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speakers in the House. Specially noticeable almost from the first was the skill he displayed in reply. Macaulay, in an essay published in 1834, remarked that he seemed to possess intuitively the faculty which in most men is developed only by long and laborious practice. "Indeed, with the exception of Mr Stanley, whose knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembles an instinct, it would be difficult to name any eminent debater who has not made himself a master of his art at the expense of his audience."

In the autumn of 1824 Stanley went on an extended tour through Canada and the United States in company with Mr Labouchere, afterwards Lord Taunton, and Mr Evelyn Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington. In May of the following year he married the second daughter of Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, created Baron Skelmersdale in 1828, by whom he had a family of two sons and one daughter who survived, besides three children who died in infancy.

At the general election of 1826 Stanley renounced his connection with Stockbridge, and became the representative of the borough of Preston, where the Derby influence has usually, though not invariably, been paramount. The change of seats had this advantage, that it left him free to speak against the system of rotten boroughs, which he did with great force during the Reform Bill debates, without laying himself open to the charge of personal inconsistency as the representative of a place where, according to Gay, cobblers used to "feast three years upon one vote." In 1827 he and several other distinguished Whigs made a coalition with Canning on the defection of the more unyielding Tories, and he commenced his official life as under-secretary for the colonies. Whether the coalition arrangement would have proved stable had its distinguished leader survived is more than questionable, but it was entirely broken up by his death in August of the same year. Lord Goderich, who had been Stanley's chief at the Colonial Office, succeeded to the premiership, but he never was really in power, and he resigned his place after the lapse of a few months without venturing to meet parliament. During the succeeding administration of the duke of Wellington (1828-30), Stanley and those with whom he acted were in opposition. His robust and assertive Liberalism about this period sounds somewhat curiously to a younger generation who knew him only as the very embodiment of Conservatism. They can find little of the earl of Derby except his characteristic force of expression in the conviction uttered by Stanley, "that the old and stubborn spirit of Toryism is at last yielding to the liberality of the age-that the Tories of the old school, the sticklers for inveterate abuses under the name of the wisdom of our ancestors, the laudatores temporis acti are giving way on all sides." Even the most retrograde political party, however, makes distinct progress almost in spite of itself as the years pass on, and Lord Derby might very well have maintained that the Toryism he represented in his maturity was not the Toryism he had denounced in his youth.

By the advent of Lord Grey to power in November 1830, Stanley obtained his first opportunity of showing his capacity for a responsible office. He was appointed to the chief secretaryship of Ireland, a position in which, as it turned out, he found ample scope for both administrative and debating skill. On accepting office he had, according to the usual practice, to vacate his seat for Preston and seek re-election; and it must have been peculiarly mortifying to one of his high spirit that, in spite of his family influence and growing reputation, he alone of all the members of the new ministry in the Lower House failed to secure his

return. He was defeated, and the defeat was doubtless rendered more bitter by the fact that his opponent was the Radical "orator" Hunt. The contest was a peculiarly keen one, and turned upon the question of the ballot, which Stanley refused to support.. He re-entered the house as one of the members for Windsor, Sir Hussey Vivian having resigned in his favour. In 1832 he again changed his seat, being returned for North Lancashire, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the House of Lords.

Mr Stanley was one of the most ardent supporters of the great measure which has made Lord Grey's administration the most memorable of the present century. Of this no other proof is needed than his frequent parliamentary utterances, which were fully in sympathy with the popular cry "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." Reference may be made especially to the speech he delivered on the 4th March 1831 on the adjourned debate on the second reading of the bill, which was marked by all the higher qualities of his oratory. More than thirty years later, when he was premier, he was again called upon to deal with the question, and he had statesmanship enough to settle it on a permanent basis; but the incertitude with which he then took what he himself in a well remembered phrase called "a leap in the dark" was in curious contrast to the clear conviction with which he advocated the earlier measure.

