by cutting off the hand. By the Napoleon code, perjury in criminal cases is punishable by confinement at hard labor for a limited time. If the party accused is sentenced to a severer punishment, the perjurer is to suffer the like. In cases of correctional or police jurisdiction, it is punishable by confinement. Perjury in civil suits, is punishable by civic degradation. By the Prussian code, promulgated by Frederic William in 1794, whoever, whether he appears as a party or as a witness, perjures himself, is to be excluded for ever from his employments, rights and civil profession, to undergo an ignominious exposition as a perjured person, or to be publicly declared such, and, in addition thereto, to be condemned to confinement from one to three years. If the perjury be with a view to profit the perjurer, he is to forfeit a sum quadruple of that which he endeavored to obtain. If the perjury is committed in a capital case, and an innocent person is, in consequence, condemned, the punishment of the perjurer is death; and in cases not capital, the punishment of the perjurer is to be proportioned to the crime of which the innocent person was accused and convicted. By the law of Spain (in 1804), perjury, in civil causes, is punishable with ten years' condemnation to the galleys; and in criminal cases, in which the punishment for the offence charged does not extend to death, public infamy and perpetual condemnation to the galleys. (Johnston's Civil Law of Spain, L. vii, tit. 17, lib. 8, Rec.)

other of brass, and were about three inches in length, and pointed at one end. The manner in which they were applied was, by drawing the points over the affected parts, in a downward direction, for about twenty minutes each time. The complaints in which this operation was found most useful, were local inflammations in general, pains in the head, face, teeth, breast, side, stomach, back, rheumatism, &c. Doctor Perkins procured a patent for his discovery, and the success which it obtained was great, not only in this country, but on the other side of the Atlantic. The professors of three universities in America gave attestations in favor of its efficacy. In Copenhagen, twelve physicians and surgeons, chiefly professors and lecturers in the Royal Frederic's Hospital, commenced a course of experiments, accounts of which were published in an octavo volume. They introduced the terin Perkinism, in honor of the discoverer, and asserted that it was of great importance to the physician. In London, a Perkinian institution, as it was called, was established, principally with the view of benefiting the poor by the use of the tractors; and, in a pamphlet giving an account of the institution, it was stated that the communications of cases were from disinterested and intelligent characters from almost every quarter of Great Britain, including professors, regular physicians, surgeons and clergymen. A computation of the cures said to have been effected, presents the number of one million five hundred thousand. It may be well deemed a matter of surprise, after what we have stated, that the tractors have sunk into oblivion; but such is the fact. During the prevalence of yellow fever in New York, in 1799, doctor Perkins went thither for the purpose of testing the merits of a highly antiseptic remedy which he had introduced into practice; but after about four weeks of unremitted assiduity in attending the sick, he took the disease himself, and died at the age of 59 years. He was a man of great liberality of character and of strict honor and integrity. In address and colloquial powers, few of his profession ex celled him.

PERKIN WARBECK. (See Warbeck.) PERKINS, doctor Elisha, the inventor of the metallic tractors, was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in January, 1740, and was educated by his father, doctor Joseph Perkins, for the profession of medicine. He was indebted to nature for uncommon endowments, both bodily and mental. In person he was six feet high, and of remarkable symmetry. He possessed extraordinary ability to endure fatigue. His reputation and success as a physician were considerable, but he is principally known by his metallic tractors. These were formed by him from a composition which he discovered after numerous experiments with various kinds of metals, during several years, he having conceived the idea that metallic substances might have an influence on the nerves and muscles of animals, and be capable of being converted to useful purposes as external agents in medicine. They consisted of two instruments, one of the appearance of steel, the

PERMUTATIONS. (See Combinations.)

PERNAMBUCO; the name generally given to the two cities of Olinda and Recife, in Brazil. The former contains 4000 inhabitants, and is the see of a bishop. It lies about three miles north-east of the latter, in lat. 8° S. It was formerly more populous and flourishing, but since its capture by the Dutch in 1640, its commerce and

nanufactures have deserted it for the latter. (See Recife.)

