which is euphony (e. g. the Italian and Spanish), give a preponderance to the vowels, and avoid successive consonants. In the northern languages, on the other hand, the consonants prevail, and too often follow each other; but three in succession are less frequent, and prolong the sound still more. Three consonants, in German, would render a syllable long by position. Such a determination of the time, according to the proportionate weight of syllables, is called quantity, and languages, in which vowels predominate, incline more to quantity; on the other hand, idioms, in which consonants prevail, incline more to accent, as they determine the duration of the tone more by the logical priority of the syllables. The German language is of the latter sort, though the meaning or derivation does by no means always determine the length of the syllables in this language. The Germans have, moreover, distinct long and short syllables, like the Greeks and Romans, and of late have very much settled their prosody, so that they are enabled to write in all the ancient metres. The other modern languages of Europe, west or south of Germany, have not long or short syllables, properly speaking. The English language has no prosody, in the ancient sense of the word: its verse depends upon accent and the number of the syllables. (See Rhyme, and Versification.)

PROSOPOPEIA. (See Personification.) PROTAGORAS; a Grecian philosopher, born at Abdera, in the middle of the fifth century B. C. He taught principally at Athens. He may be considered one of the first Sophists (q. v.) who travelled in Greece, reading his writings, holding public disputations, and giving instruction for pay. He was accused of atheism, and banished from Athens, and his writings were publicly burnt. He is said to have denied that there was any such thing as absolute truth, and to have applied his doubts of human knowledge to the most sacred and important subjects,-virtue and the existence of God,-maintaining that they might as well exist as not exist. How far this is true cannot be determined with certainty, because his writings are lost. PROTECTOR, CARDINAL. Every Catholic nation and religious order has a protector, residing in Rome, who is a cardinal, and is called cardinal protector.

PROTECTOR, LORD. (See Cromwell.) PROTECTOR OF SLAVES. An officer entirely novel, and intended to give some legal protection to slaves, was created by the English ministry of earl Grey, by a British

order in council, of Nov. 2, 1831, constituting in the colonies of Trinidad, S Lucia, the Mauritius, British Guiana, and the cape of Good Hope, certain officers, called protectors of slaves. They are never to be proprietors of slaves; are to receive complaints of slaves against their masters and others; may summon the latter to appear before them; and institute a prosecution against them before the proper tribunal. If a slave is prosecuted before a court, notice must be given to a protector, who personally, or by an assistant protector, inust be present at the trial, in order to protect the interest of the slave. The protector also keeps a register of all the slaves of his district; has the power to enter any plantation or building, where he believes slaves are ill-treated; to grant them marriage licenses, and to attend, i various other ways, to the preservation of good order among them.

PROTECTOR OF THE CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE. (See Napoleon, and Confederation of the Rhine.)

PROTESILAUS, one of the Grecian heroes at Troy, was the son of Iphiclus, king of Phylace, in Thessaly, and of Diomedes His original name was Iolaus, and be received the surname of Protesilaus, be cause he was the first of the Greeks whe leaped ashore on their landing before Troy; but he was immediately killed by a Trojan warrior, according to some b Hector. His tomb was on the Sigan promontory. He was honored as a her after his death, and had an oracle at Ekers in the Chersonesus, particularly for athitæ; he also healed several diseases.

PROTEST; a solemn declaration of oper ion, commonly against some act, partie larly a formal and solemn declaration, a writing, of dissent from the proceeding of a legislative body, as a protest of t lords in parliament, or a like declarat.n of dissent by a minority of any body. against the proceedings of the majory

In commerce, a formal declarate made by a notary public, under hand and seal, at the request of the payee, or holist of a bill of exchange, for non-acceptare or non-payment of the same, protestr against the drawer and others concert. for the exchange, charges, damages interest. This protest is written on copy of the bill of exchange, and neve is given to the endorser of the same, which he becomes liable to pay amount of the bill, with charges, damers and interest. (See Bill of Exchange.) T name of protest is also given to a Li declaration against the drawer of a ne

of hand, for non-payment to a banking corporation, and of the master of a vessel against seizure, &c. A protest is also a writing, attested by a justice of the peace, or a consul, drawn by a master of a vessel, stating the severity of a voyage, by which the ship has suffered, and showing it was not owing to the neglect or misconduct of the master.

