and refined taste, visiting cards were furnished with delicate engravings, frequently masterpieces of that art, showing some fanciful landscape, or a view of the town or place where the person resided. A further stage in the development of this custom was the autograph signature at the foot of the card beneath the engraved view. England followed the lead of France, and visiting cards became a universal fashion in Europe towards the close of the 18th century. But though in almost every European country there are variations in the size and shape of the card and the way of describing the quality of the person whom it represents, the modern tendency is everywhere in favour of simplicity and the avoidance of ostentation.
A valuable collection of visiting cards is that of the Gabinetto della Stampe in Rome and the Museo Civico in Venice.
VISOKO (or Visoki), a town of Bosnia, on the river Bosna, 15 m. N.W. of Serajevo by rail. Pop. (1895), about 5000. Visoko has a brisk trade in leather, carpets and tobacco.
Between the 13th and 16th centuries Visoko was only second to Jajce as a stronghold of the Bosnian rulers. There were fortified palaces at Sutječka, and Bobovac, among the mountains on the north. Bohovac, which had withstood many previous assaults, was betrayed to the Turks in 1463; at Sutječka there is a Franciscan monastery, founded in 1391, often razed by the Turks, and finally rebuilt in 1821. Just below Visoko lay the town of Podvisoko, called Solto Visochi by the Ragusans, which was the chief mart of the country from 1348 to 1430.
VISOR (also spelled viser, vizor, vizard or visard), a term now used generally of the various forms of movable face-guards in the helmet of medieval and later times. It meant properly a mask for the face, and is an adaptation of the O.Fr. visiere, mod. visière, as is seen by the M.E. forms viser, visere. It is thus to be referred to the Fr. vis, face, Lat. visus, from videre, to see. In this sense the word “visor” is modern, the movable guard for the upper part of the face being known as an “aventail” or “ventail,” and that for the lower part a “beaver” (see Helmet).
VISTULA (Ger. Weichsel, Polish Wisla), one of the chief rivers of Europe, rising in Austria and flowing first through Russian and then through Prussian territory. Its source is in Austrian Silesia on the northern slopes of the West Beskiden range of the Carpathian mountains.
The stream runs through a mountain valley, in a N.N.W. direction to Schwarzwasser, where it leaves the mountains, turns E. and N.E., and forms part of the Austro-German frontier. Returning within Austrian territory (Galicia), it passes Cracow, and thereafter forms a long stretch of the frontier with Russia (Poland), bending gradually towards the north, until at Zawichost it runs due N., and enters Poland. Here it at first bisects the high-lying plateau of southern Poland, but leaves this near Jozefow, and flows as far as the junction with the Pilica in a broad valley between wooded bluffs. Crossing the plain of central and northern Poland, it passes Warsaw, and at the junction of the Bug sweeps W. and N.W. to pass Plock and Wloclawek (see further Poland for its course within this territory). It enters Prussia 10 m. above Thorn, turns N.E. on receiving the Brahe, passes Graudenz and turns towards the north. From this point it throws off numerous branches and sweeps from side to side of a broad valley, having steep banks on the side upon which it impinges, and on the other being bordered by extensive flat lands. Nearing the Baltic Sea it forms a delta, dividing into two main arms, the left or western of which bears the name of Vistula, and flows directly to Danzig Bay, while the right is called the Nogat, and flows into the Frisches Haff. The enclosed deltaic tract is very fertile. Parts of it are known as Werder (cf. the English “islands” or “holms” in the Fens and other low-lying tracts of the east). In the lower part of the delta the Haff Canal leads from the main river to the Frisches Haff; there are also various natural channels in that direction, but the main river passes on towards the N.W., having a tendency to run parallel to the coast, and reaching Danzig Bay with a direct course only through an artificial cut constructed in 1888–96. The river broke a new channel into the bay, at a point between this cut and the old mouth at Neufahrwasser, on the night of the 1st–2nd of February 1840. The important seaport of Danzig, however, is on the old channel, and this channel is used by shipping, which enters it by a canal at Neufahrwasser. The Nogat, formerly inconsiderable, had become so much deepened and broadened by natural means in the early part of the 19th century that it carried more water than the Vistula itself (i.e. the other main deltaic branch). In 1845–57 the outflow of the Nogat was stopped and an artificial channel was formed for it, so as to restore the proper head of water to the Vistula.