PÉRON, François, a distinguished French naturalist, born at Cerilly, in 1775, studied in the college at that place, and, in 1792, joined the army on the Rhine. Having been captured at Kaiserslautern, in about a year he was exchanged, and, having lost the sight of one eye, was discharged from the service, and returned to Cerilly, in August, 1795. He then obtained admission into the school of medicine at Paris, where he applied himself closely to his studies, and also attended the lectures of the museum of natural history. When the expedition to the South seas, under captain Baudin, had been projected, Péron, with some difficulty, obtained the situation of zoologist. The vessels appointed for this service, the Geographer and the Naturalist, sailed from Havre, October 19, 1800, and returned to France in April, 1804. They had visited New Holland, and many of the Australian and Polynesian islands; and during the whole of the voyage, Péron seized every opportunity for augmenting the stores of science, by making collections and observations. After his return, he was employed, in conjunction with captain Freycinet, to draw up an account of the voyage, and, with M. Le Sueur, to describe the new objects of natural history which had been procured. Péron died December 14, 1810. His works are, Observations sur l'Anthropologie; and Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes (1807-1816, 3 vols., 4to.); an unfinished History of the Medusa, fragments of which have been published, and several valuable memoirs on subjects of natural history.

PÉROUSE, LA. (See Laperouse.) PERPENDICULAR, in geometry; a line falling directly on another line, so as to make equal angles on each side; called also a normal line. These lines may be straight lines or curves. A plane is perpendicular to another plane, if a line drawn on one of them, perpendicular to the line of intersection, forms right angles with a perpendicular line on the other plane drawn to the same point. (See Plumb Line.) A vertical line is one perpendicular to a horizontal line (a line parallel to the surface of calmn water), so called because it passes from our vertex or zenith (q. v.) down to the nadir (q. v.), so that the vertical line is a particular kind of perpendicular line.

PERPETUAL MOTION; a motion which is supplied and renewed from itself, without the intervention of external causes. 3

VOL. X.

The problem of a perpetual motion consists in the inventing of a machine which has the principle of its motion within itself; and numberless schemes have been proposed for its solution. The difficulty is, that the resistance of the air, the friction of the parts of the machine, &e., necessarily retard, and finally stop, the motions of machines, and therefore seem to render perpetual motion an impossibility. Attempts have recently been made to produce a perpetuum mobile, by means of galvanism; a metallic bar, being placed between two dry galvanic columns, is alternately attracted by each column.

PERPETUITY, in the doctrine of annuities, is the number of years in which the simple interest of any principal sum will amount to the same as the principal itself; or it is the number of years' purchase to be given for an annuity which is to continue for ever; and it is found by dividing £100 by the rate of interest agreed upon: thus, allowing 5 per cent., the perpetuity is =20.

£

100

5

PERPIGNAN; a city of France, capital of East Pyrenees, about a league from the Mediterranean sea; lon. 2° 54′ E.; lat. 42° 42 N.; population, 15,350. It is a place of strength, and accounted one of the keys of the kingdom, on the side of Spain. It is mostly ill built and gloomy. The trade consists in corn, wool, iron and wine. The manufactures are woollen and silk.

PERRAULT. Of four brothers of this name, who lived during the reign of Louis XIV, the most known are Claude (born 1613, died 1688), a physician, naturalist and architect, from whose designs the celebrated façade of the Louvre (q. v.) and the observatory at Paris were built; and Charles (born 1633, died 1703), a man of erudition, but of little taste, whose verses have not outlived his day. Colbert availed himself of their assistance in founding the French academy of art, of which Charles was the librarian. His poem Le Siècle de Louis le Grand, which he read before the academy in 1687, gave rise to the famous controversy on the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns. In his Parallèle des Anciens et Modernes (1688-96), in the form of a dialogue, he maintains that the moderus have carried art and science, which were in a state of infancy among the ancients, to the highest perfection, and have excelled them in their works. This opinion was warmly attacked by Boileau, and zealously defended by Fontenelle and Hudart de la Motto. Perrault was also author of Les

Hommes illustres de France (1696-1700). The Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose), of which he is the reputed author, has procured for him, but perhaps unjustly, the title of "inventor of the French Fairy Tales." (See Fairies.) PERRON, Anquetil du. (See Anquetil du Perron, and Zendavesta.)

PERRY, Oliver. (See Appendix to this vol.)
PERRY. (See Pear.)

