Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/257

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

UTOPIA UTRICULARIA 237 tri-weekly (German), and five weekly (one Welsh) newspapers, and a quarterly ("Ameri- can Journal of Insanity") and three monthly periodicals are published. There are 34 church- es, viz. : 4 Baptist, 5 Episcopal, 1 Evangelical Association, 2 Evangelical Lutheran, 1 German Moravian, 1 Jewish, 6 Methodist, 5 Presbyteri- an, 1 Reformed, 5 Roman Catholic, 1 Universal- ist, 1 "Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, and 1 Welsh Congregational. The site of the city was in- cluded in the colonial grant styled Cosby's manor, made in 1734; but there was no settle- ment till after the revolution. Fort Schuyler was erected between the present Main and Mo- hawk streets, below Second street, in 1758, and a blockhouse was built before the close of the revolutionary war near the site of the pres- ent railroad depot. Till 1798 the village was called Old Fort Schuyler. In 1813 it had 1,700 inhabitants, and it grew very slowly till after the completion of the Erie canal. It received a city charter in 1832. UTOPIA (Gr. o, not, and r<57rof, a place), the title of a political romance by Sir Thomas More, and the name that he gave to an imagi- nary island, which he represents to have been discovered by a companion of Amerigo Ves- pucci, and in which existed a perfect society. He pictured a community where all the prop- erty belonged to the government, to which every one contributed by his labor, receiving therefrom a supply of his wants; where the citizen rose through all the gradations of his existence from form to form, as if in a vast public school ; where gold was contemned, and all the members of the society, unswerved by passion, were fixed each in his proper place. "Utopia" was -published in Latin in 1516, and translated into English by Bishop Burnet. UTRAQUISTS. See CALIXTINES. UTRECHT. I. A province of the Netherlands, bounded N. by North Holland and the Zuyder Zee, E. by Gelderland, S. by Gelderland and South Holland, and W. by South Holland; area, 534 sq. m.; pop. in 1873, 179,465. The surface is level in the north and west, and va- ried in the southeast by low hills. It is well watered by the Rhine, and its branches the Vecht and Amstel. The air is less damp than in other parts of the Netherlands, and the climate is generally healthful. In the eleva- ted parts the soil is sandy, and covered by ex- tensive heaths and tracts of peat moors, but the low grounds are rich and fertile. II. A city, capital of the province, on the Crooked Rhine, which here divides into the Vecht and the Old Rhine, the principal branch as- suming the latter name, 20 m. S. E. of Am- sterdam ; pop. in 1875, 64.275, about one third Roman Catholics. It is surrounded by forts, but the old ramparts are now used as boule- vards. The mall, in the E. part of the city, is an exceedingly fine promenade. There are several canals and attractive squares, and many families of the Dutch aristocracy reside here. It has more than 20 churches, besides three cathedrals. Of the latter, the Reformed St. Martin's is the most remarkable for its fine Gothic architecture, and has seven chapels filled with monuments. Part of it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1674, and the tower is still detached from the main building. The govern- ment offices are in the so-called pope's house, built by Pope Adrian VI., who was born here (1459), in a house still standing. The once celebrated St. Paul's abbey is used for courts of law. Among other notable buildings are the national mint, a palace for arts and sci- ences, one formerly inhabited by King Louis Bonaparte, the renovated town hall, a large military hospital established by Napoleon I., and the William's barracks. The university, dating from 1636, is attended by about 500 students ; among its adjuncts are a new phys- iological museum, a botanic garden, and a large library. Cigars, cotton, silk, linen, woollen cloth, carpets, and plush (Utrecht velvet) are made, and there are many publishing houses. Drinking water is shipped to Amsterdam. The city is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop and the old headquarters of the Jansenists, whose resident archbishop and whole congre- gation of 5,000 members joined the Old Cath- olics in 1874. Utrecht is the oldest of all Ba- tavian cities. The Romans called it Trajectum ad Rhenum and Ultrajectum ; from the latter the modern name is derived. It belonged suc- cessively to the Frankish dominions and the German empire, and the union which laid the foundation of the republic of the seven United Provinces was organized here in 1579. The treaty of Utrecht, signed April 11, 1713, after long conferences, by the representatives of France, Great Britain, Holland, Prussia, Por- tugal, and Savoy, and subsequently completed by the peace of Rastadt (1714) and other trea- ties, formed an important era by ending the Spanish war of succession. By it Philip V., grandson of Louis XIV., was acknowledged as king of Spain; the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and the island of Sardinia were left in the possession of the emperor Charles VI. ; Sicily was given to Victor Amadeus II. of Savoy ; and England obtained Gibraltar, Minorca, the Hudson Bay territories, New- foundland, and Acadia, besides the recognition of the Protestant succession. (See Le traite d? Utrecht, by Charles Giraud, Paris, 1847.) UTRICULARIA (Lat. utriculits, a little blad- der), the bladderwort, a genus of aquatic or marsh plants, of which there are more than 100 species, some of which are found in nearly all parts of the world, there be- ing over a dozen in the United States. The genus, with pinguicula and one other little known genus, forms what most botanists call the family lentibulaceas (from lentibula, an old name for one species), but Hooker in his edition of Maout and Decaisne (" General Sys- tem of Botany") gives the family the more appropriate name utriculariece ; its affinities as to the structure of the flowers are with the