Apart from his connection with the general policy of the Government, Stanley had more than enough to have employed all his energies in the management of his own department. The secretary of Ireland has seldom an easy task; Stanley found it one of peculiar difficulty. The country was in a very unsettled state. The just concession that had been somewhat tardily yielded a short time before in Catholic emancipation had excited the people to make all sorts of demands, reasonable and unreasonable. As one result of that concession these demands were now permitted to be urged on the floor of the House by the most eloquent and the most widely popular representative Ireland has ever possessed,-one, too, whose hatred of the "base, bloody, and brutal Whigs" seems to have totally unfitted him for judging Whig measures fairly. Problems of great practical difficulty in connection with the land and the church pressed for solution; and the alarming increase of agrarian outrages demanded even more urgently the instant application of vigorous measures of repression. Mr Stanley's conduct in these trying circumstances showed that he had the spirit that rises with difficulties. Undaunted by the fierce denunciations of O'Connell, who styled him Scorpion Stanley, he discharged with determination the ungrateful task of carrying a Coercion Bill through the House. Parliament has probably seldom witnessed warmer or more personal encounters than those which took place about this time between the Liberator and the Irish Secretary, and seldom has an official position been more gallantly defended. It was generally felt that O'Connell, powerful though he was, had fairly met his match in Stanley, who, with invective scarcely inferior to his own, evaded no challenge, ignored no argument, and left no taunt unanswered. The title "Rupert of Debate " is peculiarly applicable to him in connection with the fearless if also often reckless method of attack he showed in his parliamentary war with O'Connell. It was first applied to him, however, thirteen years later by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton in the following passage of The New Timon;

"One after one the lords of time advance;

Here Stanley meets-here Stanley scorns the glance!
The brilliant chief, irregularly great,
Frank, haughty, rash,-the Rupert of debate."
The best answer, however, which he made to the attach

of the great agitator was not the retorts of debate, effective though these were, but the beneficial legislation he was instrumental in passing. Two of his measures deserve special mentiou. He introduced and carried the first national education act for Ireland, one result of which was the remarkable and to many almost incredible phenomenon of a board composed of Catholics, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, harmoniously administering an efficient education scheme. He was also chiefly responsible for the Irish Church Temporalities Act, though the bill was not introduced into parliament until after he had quitted the Irish secretaryship for another office. By this measure two archbishoprics and eight bishoprics were abolished, and a remedy was provided for various abuses connected with the revenues of the church. As originally introduced, the bill contained a clause authorizing the appropriation of surplus revenues to non-ecclesiastical purposes. This had, however, been strongly opposed from the first by Stauley, and several other members of the cabinet, and it was withdrawn by the Government before the measure reached the Lords. There was therefore no ground for the charge of inconsistency brought against Stanley, when a year later he seceded from the cabinet on the proposal being renewed.

In 1833, just before the introduction of the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, Stanley had been promoted to be secretary for the colonies with a seat in the cabinet. In this position it fell to his lot to carry through parliament a measure which is one of the abiding glories of English legislation. The agitation for the emancipation of the slaves had been mainly the work of others whose names have become historical in connection with it; but to Stanley belonged the honour and privilege of bringing it to a successful practical issue in the pages of the statute book. The speech which he delivered on introducing the bill for the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, on the 14th May 1833, was one of the finest specimens of his eloquence. It showed a philanthropic spirit and a love of freedom which proved him to be a not unworthy associate of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Buxton, and it was admirable for the clear statement of the somewhat complicated arrangement by which the all but unanimous wish of the nation was to be carried out. The latter quality was still more conspicuous in committee, through which Stanley carried the measure with the firmness and tact of true statesmanship.

