among tje official eunuchs, the poor creature is accounted
as a priceless treasure.The early history of British dwarfs is less studded with wonders than the record of dwarfs of the classical times. Britain has nothing to compare with Philetas of Cos, the little tutor of Ptolemy Philadelphus. /Elian would have us believe that Philetas was so light as well as diminutive that he wore leaden weights in his pockets to prevent his being blown away. Nor does any British chronicle register such minute marvels as the couple of dwarfs possessed by Julia, the niece of Augustus, namely, Coropas and Julia s little handmaid Andromeda. The height of both was 2 feet 4 inches. This, however, was little less than the stature of the Aztec dwarfs who were exhibited (and were publicly married) in London some twenty years ago. It is not that British annals or tradition can be said to be entirely silent on dwarfs as wonderful as /Elian s. The earliest, known by the now generic name of " Tom Thumb," presents himself to us in the ancient ballad which begins with the record that " In Arthur s court Tom Thumb did live." Antiquaries, on probably no better foundation, are content with placing the proto-Thumb at the court of King Edgar. It is certain that such shrunken samples of humanity figured in great festivals, as we see their foreign brethren in some of the pictures of the Italian and Spanish masters. The first English dwarf of whom there is authentic history was presented to Queen Henrietta by the duchess of Buckingham, as he stept out of a pie at a banquet. This was Jeffery Hudson of Piutlandshire. He was born in 1619, and was only 1J feet high from his eighth year to his thirtieth, after which he grew to the stature of 3 feet 9 inches, and never went beyond it. His life was not made up of court pleasures. He fought twc duels, one with a turkey-cock, a battle recorded by Davenant, and a second with Mr Crofts, who came to the meeting with a squirt, but who in the more serious encounter which ensued was shot dead by little Hudson, who fired from horseback, the saddle putting him on a level with his lofty but unlucky antagonist. Twice was Jeffery made prisoner, once by the Dnnkirkers as ho was returning from France, whither he had been on homely business for the queen ; the second time was when he fell into the hands of Barbary corsairs. In each case his liberty was soon purchased. But Jeffery died in prison, nevertheless. He was accused of participation in the "Popish Plot," and in 1682 this dwarf died in the Gate House, in the sixty-third year of his age.
Contemporary with Hudson were the two dwarfs of Henrietta Maria, Gibson and his wife Anne. They were married by the queen s wish; and the two together measured only a couple of inches over 7 feet. They had nine children, five of whom, who lived, were of ordinary stature. Edmund Waller celebrated the nuptials, Evelyn designated the husband as the " compendium of a man," and Lely painted them hand in hand. Gibson was miniature painter to Charles I., and drawing-master to the daughters of James II., the Princesses Mary and Anne, when they were children. This Cumberland pigmy, who began his career as a page, first in a "gentle," next in the royal family, died in 1690, in his seventy-fifth year, and is buried in St Paul s, Covent Garden. The last court dwarf in England was Coppernin, a lively little imp in the service of the Princess (Augusta) of Wales, the mother of George III. The last dwarf retainer in a gentleman s family was the one kept by Mr Beckford, the author of Vathek and builder of Font-hill. He was rather too big to be flung from one guest to another, as used to be done at after-dinner tables, when the wine had got the better of common sense.
Of exhibited dwarfs in England, the most celebrated was the Pole, Borulwaski, whom fashion patronized in the last century and forgot in the present one. He was then a yard and 3 inches in height, and he had a sister shorter than himself by the head and shoulders. Borulwaski was a handsome man, a wit, and something of a scholar. He travelled over all Europe ; and he born in the reign of George IL, 1739 died in his well-earned retirement near Durham, in the reign of Victoria, 1837. Borulwa?ki, buried in the above-named city, lies by the side of the Falstaffian Stephen Kemble. The companionship reminds one of that of the dwarf skeleton of Jonathan Wild by the side of that of the Irish Giant, at the Boyal College of Surgeons, London.
In the year in which Borulwaski died, 1837, the line of publicly exhibited dwarfs was continued by the birth of the existing American pigmy, Charles Stratton, better known as " General Tom Thumb." In 1844 he appeared in England, where his grace, vivacity, and good humour made him popular, from the royal family to the general public, before whom he acted at the Lyceum Theatre. He also made his appearance on the stage in Paris. Aftei extensive travel in both hemispheres, he again visited England in 1857, but the dwarf man, despite many personal and intellectual qualities, was less attractive than the dwarf boy. In the year 1863 the " General " married the very minute American lady, Lavinia Warren (born in 1842), with whom he has seen many lands, and they are now enjoying honourable retirement in their own.
DWIGHT, Timothy (1752–1817), an eminent American divine, was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, 14th May 1752. His father, though educated at Yale College, was a merchant, and his mother the third daughter of Jonathan Edwards. His mother began to instruct him almost as soon as he was able to speak, and it is said that he learned the alphabet at a single lesson, and before he- was four years old was able to read the Bible. In 1765 he entered Yale College, and received his B.A. degree in 1769, shortly after which he went to take charge of a grammar school at Newhaven, where he remained two years. In September 1771 he was appointed tutor in Yale College, where he distinguished himself by the skill with which he taught the higher mathematics. In the same year he began an epic poem entitled the Conquest of Canaan, which was published in 1785. He received his degree of M.A. in 1772, and afterwards pursued his studies with the view of adopting law as his profession, but, changing his intention, was licensed as a preacher of the gospel in 1777, and accepted the office of chaplain to the forces, which post he held for some time. In 1783 he was ordained minister of Greenfield in Connecticut, when he opened an academy which speedily acquired a very high reputation, and attracted scholars from all parts of the Union. He received the degree of D.D. from Princeton College in 1785, and that of LL.D. from New Jersey in 1810. In 1795 he was elected president of Yale College, and by his judicious management restored that institution to the high place from which it had fallen before his appointment. He died at Philadelphia on the llth January 1817. Dr Dwight was the author of a considerable number of essays and sermons; and his Theology Explained and Defended in a series of Sermons was published in 5 vols., with a life of the author, in 1818. Two additional volumes of sermons were published in 1827, and had an extensive circulation both in the United States and in England.
DWINA, a name common to two important rivers of European Russia.
longs to the basin of the White Sea, and is formed by the junction of the Sukhonaand the Yuk, which, rising the former in the south-east and the latter in the south-west
of the government of Vologda, meet in the neighbourhood