Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/711

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PALOMINO DE CASTRO—PAMIRS
655

and about 18 m. from the sea. Pop. (1910) 4486. It is served by the coast division of the Southern Pacific railway, and is the railway station for Leland Stanford Jr. University (q.v.), which is about 1 m. south-west of the city. At Menlo Park is St Patrick’s Theological Seminary (Roman Catholic). By all real estate deeds the sale of intoxicating liquors is for ever prohibited in the city; and an act of the state legislature in 1909 prohibited the sale of intoxicating liquor within 11/2 m. of the grounds of the university. The name (Sp. “tall tree”) was derived from a solitary redwood-tree standing in the outskirts of the city. Palo Alto was laid out in 1891, but had no real existence before 1893. It was incorporated as a town in 1894, having previously been a part of Mayfield township; in 1909 it was chartered as a city. Palo Alto suffered severely in the earthquake of 1906.

PALOMINO DE CASTRO Y VELASCO, ACISCLO ANTONIO (1653–1726), Spanish painter and writer on art, was born of good family at Bujalance, near Cordoba, in 1653, and studied philosophy, theology and law at that capital, receiving also lessons in painting from Valdes Leal, who visited Cordoba in 1672, and afterwards from Alfaro (1675). After taking minor orders he removed to Madrid in 1678, where he associated with Alfaro, Coello and Careño, and executed some indifferent frescoes. He soon afterwards married a lady of rank, and, having been appointed alcalde of the mesta, was himself ennobled; and in 1688 he was appointed painter to the king. He visited Valencia in 1697, and remained there three or four years, again devoting himself with but poor success to fresco painting. Between 1705 and 1715 he resided for considerable periods at Salamanca, Granada and Cordoba; in the latter year the first volume of his work on art appeared in Madrid. After the death of his wife in 1725 Palomino took priest's orders. He died on the 13th of August 1726.

His work, in 3 vols. folio (1715–1724), entitled El Museo pictorico y escala optica, consists of three parts, of which the first two, on the theory and practice of the art of painting, are whithout interest or value; the third, with the subtitle El Parnaso español pintoresco laureado, is a mine of important biographical material relating to Spanish artists, which, notwithstanding its faulty style, has procured for the author the not altogether undeserved honour of being called the "Spanish Vasari." It was partially translated into English in 1739; an abridgment of the original (Las Vidas de los pintores y estatuarios españoles) was published in London in 1742, and afterwards appeared in a French translation in 1749. A German version was published at Dresden in 1781, and a reprint of the entire work at Madrid in 1797.

PALTOCK, ROBERT (1697–1767), English writer, the only son of Thomas Paltock of St James's, Westminster, was born in 1697. He became an attorney and lived for some time in Clement's Inn, whence he removed, before 1759, to Back Lane, Lambeth. He married Anna Skinner, through whom his son, also named Robert, inherited a small property at Ryme Intrinseca, Dorset. There Robert Paltock, who died in London on the 20th of March 1767, was buried. Paltock owes his fame to his romantic Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751), which excited the admiration of men like Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lamb, Sir Walter Scott and Leigh Hunt. It has been several times reprinted, notably with an introduction by Mr A. H. Bullen in 1884. It was translated into French (1763) and into German (1767).