It has already been said that the Irish Church question determined more than one turning-point in Mr Stanley's political career. The most important occasion on which it did so was in 1834, when the proposal of the Government to appropriate the surplus revenues of the church to educational purposes led to his secession from the cabinet, and, as it proved, his complete and final separation from the Whig party. In the former of these steps he had as his companions Sir James Graham, the earl of Ripon, and the duke of Richmond. Soon after it occurred, O'Connell, amid the laughter of the House, described the secession in a couplet from Canning's Loves of the Triangles:

"Still down thy steep, romantic Ashbourne, glides The Derby dilly carrying six insides." Stanley was by no means content with marking his disapproval of the conduct of the Government of which he had been a member by the simple act of withdrawing from it. He spoke against the bill to which he objected with a vehemence that showed the strength of his feeling in the matter, and against its authors with a bitterness that he himself is understood to have afterwards admitted to have been unseemly towards those who had so recently been his colleagues. The language of one speech deserves to be quoted as a good specimen of what he could do in the way

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of invective when he chose. "Plunder." a term very familiar in more recent debates on the same long-vexed question, was perhaps the mildest word he used. The course followed by the Government was "marked with all that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter." His late colleagues were compared to "thimble-riggers at a country fair," and their plan was "petty larceny, for it had not the redeeming qualities of bold and open robbery."

In the end of 1834, Lord Stanley, as he was now styled by courtesy, his father having succeeded to the earldom in October, was invited by Sir Robert Peel to join the short-lived Conservative ministry which he formed after the resignation of Lord Melbourne. Though he declined the offer for reasons stated in a letter published in the Peel memoirs, he acted from that date with the Conservative party, and on its next accession to power, in 1841, he accepted the office of colonial secretary, which he had held under Lord Grey. His position and his temperament alike, however, made him a thoroughly independent supporter of any party to which he attached him. self. When, therefore, the injury to health arising from the late hours in the Commons led him in 1814 to seek elevation to the Upper House in the right of his father's barony, Sir Robert Peel, in acceding to his request, had the satisfaction of at once freeing himself from the possible effects of his "candid friendship" in the House, and at the same time greatly strengthening the debating power on the Conservative side in the other. If the premier in taking this step had any presentiment of an approaching difference on a vital question, it was not long in being realized. When Sir Robert Peel accepted the policy of free trade in 1846, the breach between him and Lord Stanley was, as might have been anticipated from the antecedents of the latter, instant and irreparable. Lord Stanley at once asserted himself as the uncompromising opponent of that policy, and he became, as his position warranted, the recognized leader of the Protectionist party, having Lord George Bentinck and Mr Disraeli for his lieutenants in the Commons. They did all that could be done in a case in which the logic of events was against them, but their watchword of Protection was never to become more than a watchword. It is one of the peculiarities of English politics, however, that a party may come into power because it is the only available one at the time, though it may have no chance of carrying the very principle to which it owes its organized existence. Such was the case when Lord Derby, who had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father in June 1851, was called upon to form his first administration in February 1852. He was in a minority, but the circumstances were such that no other than a minority Government was possible, and he resolved to take the only available means of strengthening his position by dissolving parliament and appealing to the country at the earliest opportunity. The appeal was made in autumn, but its result did not materially alter the position of parties. Parliament met in November, and by the middle of the following month, the ministry had resigned in consequence of their defeat on the clever but financially unsound budget proposed by Mr Disraeli. For the six following years, during Lord Aberdeen's "ministry of all the talents" and Lord Palmerston's premiership, Lord Derby remained at the head of the opposition, whose policy gradually became more generally Conservative and less distinctively Protectionist as the hopelessness of reversing the measures adopted in 1846 made itself apparent to all but the most reactionary. In 1855; he was asked to form an administration after the resignation of Lord Aberdeen, but failing to obtain sufficient support, le

declined the task. It was in somewhat more hopeful circumstances that, after the defeat of Lord Palmerston on the Conspiracy Bill in February 1858, he assumed for the second time the reins of government. Though he still could not count upon a working majority, there was a possibility of carrying on affairs without sustaining defeat, which was realized for a full session, owing chiefly to the dexterous management of Mr Disraeli in the Commons. The one rock ahead was the question of Reform, on which the wishes of the country were being emphatically expressed, but it was not so pressing as to require to be immediately alt with. During the session of 1858 the Government contrived to pass two measures of very considerable importance, one a bill to remove Jewish disabilities, and the other a bill to transfer the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown. Next year the question of parliamentary reform had to be faced, and, recognizing the necessity, the Government introduced a bill at the opening of the session, which, in spite of, or rather in consequence of, its "fancy franchises," was rejected by the House, and, on a dissolution, rejected also by the country. A vote of no confidence having been passed in the new parliament on the 10th June, Lord Derby at once resigned.