Shifting banks form a serious impediment to navigation, and these and floods (principally in spring and midsummer) necessitate careful works of regulation. The river is ice-bound at Warsaw, on an average, from about the 20th of December to the 10th of March. The navigation of the Vistula is considerable up to Cracow, and the river forms a very important highway of commerce in Poland (q.v.) and Prussia. For small craft it is navigable above Cracow up to the Austro-German frontier, where the Przemsa enters it. This river and the Pilica, Bzura, Brahe, Schwarzwasser and Ferse are the chief left-bank tributaries; on the right the Vistula receives the Skawa, Raba, Dunajec, Wisloka and San before reaching Poland, the Wieprz and Bug in Poland, and the Drewenz in Prussia. The Brahe and the Bromberg Canal give access from the Vistula to the Netze and so to the Oder. The river is rich in fish. Its total length is about 650 m., and its drainage area approaches 74,000 sq m.
See H. Keller, Memel-, Pregel- und Weichselstrom, ihre Stromgebiete, &c., vols. iii. and iv. (Berlin, 1900).
VITALIANUS, bishop of Rome from 657 to 672, succeeded Eugenius I. and was followed by Adeodatus. In the monothelite controversy then raging he acted with cautious reserve, refraining at least from express condemnation of the Typus of Constans II. The chief episode in his uneventful pontificate was the visit of Constans to Rome; the pope received him “almost with religious honours,” a deference which he requited by stripping all the brazen ornaments of the city—even to the tiles of the Pantheon—and sending them to Constantinople. Archbishop Theodore was sent to Canterbury by Vitalian.
VITEBSK, a government of western Russia, with the government of Pskov on the N., Smolensk on the E., Mogilev, Minsk and Vilna on the S., and Courland and Livonia on the W., having an area of 16,978 sq. m. Except on its south-eastern and northern borders, where there are low hills, deeply eroded by the rivers, its surface is mostly flat, or slightly undulating, and more than a million acres are occupied by immense marshes, while there are as many as 2500 small lakes. It is mainly built up of Devonian red sandstones and red clays, but the Carboniferous formations—both the Lower, characterized by layers of coal, and the Upper—crop out in the east. The whole is covered with Glacial and post-Glacial formations, in which remains of extinct mammals and stone implements are found in large quantities. There are numerous burial-mounds containing bones and iron implements and ornaments. The soil is for the most part unproductive. The W. Dvina rises not far from the north-eastern angle of the government, and flows through it, or along its southern boundary, for 530 m. From its confluence with the Kasplya, i.e. for more than 450 m., it is navigable, and, through a tributary, the Ulyanka, it is connected with the Dnieper by the Berezina Canal. The Mezha and Kasplya, tributaries of the W. Dvina, are navigable in spring. The climate is relatively mild, the average yearly temperature at the city of Vitebsk being 40° F. (January 16°.4; July 64°.3). The population was estimated at 1,740,700 in 1906. The government is divided into eleven districts, the chief towns of which are Vitchsk, Drisa, Dvinsk, formerly Dünaburg, Gorodok, Lepel, Lyutsyn, Nevel, Polotsk, Ryezhitsa, Sebezh and Velizh.
VITEBSK, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on both banks of the W. Dvina, and on the railway from Smolensk to Riga, 85 m. N.W. from the former. Pop. (1885) 54,676; (1897) 63,871. It is an old town, with decaying mansions of the nobility, and dirty Jewish quarters, half of its inhabitants being Jews. There are two cathedrals, founded in 1664 and 1777 respectively. The church of St Elias, a fine example of the Old Russian style of architecture, founded in 1643, was burned down in 1904. The manufactures are insignificant, and the poorer classes support themselves by gardening, boat-building and the flax trade, while the merchants carry on an active business with Riga in corn, flax, hemp, tobacco, sugar and timber.
Vitebsk (Dbesk, Vitbesk and Vitepesk) is mentioned for the first time in 1021, when it belonged to the Polotsk principality. Eighty years later it became the chief town of a separate