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS. The persecutions which the early Christians underwent were a natural consequence of the anxiety which the free spirit of the Christian doctrine and worship, so opposite to the religious institutions previously existing, excited among Jews and heathens. As long as the Jewish state continued, the Christian communities established within its limits had little reason to expect toleration, as even the founder of their religion had been regarded as a stirrer up of sedition, on account of his opposition to the ordinances of the Jewish church, which were zealously defended by the Pharisees, who formed the ruling party; and the sanhedrim could not forgive his followers for regarding him as the true Messiah. But, as this body had not power to carry its wishes into effect, and the Christians abstained from open violation of the public peace, there was no general persecution of them in Palestine under the sanction of the Roman authorities; and only some of the heads of the congregations at Jerusalem, such as Stephen and the apostles James the elder and James the younger, suffered martyrdom, the former forty-three, the latter sixty-three years after Christ. But the Jews in the towns of the Roman empire, where they had made settlements, and where Christian congregations soon sprung up, excited against them the suspicions of the magistrates, who, at first, may have considered the Christians as an unimportant Jewish sect, or have tolerated the new worship with less reluctance, since the introduction of a new divinity had little in it to startle the mind of a heathen. Nero, indeed, ascribed to the Christians the conflagration of the city of Rome kindled by himself, and, in the year 64, subjected them to a dreadful persecution, in which the apostles Peter and Paul suffered; but this was more an exercise of imperial tyranny than of policy, or an intolerant spirit. This first persecution does not appear to have extended far beyond Rome. There arose, however, a second, in the year 95, because Domitian, deceived by the royal title which the Christians gave to Jesus,

after fruitless inquiries for the supposed relations of Jesus and pretenders to the crown, caused many of his followers, particularly in Asia Minor, to be banished, or put to death. What is called the third persecution of the Christians, took place in the time of Trajan, who issued an edict against secret societies, which was followed, in 105, by a prohibition of their meetings, and the punishment of some refractory individuals, because the Roman proconsuls (for example, Pliny the younger, in Bithynia) considered the refusal of the Christians to pay the usual homage to the image of the emperor as deserving of punishment; and their suspicions were awakened by the independent character of the followers of the new faith, and their deviation from the national customs. Charges of outrage and sedition, principally excited and spread abroad by the Jews, increased the unfavorable disposition of the heathens towards the Christians. It was said that they were accustomed, in their assemblies, to eat human flesh (a misconception of the eucharist), and to practise shameful vices, and not only to aim at the destruction of the old religion, but at the overthrow of the Roman imperial throne, and the foundation of a new monarchy. These reports easily grew out of their peculiar habits. The obscurity in which they enveloped themselves, on account of their well-founded apprehensions; the spirit of their associations, which kept them separate from the rest of the world; their secret meetings for religious exercises, often held by night,-were sufficient to furnish materials for suspicion: and the extravagant expectations which many among them entertained of the near return of Christ, their zeal against heathen manners and customs, and their open opposition to the worship of idols, from which they annually converted thousands, excited the heathen priests and magistrates against all that bore the name of Christian. Yet the followers of the new religion, being almost entirely confined to the lower class, and being split into a variety of sects, chiefly Gnostics, which were continually increasing, were objects rather of contempt than of fear; and, next to the protection of an overruling Providence, it is principally owing to this circumstance that, notwithstanding several occasions for new persecutions, and notwithstanding the zeal with which their doctrines were assailed by heathen philosophers (as, for example, Celsus, who wrote against Christianity about 140), they enjoyed above fifty years of undisturbed

tranquillity, until the fourth persecution so called. In Asia Minor, they were violently assailed, about the year 160, by the heathen populace; and the Christian apologist Justin Martyr, and the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, were put to death. About the year 177, Marcus Aurehus treated the new congregations in Gaul, at Vienne and Lyons, with great severity, and many Christians suffered martyr dom (fourth persecution). About the end of the second century, a strong disposition was manifested to unite the congregations, which had been hitherto independent of one another, into one church. The spiritual teachers, too, growing holder with the increase of their distinctions and privileges, showed a disposition to grasp more authority, and often came into collision with the civil magistrates; and the Christians, having become numerous and powerful, openly derided the pagan worship, now sinking into decline. These circumstances led to wild outbreaks of the heathen populace, bent on revenging the insults offered to their gods (about 192), and a dreadful slaughter ensued. The emperor Septimius Severus, moreover, in 202, forbade the accession of new converts to the Jewish and Christian religions, and this decree was followed by still severer oppressions of the Christians. Dreadful tortures were employed by the Roman magistrates, at that time, in order to compel the Christians, of every age and sex, to deny their religion. Many yielded to the storm, with the intention of returning to Christianity in more peaceful times; yet not a few preferred death to apostasy, and gained the martyr's crown, and the admiration of Christian posterity. (See Martyrs, and Saints.) After this fifth persecution, the Christians enjoyed toleration and peace from 211, under Caracalla, Macrinus and Heliogabalus, and, under Alexander Severus, even privileges and distinction. The restraints imposed upon them by the emperor Maximian (235) received the name of the sixth persecution, although, properly speaking, only Christian teachers and clergymen were oppressed by this emperor; but the oppressions which many of the congregations underwent were inflicted without his command. Private hatred, in fact, often led to outrages against the Christians, and excited the populace to assail them. This happened at Alexandria, in the latter years of the reign of the emperor Philip the Arabian, who was, personally, well-affected towards them. But his successor, Decius, began his reign (249) with a perse