After resuming the leadership of the Opposition Lord Derby devoted much of the leisure the position afforded him to the classical studies that had always been congenial to him. It was his reputation for scholarship as well as his social position that had led in 1852 to his appointment to the chancellorship of the university of Oxford, in succession to the duke of Wellington; and perhaps a desire to justify the possession of the honour on the former ground had something to do with his essays in the field of authorship. These were made at first with a diffidence that contrasted strongly with his boldness in politics. His first venture was a poetical version of the 9th ode of the 3rd book of Horace, which appeared in Lord Ravensworth's collection of translations of the Odes. In 1862 he printed and circulated in influential quarters a volume entitled Translations of Poems Ancient and Modern, with a very modest dedicatory letter to Lord Stanhope, and the words "Not published" on the title-page. It contained, besides versions of Latin, Italian, French, and German poems, a translation of the first book of the Iliad. The reception of this volume was such as to encourage him to proceed with the task he had chosen as his magnum opus, the translation of the whole of the Iliad, which accordingly appeared in 1864. The fact that it speedily passed through six editions is, of course, not so unequivocal a proof of its literary merit as would have been the case had the work proceeded from an author of less social distinction, but it has considerable significance. Tried on its merits, the most severe critic could not pronounce the work a failure. That it was not a complete success was due principally to the facts that the author had not caught the difficult secret of the management of the metre he chose-blank verse,and that he was unable to divest himself of the diffuseness and of the modern cast of thought and style of expression natural to the parliamentary orator,

During the seven years that elapsed between Lord Derby's second and third administrations an industrial crisis occurred in his native county, which brought out very conspicuously his public spirit and his philanthropy. The destitution in Lancashire, caused by the stoppage of the cotton-supply in consequence of the American civil war, was so great as to threaten to overtax the benevolence of the country. That it did not do so was probably due to Lord Derby more than to any other single man. From the first he was the very life and soul of the movement for relief. His personal subscription, munificent though

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it was, represented the least part of his service. His noble speech at the meeting in Manchester in December 1872, where the movement was initiated, and his advice at the subsequent meetings of the committee, which he attended very regularly, were of the very highest value in stimulating and directing public sympathy. His relations with Lancashire had always been of the most cordial description, notwithstanding his early rejection by Preston; but it is not surprising that after the cotton famine period the cordiality passed into a warmer and deeper feeling, and that the name of Lord Derby is still cherished in most grateful remembrance by thousands of the factory operatives.

On the rejection of Earl Russell's Reform Bill in 1866, Lord Derby was for the third time intrusted with the formation of a cabinet. Like those he had previously formed it was destined to be short-lived, but it lived long enough to settle on a permanent basis the question that had proved fatal to its predecessor. The "education" of the party that had so long opposed all reform to the point of granting household suffrage was the work of another; but it is understood that Lord Derby fully concurred in, if he was not the first to suggest, the statesmanlike policy by which the question was disposed of in such a way as to take it once for all out of the region of controversy and agitation. The passing of the Reform Bill was the main business of the session 1867. The chief debates were, of course, in the Commons, and Lord Derby's failing powers prevented him from taking any large share in those which took place in the Lords. His description of the measure as a "leap in the dark," was eagerly caught up, because it exactly represented the common opinion at the time,-the most experienced statesmen, while they admitted the granting of household suffrage to be a political necessity, being utterly unable to foresee what its effect might be on the constitution and government of the country.

