundred years; but none of them seem to have been on a par with him in energy or ability. On the whole, however, they were able to continue in the course marked out by him, and, in spite of the pernicious practice