Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/1030

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O’CONNOR, F.—OCTAVE

land, and under this visitation the repeal movement, already paralysed, wholly collapsed. O'Connell died on the 15th of May 1847, at Genoa, whilst on his way to Rome. His body was brought back to Dublin and buried in Glasnevin cemetery.

O'Connell was a remarkable man in every sense of the word, of splendid physique, and with all the attractions of a popular leader. Catholic Ireland calls him her “Liberator” still; and history will say of him that, with some failings, he had many and great gifts, that he was an orator of a high order, and that, agitator as he was, he possessed the wisdom, the caution and the tact of a real statesman. Nevertheless he not only failed to accomplish the chief aim of his life, but Lecky trenchantly observes that “ by a singular fatality the great advocate of repeal did more than any one else to make the Union a necessity. He destroyed the sympathy between the people and their natural leaders; and he threw the former into the hands of men who have subordinated all national to ecclesiastical considerations, or into the hands of reckless, ignorant, and dishonest adventurers.” O'Connell married in 1802 his cousin Mary O'Connell, by whom he had three daughters and four sons, Maurice, Morgan, John (1810–1858), known as the “Young Liberator,” and Daniel, who all sat in parliament.

His son John published a Life in 1846 and Recollections and Experiences in 1849. There are also biographies by W. Fagan (1847), M. F. Cusack (1872), J. O'Rourke and O’Keffe (1875), and J. A. Hamilton (1888). See especially W. E. H. Lecky's essay in the revised edition of his Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland vol. ii. (1903).  (W. O. M.) 


O'CONNOR, FEARGUS EDWARD (1794–1855), Chartist leader, was a son of the Irish Nationalist politician Roger O'Connor (1762–1834), and nephew of Arthur O'Connor (1763–1852), who was the agent in France for Emmet's rebellion; both belonged to the “United Irishmen.” He entered parliament as member for the county of Cork in 1832. Though a zeal ous supporter of repeal, he endeavoured to supplant O'Connell as the leader of the party, an attempt which aroused against him the popular antipathy of the Irish. In 1835 he was unseated on petition, and after standing unsuccessfully for Oldham he took to stumping England in favour of the new Radical doctrines of the day, and the use of physical force for their adoption. In 1837 he established the Northern Star newspaper at Leeds, and became a vehement advocate of the Chartist movement. He was imprisoned for seditious libel in 1840, and after his release became prominent for his attack on John Bright, and the anti-corn-law league. In 1847 he was returned for Nottingham, and in 1848 he presided at a Chartist demonstration on Kennington Common, which caused great alarm (see Chartism). But the projected march on Westminster fizzled out when the preparations made to receive it became known. The eccentricity which had characterized his opinions from the beginning of his career gradually became more marked until they developed into insanity. He began to conduct himself in a disorderly manner in the House of Commons, and in 1852 he was found to be of unsound mind by a commission of lunacy. He died at London on the 30th of August 1855, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery.


OCONOMOWOC, a city of Waukesha county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., about 33 m. W. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 2729; (1900) 2880; (1905) 3013; (1910) 3054. It is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee 81 St Paul railway and by an electric railway connecting with Milwaukee. Oconomowoc is one of the most popular summer resorts in the Middle West. Along the shore of Lakes Fowler and La Belle are some beautiful country estates, several large hotels and fine club houses, and two sanatoria. At Delafield and at Dousman (8 m. S. of Oconomowoc) there are state fish hatcheries, the former for black bass. Oconomowoc was settled about 1837 and incorporated in 1875; its name is an Indian word, said to mean “ home of the beaver.”


O'CONOR, CHARLES (1804–1884), American lawyer, was born in the city of New York on the 22nd of January 1804, and was the son of Thomas O'Conor (1770–1855), who in 1801 emigrated from Roscommon county, Ireland, to New York, where he devoted himself chiefly to journalism. The son studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1824, and soon won high reputation in his profession. He was United States district attorney for New York in 1853–1854. In politics an extreme States'-Rights Democrat, he opposed the coercion of the South, and after the Civil War became senior counsel for Jefferson Davis on his indictment for treason, and was one of his bondsmen; these facts and O'Conor's connexion with the Roman Catholic Church affected unfavourably his political fortunes. In 1872 he was nominated for the presidency by the “Bourbon” Democrats, who refused to support Horace Greeley, and by the “Labour Reformers”; he declined the nomination but received 21,559 votes. He took a prominent part in the prosecution of William M. Tweed and members of the “Tweed Ring,” and published Peculation Triumphant, Being the Record of a Five Years' Campaign against Official Malversation, A.D. 1871–1875 (1875). He removed to Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1881, and died there on the 12th of May 1884.


OCONTO, a city and the county-seat of Oconto county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., about 130 m. N. of Milwaukee, on the W. shore of Green Bay, at the mouth of the Oconto river. Pop. (1890) 5219; (1900) 5646, of whom 1544 were foreign-born; (1905) 5722; (1910) 5629. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways. The city lies in a good farming country, and has a considerable lake commerce in lumber and fish. The first settlement was made here in 1846, and Oconto was chartered as a city in 1882.


OCRICULUM (mod. Otricoli), an ancient town of Umbria, Italy, on the Via Flaminia, near the E. bank of the Tiber, 44 m. N. of Rome and 12 m. S. of Narnia. It concluded an alliance with Rome in 308 B.C. The modern village lies higher than the ancient town, and excavations on the site of the latter in 1775 and following years led to the discovery of the baths, a theatre, a basilica and other buildings. In the baths were found a number of works of art, now in the Vatican, notably the mosaic pavement of the Sala della Rotonda, and the celebrated head of Zeus and the head of Claudius in the same room. An amphitheatre is still visible, but the other buildings have in the main been covered up again.


OCTAHEDRON (Gr. ὀκτώ, eight, ἕδρα, base), a solid bounded by eight triangular faces; it has 6 vertices and 12 edges. The regular octahedron has for its faces equilateral triangles; it is the reciprocal of the cube. Octahedra having triangular faces other than equilateral occur as crystal forms. See Polyhedron and Crystallography.


OCTAVE (from Lat. octavus, eighth, octo, eight), a period or series of eight members. In ecclesiastical usage the octave is the eighth day after a particular church festival, the feast day itself and the “ octave ” being counted. The octave thus always falls on the same day of the week as the festival, and any event occurring during the period is said to be “ in the octave.” In music, an octave is the eighth full tone above or below any given note. It is produced by double or half the number of vibrations corresponding to the given note. In the interval between a note and its octave is contained the full scale, the octave of a note forming the starting-point of another scale of similar intervals to the first. The interval between a note and its octave is also called an octave. The name is also applied to an open metal stop in an organ, and to a flute (more usually known as the piccolo) one octave higher in pitch than the regular flute. It is also a term for a “ parade ” in fencing. The “ law of octaves ” was a term applied in 1865 to a relationship among the chemical elements enunciated by J. A. R. Newlands.

In literature an octave is a form of verse consisting of eight iambic lines, and complete in itself. From its use by the poets of Sicily, the recognized type of this form is usually called the Sicilian Octave. It is distinguished from a single stanza of ottava rima, in which the rhyme-arrangement is abababcc, by having only two rhymes, arranged abababab. In German literature the octave has been used not infrequently since 1820, when Ruckert published “ Sicilianen,” as they are called in German, for the first time. The word octave is also often used to describe