PROTESTANTISM includes the Protestant religion in its various forms, and the history of its developement, as well as the influence which it has had on mankind. This name, like many others in history, owes its origin to a circumstance comparatively insignificant. It originated in Germany, when those members of the empire who were attached to the reformation, protested (April 19, 1539), before the assembled princes, against the following resolve of the diet at Spire: "that, until a general council should be held, further innovations in ecclesiastical affairs should be avoided; the mass should not be any further abolished, nor its celebration be prevented in those places whither the new doctrine had already spread; no inflammatory sermons should be preached; and no vituperative writings be printed." In consequence of this protestation, they were called Protestants, and soon adopted this name themselves. To this protestation was added (April 25) a formal appeal to the emperor against every measure hostile to their faith. The word Protestant was afterwards adopted, also, in foreign countries; and when, in 1817, the centennial celebration of the beginning of the German reformation caused several controversies in Prussia, the government prohibited (June 30, 1817) the further use of the term Protestant in the country, as being obsolete and unmeaning, since the Protestants did not any longer protest, and ordered the word evangelical to be substituted for it. The numberless sects which have sprung up among the seceders from Catholicism, since the time of the reformation, and which are comprehended under the name of Protestants, all agree (however different their opinions on some important points may be) in rejecting human authority in matters of religion, taking the Holy Scripture as the sole rule of their faith and life, and adhering to particular creeds on ly as expressing the convictions in which all their members agree. (See Reformation.) The present number of the Protestants and Catholics is given in the article Ecclesiastical Establishments.

PROTEUS, according to the old Grecian mythology, a deified mortal, a soothsaying

and wonder-working old man of the sea, who fed the phoca of Neptune in the

gean sea, and was said by wandering mariners to sun himself with his seacalves, and to sleep at mid-day, sometimes on the desert island of Pharos, near the western mouth of the Nile, and sometimes on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, in Carpathus (the modern Scarpanto), between Crete and Rhodes. He prophesied only when compelled by force and art. He tried every means to elude those who consulted him, and changed himself, after the manner of the sea-gods, into every shape, into beasts, trees, and even into fire and water. But whoever boldly held him fast, to such a one he revealed whatever he wished to know, whether past, present, or future. Thus Menelaus surprised him (Odyssey, iv, 351), and compelled him to aid him by his prophecies and his counsel. Homer calls Proteus Egyptian, either in the literal sense, or to signify that he lived in the neighborhood of the river Egyptus. Later writers represented Proteus as a king in the time of the Trojan war, who, either by divine skill, or by an artful change of the ornaments of his head, could assume various forms. According to other accounts, which, perhaps, Virgil had in view, Proteus was a deified sorcerer of Pallene, a peninsula of Emathia or Macedonia. Disturbed by the profligacy of his sons, he went, in the time of Hercules, under the sea to Egypt, and in that unfrequented part of the sea kept the sea-calves of his master Neptune, who had given him the wonderful power of prophesying. The later mystics made him an emblem of primeval matter, and he is thus represented in the 24th Orphic hymn. This mortalborn sea-god now became a son of Neptune and Phoenice, or of old Oceanus himself and Tethys. Psamathe was his wife, by whom he had many sons and daughters, whose names are differently given. Any one who hastily changes his principles is, from this old sea-god, called a Proteus.

PROTHÉEITE; a new mineral, found in the valley of Zillerthal, in the Tyrol. It occurs in rectangular prisms, with faces longitudinally striated; color chrysolitegreen; lustre between glass and diamond; heavy; scratches glass; infusible before the blow-pipe, and is electric by friction.

