Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/37

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DENMAN—DENMARK
23

Byzantines and Seljuk Turks, probably between 1158 and 1174. It had become a fine Moslem city in the 14th century, and was then called Ladik, being famous for the woven and embroidered products of its Greek inhabitants. The delightful gardens of Denizli have obtained for it the name of the “Damascus of Anatolia.”


DENMAN, THOMAS, 1st Baron (1779–1854), English judge, was born in London, the son of a well-known physician, on the 23rd of July 1779. He was educated at Eton and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1800. Soon after leaving Cambridge he married; and in 1806 he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, and at once entered upon practice. His success was rapid, and in a few years he attained a position at the bar second only to that of Brougham and Scarlett (Lord Abinger). He distinguished himself by his eloquent defence of the Luddites; but his most brilliant appearance was as one of the counsel for Queen Caroline. His speech before the Lords was very powerful, and some competent judges even considered it not inferior to Brougham’s. It contained one or two daring passages, which made the king his bitter enemy, and retarded his legal promotion. At the general election of 1818 he was returned M.P. for Wareham, and at once took his seat with the Whig opposition. In the following year he was returned for Nottingham, for which place he continued to sit till his elevation to the bench in 1832. His liberal principles had caused his exclusion from office till in 1822 he was appointed common serjeant by the corporation of London. In 1830 he was made attorney-general under Lord Grey’s administration. Two years later he was made lord chief justice of the King’s Bench, and in 1834 he was raised to the peerage. As a judge he is most celebrated for his decision in the important privilege case of Stockdale v. Hansard (9 Ad. & El. I.; 11 Ad. & El. 253), but he was never ranked as a profound lawyer. In 1850 he resigned his chief justiceship and retired into private life. He died on the 26th of September 1854, his title continuing in the direct line.

The Hon. George Denman (1819–1896), his fourth son, was also a distinguished lawyer, and a judge of the Queen’s Bench from 1872 till his death in 1896.

See Memoir of Thomas, first Lord Denman, by Sir Joseph Arnould (2 vols., 1873); E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904).


DENMARK (Danmark), a small kingdom of Europe, occupying part of a peninsula and a group of islands dividing the Baltic and North Seas, in the middle latitudes of the eastern coast. The kingdom lies between 54° 33′ and 57° 45′ N. and between 8° 4′ 54″ and 12° 47′ 25″ E., exclusive of the island of Bornholm, which, as will be seen, is not to be included in the Danish archipelago. The peninsula is divided between Denmark and Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). The Danish portion is the northern and the greater, and is called Jutland (Dan. Jylland). Its northern part is actually insular, divided from the mainland by the Limfjord or Liimfjord, which communicates with the North Sea to the west and the Cattegat to the east, but this strait, though broad and possessing lacustrine characteristics to the west, has only very narrow entrances. The connexion with the North Sea dates from 1825. The Skagerrack bounds Jutland to the north and north-west. The Cattegat is divided from the Baltic by the Danish islands, between the east coast of the Cimbric peninsula in the neighbourhood of the German frontier and south-western Sweden.

There is little variety in the surface of Denmark. It is uniformly low, the highest elevation in the whole country, the Himmelbjerg near Aarhus in eastern Jutland, being little more than 500 ft. above the sea. Denmark, however, is nowhere low in the sense in which Holland is; the country is pleasantly diversified, and rises a little at the coast even though it remains flat inland. The landscape of the islands and the south-eastern part of Jutland is rich in beech-woods, corn fields and meadows, and even the minute islets are green and fertile. In the western and northern districts of Jutland this condition gives place to a wide expanse of moorland, covered with heather, and ending towards the sea in low whitish-grey cliffs. There is a certain charm even about these monotonous tracts, and it cannot be said that Denmark is wanting in natural beauty of a quiet order. Lakes, though small, are numerous; the largest are the Arresö and the Esromsö in Zealand, and the chain of lakes in the Himmelbjerg region, which are drained by the largest river in Denmark, the Gudenaa, which, however, has a course not exceeding 80 m. Many of the meres, overhung with thick beech-woods, are extremely beautiful. The coasts are generally low and sandy; the whole western shore of Jutland is a succession of sand ridges and shallow lagoons, very dangerous to shipping. In many places the sea has encroached; even in the 19th century entire villages were destroyed, but during the last twenty years of the century systematic efforts were made to secure the coast by groynes and embankments. A belt of sand dunes, from 500 yds. to 7 m. wide, stretches along the whole of this coast for about 200 m. Skagen, or the Skaw, a long, low, sandy point, stretches far into the northern sea, dividing the Skagerrack from the Cattegat. On the western side the coast is bolder and less inhospitable; there are several excellent havens, especially on the islands. The coast is nowhere, however, very high, except at one or two points in Jutland, and at the eastern extremity of Möen, where limestone cliffs occur.

Continental Denmark is confined wholly to Jutland, the geographical description of which is given under that heading. Out of the total area of the kingdom, 14,829 sq. m., Jutland, including the small islands adjacent to it, covers 9753 sq. m., and the insular part of the kingdom (including Bornholm), 5076 sq. m. The islands may be divided into two groups, consisting of the two principal islands Fünen and Zealand, and the lesser islands attendant on each. Fünen (Dan. Fyen), in form roughly an oval with an axis from S.E. to N.W. of 53 m., is separated from Jutland by a channel not half a mile wide in the north, but averaging 10 m. between the island and the Schleswig coast, and known as the Little Belt. Fünen, geologically a part of southern Jutland, has similar characteristics, a smiling landscape of fertile meadows, the typical beech-forests clothing the low hills and the presence of numerous erratic blocks, are the superficial signs of likeness. Several islands, none of great extent, lie off the west coast of Fünen in the Little Belt; off the south, however, an archipelago is enclosed by the long narrow islands of Aerö (16 m. in length) and Langeland (32 m.), including in a triangular area of shallow sea the islands of Taasinge, Avernakö, Dreiö, Turö and others. These are generally fertile and well cultivated. Aeröskjöbing and Rudkjöbing, on Aerö and Langeland respectively, are considerable ports. On Langeland is the great castle of Tranekjaer, whose record dates from the 13th century. The chief towns of Fünen itself are all coastal. Odense is the principal town, lying close to a great inlet behind the peninsula of Hindsholm on the north-east, known as Odense Fjord. Nyborg on the east is the port for the steam-ferry to Korsör in Zealand; Svendborg picturesquely overlooks the southern archipelago; Faaborg on the south-west lies on a fjord of the same name; Assens, on the west, a port for the crossing of the Little Belt into Schleswig, still shows traces of the fortifications which were stormed by John of Ranzau in 1535; Middelfart is a seaside resort near the narrowest reach of the Little Belt; Bogense is a small port on the north coast. All these towns are served by railways radiating from Odense. The strait crossed by the Nyborg-Korsör ferry is the Great Belt which divides the Fünen from the Zealand group, and is continued south by the Langelands Belt, which washes the straight eastern shore of that island, and north by the Samso Belt, named from an island 15 m. in length, with several large villages, which lies somewhat apart from the main archipelago.

Zealand, or Sealand (Dan. Sjaelland), measuring 82 m. N. to S. by 68 E. to W. (extremes), with its fantastic coast-line indented by fjords and projecting into long spits or promontories, may be considered as the nucleus of the kingdom, inasmuch as it contains the capital, Copenhagen, and such important towns as Roskilde, Slagelse, Korsör, Naestved and Elsinore (Helsingör). Its topography is described in detail under Zealand. Its attendant islands lie mainly to the south and are parts of itself, only separated by geologically recent troughs. The eastern