PALUDAN-MÜLLER, FREDERIK (1809–1876), Danish poet, was the third son of Jens Paludan-Müller, from 1830 to 1845 bishop of Aarhus, and born at Kjerteminde in Fünen, on the 7th of February 1809. In 1819 his father was transferred to Odense, and Frederik began to attend the Latin school there. In 1828 he passed to the university of Copenhagen. In 1832 he opened his poetical career with Four Romances, and a romantic comedy entitled Kjærlighed ved hoffet (“Love at Court”). This enjoyed a considerable success, and was succeeded in 1833 by Dandserinden (“The Dancing Girl”). Paludan-Müller was accepted by criticism without a struggle, and few writers have excited less hostility than he. He was not, however, well inspired in his lyrical drama of Amor and Psyche in 1834 nor in his Oriental tale of Zuleimas flugt (“Zuleima's Flight”) in 1835, in each of which he was too vividly influenced by Byron. But he regained all that he had lost by his two volumes of poems in 1836 and 1838. From 1838 to 1840 Paludan-Müller was making the grand tour in Europe and his genius greatly expanded; in Italy he wrote Venus, a lyrical poem of extreme beauty. In the same year, 1841, he began to publish a great work on which he had long been engaged, and which he did not conclude until 1848; this was Adam Homo, a narrative epic, satirical, modern and descriptive, into which Paludan-Müller wove all his variegated impressions of Denmark and of love. This remains the typical classic of Danish poetical literature. In 1844 he composed three enchanting idylls, Dryadens bryllup (“The Dryad's Wedding”) Tithon (“Tithonus”) and Abels död (“The Death of Abel”). From 1850 a certain decline in the poet's physical energy became manifest and he wrote less. His majestic drama of Kalanus belongs to 1854. Then for seven years he kept silence. Paradiset (“Paradise”) 1861; and Benedikt fra Nurcia (“Benedict of Nurcia”) 1861; bear evidence of malady, both physical and mental. Paludan-Müller wrote considerably after this, but never recovered his early raptures, except in the very latest of all his poems, the enchanting welcome to death, entitled Adonis. The poet lived a very retired life, first in Copenhagen, then for many years in a cottage on the outskirts of the royal park of Fredensborg, and finally in a house in Ny Adelgade, Copenhagen, where he died on the 27th of December 1876.  (E. G.) 

PALWAL, a town of British India, in Gurgaon district, Punjab. Pop. (1901), 12,830. It is a place of great antiquity, supposed to figure in the earliest Aryan traditions under the name of Apelava, part of the Pandava kingdom of Indraprastha. Its importance is mainly historical, but it is a centre for the cotton trade of the neighbourhood, having a station on the Delhi-Agra branch of the Great Indian Peninsula railway.

PAMIERS, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Ariège, 40 m. S. by E. of Toulouse on the railway to Foix. Pop. (1906), town, 7728; commune, 10,449. Pamiers is the seat of a bishopric dating from the end of the 13th century. The cathedral (chiefly of the 17th century) with an octagonal Gothic tower, is a bizarre mixture of the Graeco-Roman and Gothic styles; the church of Notre-Dame du Camp (17th and 18th centuries) is noticeable for its crenelated and machicolated façade of the 14th century. Pamiers has a subprefecture, a tribunal of first instance, a communal college and a school of commerce and industry. Iron and steel of excellent quality, chains and carriage-springs are among its products. It has also tanneries and wool, flour, paper and saw mills, brick works and lime-kilns, and commerce in grain, flour, fodder, fruit and vegetables. There are stone quarries and nursery gardens in the vicinity, and the white wine of the district is well known.

Pamiers was originally a castle built in the beginning of the 12th century by Roger II., count of Foix, on lands belonging to the abbey of St Antonin de Frédelas. The abbots of St Antonin, and afterwards the bishops, shared the authority over the town with the counts. This gave rise to numerous disputes between monks, counts, sovereigns, bishops and the consuls of the town. Pamiers was sacked by Jean de Foix in 1486, again during the religious wars, when the abbey of St Antonin was destroyed, and finally, in 1628, by Henry II. of Bourbon prince of Condé.

PAMIRS, a mountainous region of central Asia, lying on the north-west border of India. Since 1875 the Pamirs have probably been the best explored region in High Asia. Not only have many travellers of many nationalities directed their steps towards the Bam-i-dunya (“the Roof of the World”) in search of adventure or of scientific information, but the government surveys of Russia and India have met in these high altitudes, and there effected a connexion which will help to solve many of the geodetic problems which beset the superficial survey of Asia. Since Wood first discovered a source of the Oxus in Lake Victoria in 1837, and left us a somewhat erroneous conception of the physiography of the Pamirs, the gradual approach of Russia from the north stimulated the processes of exploration from the side of India. Native explorers from India first began to be