PROTOCOL (from the Latin protocollum); a record or register. In French, protocol means the prescribed formula for instruments accompanying certain transactions, and in German it signifies the minutes of any transaction. In the latter sense the

word has, of late, been received into international law, and we hear much of the London protocols respecting Greece, Belgium, &c. The word comes from the Greek, and is used as early as in the fortieth novel of Justinian, which forbids the cutting the protocollum of charters—a short note, showing the year in which the paper or parchment was made, and the officer commissioned for the delivery of the instruments, by means of which frauds were frequently detected. (See Du Fresne's Glossary.)

PROTOGENES; a Greek painter, contemporary with Apelles, according to some, born in Rhodes, according to others, in Caria. (See Apelles.) Several masterpieces of his are mentioned, particularly a picture of Jalysus, who is said to have been the founder of the city of Rhodes. In this picture a hound was represented panting, and with froth on his mouth. Pliny relates, that for a long time the painter was unable to satisfy himself in the execution of the froth; but that, at last, in a fit of anger, he threw the sponge, with which he used to wipe off the colors, on the painting, and thus accidentally produced a natural representation of it. This picture saved the city of Rhodes, when it was besieged by Demetrius. In the time of Cicero it was still in that city, but Cassius carried it to Rome, and placed it in the temple of Peace, in which it was burnt during the reign of Commodus.

PROTRACTOR. An instrument for laying down and measuring angles on paper with accuracy and despatch, and by which the use of the line of chords is superseded. It is of various forms semicircular, rectangular or circular.

PROVENÇAL POETS were romantic poets of chivalry, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the south of France and in Spain. These southern countries at that time bore the common name of Provence, which included, beside the country situated between the Rhone and the Var, Languedoc, Gascony, Auvergne and Burgundy. They were united in the beginning of the twelfth century, under Raymond Berengarius IV, previously count of Barcelona or Catalonia, and by marriage, count of Provence (as such, Raymond Berengarius I), and after wards comprehended also Arragon, and a great part of the south of Spain. The people were called Provençaur, and were separated from the less polished French by the Loire. Southern France, already refined by colonies from Greece, and by its vicinity to the Romans, favored with a milder climate and a freer government,

was, until the eleventh century, far in advance of the north in civilization, and possessed a language composed of Roman and Teutonic words, and so much distinguished for clearness, tenderness, sweetness and copiousness, that it was spoken by the higher classes even in Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, &c. The language, the cultivation of the nobles by their intercourse with the East, particularly with the poetical Arabs, an imagination awakened, and an understanding enlarged by travel and adventure, a romantic spirit, and the wealth produced by coinmerce,-all these circumstances contributed to foster genius and to produce poetry. The poet sang of war and adventures, religion and love, and found encouragement and applause, particularly from the ladies, who were celebrated in his verses. The taste for poetry became general among the nobles and cultivated classes in Provence, and the princes, particularly Raymond Berengarius III and V, favored the poetical art. In their court, at that time the most refined and splendid in Europe, it was customary to collect a circle of noble poets. Poetry and song, accompanied by the lute, harp, or viol, were demanded at every feast, and many persons therefore wandered about to enliven festivals with such accompaniments. The words Provençal and poet became almost synonymous. Their songs, which were in rhyme, and which often proceeded less from poetic inspiration than from a spirit of imitation, are divided into three principal classes: 1. Canzonets, love songs and joyful (soulas), plaintive (lais), pastoral (pastourelles), and religious or didactic songs; 2. Sirventes, songs in honor of heroes and princes, in which class were included patriotic and war songs; 3. Tensons, sometimes on questions of gallantry, which were recited in the courts of love (cours d'amour). The favorite subjects were love and ladies; and the poets endeavored to rival each other in the praises of their mistresses; but they were less tender and chaste than the German Minnesingers. (q. v.) though their poems, as a whole, are not much to our taste, they contain occasional fine passages (which must be read in the original, as their principal charm consists in the expression), and although they have little true poetical merit, as they consist rather of fantastic conceits and hackneyed rhymes, than of the outpourings of an elevated soul, yet it is not to be denied that they were of great advantage to that age, by forming the mind, enriching the language, exciting men to action, and la