Finding himself unable, from declining health, to encounter the fatigues of another session, Lord Derby resigned office early in 1868. The step he had taken was announced in both houses on the evening of the 25th February, and warm tributes of admiration and esteem were paid by the leaders of the two great parties. He was succeeded by Mr Disraeli, to whom he yielded the entire leadership of the party as well as the premiership. His subsequent appearances in public were few and unimportant. It was noted as a consistent close to his political life that his last speech in the House of Lords should have been a denunciation of Mr Gladstone's Irish Church Bill marked by much of his early fire and vehemence. A few months later, on the 23rd October 1869, he died at Knowsley.

Lord Derby was one of the last and most brilliant representatives of a class which seems to have become extinct, for the time at least, if the sharp differentiation of human pursuits that has now established itself has not rendered it impossible that it should ever again exist. Politics is now a distinct and exclusive profession; the number of those to whom, like Lord Derby, it is the main without being the all-absorbing interest of life seems to become fewer year by year. There still remain one or two noted statesmen who are also noted authors, but of the life of many interests embracing public affairs, scholarship, literature, society, sportsmanship, and estate management, Lord Derby was almost the last specimen. Of another class, which will have ceased to exist when one or two more have passed away, he was also among the last and best; he was a master of the all but lost art of parliamentary oratory. On this point it is enough to quote the testimony of two most competent, witnesses. Sir Archibald Alison, writing of him when he was in the zenith of his powers, styles him "by the admission of all parties the most per

fect orator of his day." Even higher was the opinion of Lord Aberdeen, who is reported by the Times to have said that no one of the giants he had listened to in his youth, Pitt, Fox, Burke, or Sheridan, "as a speaker, is to be compared with our own Lord Derby, when Lord Derby is at his best."

(W. B. S.) DEREYEH, or DERAYA, a town of Arabia, in the Nejd, on the caravan-route from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, about 15 miles west of Riad. It was formerly the capital of the Wahabees, and had a population of about 30,000 inhabitants; but it has never recovered from the ruin inflicted on it by the army of Ibrahim Pasha in 1818. DERHAM, WILLIAM (1657-1735), an eminent English divine and natural philosopher, was born at Stoughton, near Worcester, in 1657. He received his early education at Blockley, in his native county, and in 1679 graduated with much distinction at Trinity College, Oxford. Three years later he became vicar of Wargrave, in Berkshire; and in 1689 he was preferred to the living of Upminster, in Essex. In 1696 he published his Artificial Clockmaker, which went through several editions. The best known of his subsequent works are Physico-Theology, published in 1713; Astro-Theology, 1714; and Christo-Theology, 1730. In consideration of these contributions to science and theology he was, in 1716, made a canon of Windsor; and in 1730 he received the degree of D.D. from Oxford. His last work, entitled A Defence of the Church's Right in Leasehold Estates, appeared four years previous to his death, which happened in 1735. Besides the works published in his own name, Derham contributed a variety of papers to the Philosophical Transactions, revised the Miscellanea Curiosa, edited the correspondence of John Ray, and Albin's Natural History, and published some of the MSS. of Hooke, the natural philosopher.

