Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/875

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858

PALGBAVE.

and Songs/' 1854; "The Golden Treasury of English Songs," 1861 ; " Art Catalogue of the Great Ex- hibition of 1862;" "Essays on Art," 1866 ; and a life of Sir Walter Scott, prefixed to the Globe edition of his poems, 1867. His more re- cent works are — "Hymns," 1867; 2nd edit., enlarged, 1868; "The Five Days' Entertainments at Wentworth Grange," 1868 ; the text illustrative of " Gems of Eng- lish Art in this country : Twenty- four Pictures from National Col- lections, printed in colours by Leighton Brothers," 1869 ; and "Lyrical Poems," 1871. He also edited " Chrysomela : a selection from the Lyrical Poems of Kobert Herrick," 1877. Mr. Palgrave was created an honorary LL.D. of Edin- burgh in 1878.

PALGRAVE, William Giffobd, son of the late Sir Francis Palgrave, was born in Westminster Jan. 24, 1826, and received his education at the Charterhouse. He was Captain and Gold Medallist of his year, and obtained a scholarship at Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1846, taking a first class in classics, and a second class in mathematics. The follow- ing year he was appointed a second lieutenant in the 8th Bombay Na- tive Infantry. After a short period of service, he became connected with the Order of the Jesuits, and in due course he was admitted to the priesthood. During his en- gagement with the French and Itjflian branches of the Society of Jesus he resided in Southern India till 1853 ; at Rome till the autumn of 1855 ; and subsequently in Syria and Palestine, where he was ac- tively employed in the interests of the Order till 1860, by which time he had acquired a complete mas- tery of the Arabic language, both literary and vernacular. In his " Lectures on the Massacres of the Christians in Syria," delivered in Ireland in 1861, he describes him- self as "a poor missionary for

fifteen years," and he remarks, " I have myself been a witness of horrors and desolations that chill the very blood to read of ; I saw them with my own eyes, heard them with my own ears, and only escaped through the Providence of Gtod from being among the num- ber of the victims." Mr. Pkdg^ve was summoned to France in the summer of 1860 by Napoleon III., to give an account of the Syrian disturbances and massacres, and he returned to Syria in 1861, charged with the task of exploring Central and Eastern Arabia in the service of the Emperor. This he accomplished in the years 1862 and 1863, traversing the entire Wa- habe kingdom, and subsequently the provinces adjacent to the Per- sian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Du- ring his prolonged and varied residence and journeys in Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, and other regions of the Ottoman East, he acquired such a familiarity with Arabic and the Arabs, that he was looked on by the latter as one of their own leaders and Sheyhks ; and on several occasions acted as " Imam " and " Khutab " in their mosques. Mr. Palgrave, having obtained the permission of the French Emperor, published a work of great merit, entitled •* Narrative of a Year's Journey through Cen- tral and Eastern Arabia (1862-63)/' 2 vols., London, 1865, which has been translated into French by M. E. Jonveaux. In the preface the author thus describes the object of his journey : — "The hope of doing something towards the permanent social go^ of those wide regions ; the desire of bringing the stagnant waters of Eastern life into contact with the quickening stream of European prog^ss ; perhaps a na- tural curiosity to know the yet un- known, and the restlessness of enterprise not rare in Englishmen : these were the principal motives. The author may add that at the time of the undertakings he was in