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dies to make themselves worthy of love. The Provençal poets were also called Romans, and the Provençal language was called the Romana, as it was derived principally from the Latin. These poets were likewise called Troubadours (q. v. ; in Italian, Trovatori), while the Norman-French poets of a somewhat later period, who wrote in French the nonsensical, conceited and absurd romances (the first of which was the tedious, but then popular, Roman de la Rose), heroic poems (of the twelve peers of Charlemagne, of the knights of the round table, and of the Amadisses), Contes and Fabliaux, and who were particularly favored by Charles VI, were called Trouvères, or Trouveurs. (See France, Literature of, division Poetry.) The oldest Troubadour, whose name and poems are known to us, is William, count of Poitiers and Guienne (born 1071), who sang the adventures of his crusade, although there must have been others who sang before him. Raynouard discovered a Provençal poem of the year 1000, in rhyme. The flourishing period of this school of poetry extends from 1090 to 1290, and its popularity was at its height about 1140, and at the time when Berengarius III received the investiture of Provence from the emperor Frederic I. Not only the nobles and many ladies in Provence, but many celebrated foreign princes (e. g. Richard the Lion-hearted), and the Italian nobles, partook of the enthusiasm in its favor. The charms of the Provencal poetry and language were more early widely felt in Italy (where Folchetto was the first known poet of this school), and in Spain (the country of the Limousin Provençal poets), where many princes were poets (Alphonso II, Peter III and IV), and later in Sicily. The history of Romeo de Villeneuve (the Pilgrim), who was minister of the tenth count of Provence, Raymond Berengarius (from 1206 to 1244), and who is praised by Dante, deals in the marvellous, and was considered by Baudrier (1635) as a romance. These materials have been worked up in a new form in the Peregrinazioni ed Avanture del nobile Romeo da Provenza (Turin, 1824). The decline of the Provençal poetry began in the fourteenth century, in the first half of which, prizes were offered (at Toulouse golden violets, afterwards silver marigolds and roses), for the encouragement of poets. The last whom Millot, the author of the principal work on this subject, Hist. Littéraire des Troubadours (Paris, 1774, 3 vols.), cites is Jean Esteve de Blesières (about 1286). At

length this amusement became wearisome, the understanding took the place of fancy, the nobility lost their splendor, the princely patrons of poetry became extinct, the French line of kings who succeeded, favored the French language instead of the Provençal, and materials failed when the adventures of chivalry ceased to exist; no powerful Petrarch arose among the Provençals, and instead of the singers, who, if they really were Troubadours, were called minstrels (q. v.), succeeded actors and jugglers, who disgraced the name of Troubadours, and whose meanness soon caused the earlier and better poets to be forgotten. We have still much of the Provençal poetry left. Some of the pieces are religious romances. See Raynouard's Choix des Poésies originales des Troubadours (Paris, 1816-21, 6 vols.), to which collection is prefixed a Grammaire Romane; see also A. W. Schlegel's Observations sur la Littérature Provenzale (Paris, 1818).

PROVENCE; one of the old provinces of France, lying in the south-eastern part of the country, on the Mediterranean, bounded on the north by Dauphiny, and on the west by Languedoc. Its natural boundaries were the sea, the Rhone, the Var and the Alps. The capital was Aix, and the province was divided into Upper and Lower Provence. The departments of the Mouths of the Rhone, the Lower Alps and the Var, with a part of that of Vaucluse, have been formed from it. Greek colonies were founded here at an early period (see Marseilles); and the Romans, having conquered the country (B. C. 124), gave it the name of Provincia (the province), whence its later name was derived. After the division of the empire of Louis le Débonnaire, it fell to Lothaire, and was afterwards a separate kingdom, under the name of the kingdom of Arles. In 1246, it passed to the house of Anjou by marriage; and, in 1481, on the extinction of the male line of that house, Louis XI united it to the dominions of the French crown. (For its language and literature, see France, division Language, and the article Provençal Poets.)