DERVISH is a Persian word meaning "the sill of the door," or those who beg from door to door. The Arabic equivalent is fakir, or fuqueer. The dervishes of the Turkish empire may be said to constitute the regular religious orders, and are distinguished from the ulemas, or secular clergy. In Turkey, Egypt, Persia, Hindustan, and Central Asia, however, dervishes, or fakirs, are to be found in great number who belong to no society, but are simply mendicants or single devotees, many of whom subsist by professional jugglery. Especially is this true of the Byragis, the Dundis, the Bhikshooks, the Wanuprusts, the Sunyasis, the Aghorpunts, the Gosaens, the Jogis, the Oodassis, the Jutis, and the Lingaet Jungums of northern Hindustan, and still more emphaticelly of the Bonzes, or Buddhist monks. But i the more favourable sense of the word, the dervishes represent Sofism, or the spiritual and mystic side of Islam. Long before the time of Mahomet, Arabic thought was divided, as if by Greek and Indian influences, into the schools of the Meschaïouns (the walkers) and the Ischrachaiouns (the contemplators). When the Koran appeared, these became the Mutekelim (metaphysicians), and the Sofis (mystics). The latter put an esoteric interpretation on both the Koran and the Hadisât, or collected sayings of the Prophet; they dispense with the jemaat and other formalities of the mosque; they in many cases recognize the fact of spiritual religion outside Islam; and in general they observe the rules of poverty, abstinence from wine, and celibacy. The name fakir, indeed, comes from the saying of the Prophet, "El fakr fakhri," poverty is my pride. The six Erkiân, or pillars of the Tesavvuf, or spiritual life, are (1) the existence of God, (2) His unity, (3) the angels, (4) the prophets, (5) the day of resurrection, and (6) good and evil through God's predestination. But it is only the Tarikats, or orders (lit. paths), among the more orthodox or Sunnite Mahometans who attach much importance to positive dogma. The

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Shiite party, especially the Persian dervishes, who trace their descent through various sheikhs and peers from Ali, the fourth caliph, believe that "the paths leading to God are as many as the breaths of his creatures." These form the great majority of the orders; for it is stated in a work called the Silsileh ul Evlia Ullah (Genealogy of the Saints of God), last edited in 1783, that, out of 36 welldefined orders, 12 of which were in existence before the beginning of the Ottoman empire, only 3, viz., the Bestamis, the Nakshibendis, and the Bektashis. are descended from the congregation of Abu Bekr, the second caliph, and that all the others are descended from the caliph Ali. As the dervishes do not recognize the legal exposition which the ordinary tribunals give of the letter of the Koran, and acknowledge no authority but that of their spiritual guide, or of Allah himself speaking directly to their souls, the Ottoman sultans have always regarded them with jealousy; and in 1826 Mahmoud entirely suppressed the order of the Bektashis, which had for centuries been closely connected with the Janissaries, or Hoo Keshans (him scatterers), and which is said to have formed part of a Fermason (freemasonry) extending through Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. The other orders, however, or most of them, have survived to the present day, and are generally popular,-one of them, the Mevlevis, being joined by persons fron the highest and wealthiest ranks. But membership, when it does not proceed beyond the first stage of Shi'at or Sher'iat, i.e., legal religion unde⚫ the supervision of a murshid,2 may be satisfied by the repetition of a few prayers at home and the wearing of the sacred cap for a few minutes each day.

The regular dervishes live in tekkiehs, khanakahs, or convents, which are endowed with lands or wakf, just as the Muths of Hindustan are endowed with enam lands, incapable of mortgage or alienation. Thus, in 1634, the sultan Amurath IV. gave to the Bektashis of Konieh the whole tribute paid by that city. Over each coivent presides a sheikh, or murshid, who represents the pir, or original founder of the order. This corresponds to the mohunt, malik, or guru of Hindustan. Among the Persian Nosairis (who consider Mahomet an impostor, and perform no ablutions), the succession of sheikhs is hereditary-elsewhere by seniority or election, confirmed by the Sheikh ul Islam. In Hindustan the selection takes place in a dusname, or council of mohunts, called among the Sikhs a muta. The murid, or disciple, has to undergo a long initiation (called in Turkey Ikrar, in Egypt Ahd) before he obtains the taybend, or woollen belt, with its palenk or cabalistic "stone of contentment;" the mengusay, or earrings shaped like the horse shoe of Ali; the khirka, or mantle; the tesbeeh, or rosary, containing the ismi jelal, or the 99 beautiful names of God; and finally the tâj, or white cap, with the proper number of terks, or sections, belonging to the order. Similar distinctions are preserved in Hindustan by the barbarous method of marking on the forehead the sandal-wood stripes of Siva, or the white and red trident of Vishnu. In the Mevlevi order the murid goes through 1001 days of menial labour, and is during that time called the karra kolak, or jackal. It is not necessary, however, to give up one's private property; and many dervishes are permitted to remain in trade on the

