shoot him on the spot.” He rendered important services in hurrying forward troops in 1861, was appointed major-general of volunteers in June 1861, and during the Civil War commanded successively the department of Maryland (July 1861–May 1862), Fortress Monroe (May 1862–July 1863), and the department of the East (July 1863–July 1865). He was minister to France from 1866 to 1869, and in 1872 was elected by the Republicans governor of New York, but was defeated two years later. He had great energy and administrative ability, was for a time president of the Chicago & Rock Island and of the Mississippi & Missouri railways, first president of the Union Pacific in 1863–1868, and for a short time in 1872 president of the Erie. He died in New York city on the 21st of April 1879. Among his publications are A Winter in Madeira and a Summer in Spain and Florence (1850), and Speeches and Occasional Addresses (1864). He wrote excellent English versions of the Dies irae and the Stabat mater.
His son, Morgan Dix (1827–1908), graduated at Columbia in 1848 and at the General Theological Seminary in 1852, and was ordained deacon (1852) and priest (1853) in the Protestant Episcopalian church. In 1855–1859 he was assistant minister, and in 1859–1862 assistant rector, of Trinity Church, New York city, of which he was rector from 1862 until his death. He published sermons and lectures; A History of the Parish of Trinity Church, New York City (4 vols., 1898–1905); and a biography of his father. Memoirs of John Adams Dix (2 vols., New York, 1883).
DIXON, GEORGE (1755?–1800), English navigator. He served under Captain Cook in his third expedition, during which he had an opportunity of learning the commercial capabilities of the north-west coast of North America. After his return from Cook’s expedition he became a captain in the royal navy. In the autumn of 1785 he sailed in the “Queen Charlotte,” in the service of the King George’s Sound Company of London, to explore the shores of the present British Columbia, with the special object of developing the fur trade. His chief discoveries were those of Queen Charlotte’s Islands and Sound (the latter only partial), Port Mulgrave, Norfolk Bay, and Dixon’s Entrance and Archipelago. After visiting China, where he disposed of his cargo, he returned to England (1788), and published (1799) A Voyage round the World, but more particularly to the North-West Coast of America, the bulk of which consists of descriptive letters by William Beresford, his supercargo. His own contribution to the work included valuable charts and appendices. He is usually, though not with absolute certainty, identified with the George Dixon who was author of The Navigator’s Assistant (1791) and teacher of navigation at Gosport.
DIXON, HENRY HALL (1822–1870), English sporting writer over the nom de plume “The Druid,” was born at Warwick Bridge, Cumberland, on the 16th of May 1822, and was educated at Rugby and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1846. He took up the profession of the law, but, though called to the bar in 1853, soon returned to sporting journalism, in which he had already made a name for himself, and began to write regularly for the Sporting Magazine, in the pages of which appeared three of his novels, Post and Paddock (1856), Silk and Scarlet (1859), and Scott and Sebright (1862). He also published a legal compendium entitled The Law of the Farm (1858), which ran through several editions. His other more important works were Field and Fern (1865), giving an account of the herds and flocks of Scotland, and Saddle and Sirloin (1870), treating in the same manner those of England. He died at Kensington on the 16th of March 1870.
See Hon. Francis Lawley, Life and Times of “The Druid ” (London, 1895).
DIXON, RICHARD WATSON (1833–1900), English poet and divine, son of Dr James Dixon, a Wesleyan minister, was born on the 5th of May 1833. He was educated at King Edward’s school, Birmingham, and on proceeding to Pembroke College, Oxford, became one of the famous “Birmingham group” there who shared with William Morris and Burne-Jones in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He took only a second class in moderations in 1854, and a third in Literae Humaniores in 1856; but in 1858 he won the Arnold prize for an historical essay, and in 1863 the English Sacred Poem prize. He was ordained in 1858, was second master of Carlisle high school, 1863–1868, and successively vicar of Hayton, Cumberland, and Warkworth, Northumberland. He became minor canon and honorary librarian of Carlisle in 1868, and honorary canon in 1874, he was proctor in convocation (1890–1894), and received the honorary degree of D.D. from Oxford in 1899. He died at Warkworth on the 23rd of January 1900. Canon Dixon’s first two volumes of verse, Christ’s Company and Historical Odes, were published in 1861 and 1863 respectively; but it was not until 1883 that he attracted conspicuous notice with Mano, an historical poem in terza rima, which was enthusiastically praised by Mr Swinburne. This success he followed up by three privately printed volumes. Odes and Eclogues (1884), Lyrical Poems (1886), and The Story of Eudocia (1888). Dixon’s poems were during the last fifteen years of his life recognized as scholarly and refined exercises, touched with both dignity and a certain severe beauty, but he never attained any general popularity as a poet, the appeal of his poetry being directly to the scholar. A great student of history, his studies in that direction colour much of his poetry. The romantic atmosphere is remarkably preserved in Mano, a successful metrical exercise in the difficult terza rima. His typical poems have charm and melody, without introducing any new note or variety of rhythm. He is contemplative, sober and finished in literary workmanship, a typical example of the Oxford school. Pleasant as his poetry is, however, he will probably be longest remembered by the work to which he gave the best years of his life, his History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction (1878–1902). At the time of his death he had completed six volumes, two of which were published posthumously. This fine work, covering the period from 1529 to 1570, is built upon elaborate research, and presents a trustworthy and unprejudiced survey of its subject.
Dixon’s Selected Poems were published in 1909 with a memoir of the author by Robert Bridges.
DIXON, WILLIAM HEPWORTH (1821–1879), English author and traveller, was born at Great Ancoats, Manchester, on the 30th of June 1821, a member of an old Lancashire family. Beginning life as a clerk at Manchester, he decided, in 1846, to take up literature as a career. After gaining some journalistic experience at Cheltenham he settled in London, on the recommendation of Douglas Jerrold, and contributed to the Athenaeum and Daily News. His series of papers—“The Literature of the Lower Orders”—in the last-named journal, and a further series, “London Prisons,” were widely noticed. In 1849 appeared his John Howard and the Prison World of Europe, which proved a great popular success. These were followed by a Life of William Penn (1851), in which he replied to Macaulay’s attack on Penn; Life of Blake (1852); and Personal History of Lord Bacon (1861), supplemented by The Story of Lord Bacon’s Life (1862). From 1853 to 1869 he was editor of the Athenaeum. In 1863 he visited the East, and on his return helped to found the Palestine Exploration Fund, and published (1865) The Holy Land. In 1866 he travelled through the United States, publishing, in 1867, New America, and, the following year, Spiritual Wives, two supplementary volumes. In the autumn of 1867 he journeyed through the Baltic Provinces, publishing an account of his trip in Free Russia (1870). In 1871 he was in Switzerland, and in 1872 in Spain, where he wrote the greater part of his History of Two Queens. In 1874 he revisited the United States, giving the impressions of his tour in The White Conquest (1875). His other works, besides some fiction, were British Cyprus (1879) and Royal Windsor. He died on the 26th of December 1879. His daughter, Ella N. Hepworth Dixon, became known as a journalist and novelist.
DIXON, a city and the county seat of Lee county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Rock river, in the N.W. part of the state. Pop. (1890) 5161; (1900) 7917 (879 foreign-born); (1910) 7216. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western and the Illinois Central railways, and is connected with Sterling by an electric line; freight is shipped over the Hennepin Canal. The city