PROVERBS are the flower of popular wit and the treasures of popular wisdom; they give the result of experience in a form made impressive by rhyme, alliteration, parallelism (q. v.), a pointed turn, or a comparison drawn from the most ordinary scenes and occurrences of life, which, by the force of association, makes their effect strong and permanent. Proverbs may be unassuming, lively, grave, or even

sublime; their general character is naïveté. The habit of men, at the present day, to communicate so much with each other by writing, which, exciting the feelings less than conversation, leads to a less animated mode of expression, and the disposition to avoid what is common, springing from the pride of intellectual cultivation inc dent to an advanced stage of society, and various causes connected with the progress of civilization, make proverbs every day more unfashionable with the most civilized European nations, particularly the English, with whom the use of a proverb (except it be one of a foreign nation) is considered almost vulgar; and the same contempt for these jewels of the multitude has spread to us. Another reason for proverbs going out of fashion may be, that the better a proverb is, the more trite it becomes; and what is trite is vulgar, and what is vulgar is inelegant. Thus a public speaker could not use the proverb, ""Twixt cup and lip is many a slip," at least, not without some apology for its triteness, although the very triteness in this, as in most other cases (such as often quoted verses), proves merit; and even this homely proverb undoubtedly has often led to care and thoughtfulness. Proverbs often save long explanations by presenting a striking image; and many a lecture has probably been superseded by the French adage, "One spoonful of honey attracts more flies than a hundred barrels of vinegar." So they may be often used with effect to point the conclusion of a discourse. A period on the failure of men who strive beyond their capacity, might be well closed by the Arabian saying which Burckhardt mentions, "If God purposes the destruction of an ant, he gives her wings;" and the vanity of human resolutions could hardly be set in a stronger light than by the Portuguese proverb, "Hell is paved with good intentions"-a proverb which, until it has become familiar, is awfully impressive. It requires skill to apply proverbs elegantly and judiciously in common life. As to the general worth of proverbs, we would say, with one of their number, Vox populi, vox Dei. Yet there are many directly opposed to others, and they must always be received cum grano salis; they are general views of things, and "no rule without an exception." Proverbs are plain spoken. In their view, as in the eye of the law, all are equal. They take cognizance of the virtues, and vices, and follies, of all classes, without respect of persons. They pierce the object at which they aim; and this, in

fact, gives them currency, and makes them what they are. Boileau speaks of happy expressions,

Qui, par le prompt effet d'un sel réjouissant, Deviennent quelquefois proverbes en naissant. Such a phrase is Napoleon's, "There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous," which may be almost said to have become a proverb, as is the case with many other expressions struck out in happy moments, or proceeding from conspicuous persons. The proverb is nearly related to the motto, symbol, device, sentence, apologue, fable, &c.; and the unit cannot always be easily drawn. Burckhardt gives us the following as Arabic proverbs: The wolf was asked, "For what art thou following those poor little sheep?" He replied, "The dust upon which they tread is good for my poor little eyes." And this: one man said to another, "O slave, I have bought thee." "That is thy business," replied he. "But wilt thou run away?" "That is my business," replied he. These, having at once a narrative character, and a concise, pointed expression, partake of the nature of the apologue and the proverb. Certain sallies of popular humor, ludicrous personifications, &c., which are frequently repeated, are sometimes called proverbs; as, "What a dust we kick up, as the fly said to the cart-wheel." Proverbs, being the offspring of popular feeling and experience, often serve, of course,to keep alive the recollection of peculiar views and customs; and a collection of the sayings of different nations would form an exceedingly useful and interesting work. Burckhardt collected, at Cairo, a number of Arabic proverbs, which have been published, in a quarto volume, under the title Arabic Proverbs, or the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Lendon, 1830). Sailer has published the Wisdom of the Streets, or the Meaning and Use of German Proverbs (Augsburg, 1810, in German). Many other collections of German proverbs exist, but none very complete. The East, the region of imagination and metaphor, abounds in proverbs; and the southern countries of Europe, Portugal, Spain and Italy, have many more than the cool, reflecting North.

PROVERBS, BOOK OF. (See Solomon.) PROVIDENCE, the largest place and only city in Rhode Island, is situated at the head of the tide-waters of Narraganset bay, about thirty miles from the Atlantic ocean, and is forty miles south-southwest of Boston, fifteen north-north-west of Bristol, thirty north of Newport,