1 This jealousy was not without foundation. The great political factions which disturbed Constantinople, the Reds, the Whites, the Masked, the Intimates, the Interpreters, the Hashashins (from Hashish, whence assassins), were to some extent connected with the dervish orders. The Kalenderis, founded by an Andalusian dervish who was expelled from the Bektashis, furnished several pretenders to the title of Mehdee, the 12th imam, whose second coming is looked for by all the mystics.

The subsequent stages are Tarikat, mystical rites, Mearifat, know, ledge, and Hakikat, truth, 15

VII.

principle stated by the Prophet, that "the seeker of gain is the friend of God." Some also are permitted to marry, just as among the Sikh fakirs of Nanuk those named Bashara (with the law), or Salik (travellers), are allowed to marry and to move about; those named Beshara (without the law), or Majzub (the abstracted), are condemned to celibacy and seclusion. But their lives are mainly directed to the production in themselves of the ecstatic state in which the soul enters the Alem-i-misal, or world of dreams, and becomes one with God. This part of Sofism strongly resembles Vedantism. Kaif, or quiescence, is often caused by the use of hashish (the Arabic khoshkhosh, sold at Constantinople in pastilles called esrar), or by khalwet, retirement, and the erba'cin, or fast for 40 days. Then they indulge in excessive and rapid repetitions of particular phrases, as the Esami Ilahi, or seven attributes of God, viz.—La ilaha ill' Allah (no God but Allah), Ya Allah (O God), Ya Hoo (O Him), Ya Hakk (O just God), Ya Hay (O living God), Ya Kayyoum (O living God), Ya Kahhar (O revenging God). The Zikr consists mainly in a chant, always becoming louder and more violent, of the first attribute; thus

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This leads to the Devr, or rotation, in which the Rufai, or Howling Dervishes, stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, each on his right foot, and swaying the body and the left leg backwards and forwards or from side to side; the Sem'a of the Mevlevis, or Spinning Dervishes, in which a pirouette is performed all round the khaneh on the left heel, the eyes being closed, the arms outstretched; and other more violent dances, accompanied by the music of the nay, or flute, and tambourine, and by the cries of the dancers. In the Halet, or final ecstasy, the dervishes tako hold of red-hot implements, place glowing charcoal in the mouth, and exhibit prodigies of muscular strength, which are in some cases the genuine and interesting effects of excitement, in others mere calculated imposture. At last the Jezbed, or attraction of God, begins to operate. Besides daily readings from the Koran, an infinity of small figurative prayers, or terjumans, is repeated. These are connected with the khirka, the palenk, the postaki, or seat, the seggadeh, or carpet, and with almost every act and motion of the dervish within the monastery. A rabouta, or silent prayer, is also practised. In return for these mystical rites the dervish obtains spiritual powers, of which the most remarkable is that called fascination, kuvveh iradat, the power of the will, which deperds on certain physical conditions, and seems to include prophecy and the phenomena of mesmerism. By vifk, or the science of numbers, a charm, composed of the names of the matloob, or patient, and the arif, or knowing person (each letter of the alphabet has a numerical value), is placed on the knee of the latter, and by diligent blowing and mental concentration he is able to summon before him the spirit of the matloob. Some dervishes cure diseases, sell talismans, called tilsims and nushkas, charm snakes, and some are musicians and dancers. It is in Egypt and Hindustan that the extreme degrees of squalor, of imposture, and also of self-mortification are found. Some spend their lives in absolute nakedness, their bodies smeared with wood ash, their unkempt hair twisted into a turban; some roll head over heels for hundreds of miles; some contemplate the tip of the nose from 84 different postures; some live by the fraudulent sale of drugs or by feats of legerdemain. All Mahometan dervishes hold a powerful belief in the perpetual agency of the evlia, or saints, and the departed salihin (pure ones), the "unseen men or masters of destiny,' who are sent forth from the kutb, or centre of the roof of the

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Kaaba, to control the spiritual affairs of the world. This 15 closely connected with the doctrine of tenassuh, or meteinpsychosis, which, however, is held chiefly in a spiritual sense. The Bektashis believe that every one has a mesal, or equal (doppel-gänger ?), who watches over him from the unseen region.

For an account of dervishes in Persia, where mysticism has been refined by the poetry of Jelaleddin, Saadi, and Hafiz, and where the seven original orders of Hulullieh, Ittihadieh, Vusoolieh, Malcolm's History of Persia, and De Gobineau's Three Years in Asia, Ashkieh, Telkinieh, Zurikieh, Wahdettieh, are still preserved. see 1859; for Central Asia, the works of Vambéry and other travellers, for Hindustan, The Peoples of India, by Kaye and Watson, 186872, and Steel's Hindu Castes. For Egypt, where four orders are presided over by the Sheikh el Bekri, and where the ceremony of dervishes, is still practised, see Lane's Modern Egyptians; and for the Doseh, or the mounted sheikh riding over the bodies of the the general subject, The Dervishes, or Oriental Spiritualism, by J. P. Brown, Constantinople, 1868, which contains a number of valuable translations of Dervish MSS. (W. C. S.)

DESAIX DE VOYGOUX, LOUIS CHARLES ANTOINE (1768-1800), one of the most eminent generals of the French republic, was born at the Chateau d'Ayat, near Riom, in Auvergne, on the 17th August 1768. He studied at the military school founded by the Marshal d'Effiat, and

distinguished himself by his eagerness in acquiring a knowledge of his chosen profession. After joining the army he spent some time in garrison at Briançon and Huningue. He was favourable to the Revolution, but was an object of suspicion to the Convention, on account of his aristocratic birth and his popularity with his men. He was twice suspended, and on the earlier occasion he was imprisoned for two months by order of Carnot. The first engagement in which he took part was the battle of Lauterburg, in which he was wounded; and when Moreau executed his masterly retreat through the Black Forest, Desaix contributed not a little to the success of that memorable exploit. After some gallant achievements, such as the repulse of the Archduke Charles at Rastadt, and the defence of the bridge of Kehl, he accompanied Bonaparte (1798-9) to Egypt, where he dispersed the Arabs, and for his various services was made commander of Upper Egypt. The campaign of eight months in which he completed the conquest of Upper Egypt was the great achievement of his military career. During his occupation he conducted himself in such a way as to win from the inhabitants the title of the Just Sultan, and to be compared by his soldiers to Bayard. On his return to Europe he found Napoleon marching to the conquest of Italy. With a small squadron he hastened to join the first consul, whom he overtook at Marengo at the very moment when the Austrians had deemed themselves secure of the victory. His timely arrival changed the fortune of the day; but in the moment of victory he was shot through the heart and immediately expired, 14th June 1800. His body was embalmed at Milan, and finally deposited in the convent of Mount St Bernard, where a handsome monument is erected to his memory.

DESAUGIERS, MARC ANTOINE MADELEINE (17721827), a French dramatist and song-writer, son of Marc Antoine Desaugiers, a musical composer, was born at Fréjus on the 17th November 1772. Being intended for the church, he studied at the Mazarin College in Paris, where he had for one of his teachers the celebrated critio Geoffroy. He did not continue his studies long, however, having shown signs of a decided dramatic talent, which his father thought it well to encourage. Ere he completed his twentieth year he had written a comedy in verse in one act, which was well received when produced on the stage in 1792. In the following year he wrote some verses which appeared in the Almanach des Muses. During the stormy period of the Revolution he emigrated to St Domingo with a sister who was about to marry a creole

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