cution of the Christians (the seventh) throughout his kingdom. The universality of this persecution, and the perseverance and cruelty with which it was pursued, made it plain that the emperor's purpose was to extirpate them entirely, and induced many to fall from their faith. Fortunately, however, from the rapid changes in the government at this period, the persecuting policy was not very steadily followed. Valerian, in 257, put to death few but the clergy (eighth persecution); and the execution of the edict of Aurelian against the Christians (274, the ninth persecution, as it was called) was prevented by his violent death. A severe persecution (the tenth) took place under the emperor Diocletian, at the instigation o. his ministers, Galerius and other enemies of the Christians, in 303. Throughout the Roman empire, their churches were destroyed, their sacred books collected and burned, and all imaginable means of inhuman violence employed to induce them to renounce their faith. As they were accused, moreover, of a rebellious spirit, and of kindling a conflagration in the royal palace at Nicomedia, thousands suffered martyrdom. Constantius Chlorus, a sovereign favorable to them, was unable to protect them entirely in his Gallic and British provinces; and in Greece, Illyria, Italy and Spain, Galerius, Maximinus and Licinius pursued them with imprisonments and executions, principally directed against the clergy, till 310. These were the last oppressions of the Christians under the Roman government. Constantine the Great (312 and 313) restored to the Christians full liberty, and the use of their churches and goods; and his conversion to Christianity made it the established religion in the Roman empire. This religion afterwards experienced oppression without the limits of the Roman empire; for instance, in 343 and 414 in Persia, and from 437, with little interruption, till the commencement of the sixth century, in the African kingdom of the Vandals; but the efforts of some Roman emperors favorable to heathenism, as Julian and Eugenius, for the restoration of the pagan worship in the Roman empire, were more prejudicial to themselves than to the Christians. After the establishment of islamism, the caliphs in Asia and Africa labored, with success, for the extirpation of Christianity, and spared only particular schismatic sects, which still enjoy, under the protection of the Mohammedans, the free exercise of their religion. Christians themselves, after it had become a crime to

be a heretic (see Heretic, and Inquisition), persecuted one another most bitterly; and the outrages which the early Christians had suffered from the heathens were tolerable, compared to the religious wars which they waged against each other in the middle ages, and to the sufferings inflicted on heretics, so called, by the inquisition, and by fanatical princes, even to the eighteenth century. But, as heathen Rome could not stop the spread of Christianity, so Protestantism, in later times, rooted itself the more firmly in proportion to the tempests which assailed it; for the direct tendency of persecution is to awaken a spirit of heroic resistance, and a zeal to make sacrifices for the cause of truth.

PERSEPHONE. (See Proserpine.) PERSEPOLIS. In a northern direction from the Persian capital of Shiraz are the ruins of ancient structures of different ages, among which are the only remains of ancient Persian architecture, belonging to the most flourishing period of that powerful nation. There are other architectural remains, with inscriptions, belonging to the time of the modern Persian empire, which originated in the third century of the Christian era, out of the Parthian empire. (See Parthians.) These latter remains lie about four or five miles from the ruins of Persepolis proper, and consist partly of works of sculpture, partly of inscriptions in the ancient Pehlvi language, cut in the rocks. They are called, by the Arabs, Nakshi Rustam (the image of Rustam) because they were regarded as intended to commemorate the deeds of this ancient hero; but, according to De Sacy's satisfactory explanation, they relate to the kings of the modern Persian race (the Sassanides). (See Persia.) Many inscriptions in Arabic, the later Persian, and other languages, were put here in the century after Mohammed. The ancient Persian monuments differ essentially from all the rest of the ruins. These are the ruins of the proper palace of Persepolis, called, by the Arabs, Chilminar, i. e. the forty (used indefinitely to signify many) columns, with two tombs near it; four tombs towards the north-east, near Nakshi Rustam, called the tombs of the kings, with the ruins of some other ancient buildings; and lastly many remains and columns of unfinished tombs between Chilminar and Nakshi Rustam. All these remains are represented in Chardin's Travels through Persia, and in Niebuhr's Travels to Arabia. The chief monument is Chiliinar, undoubtedly the remains of a great and magnificent structure, encir

cled in the rear by rocky mountains, which open in the form of a crescent, and consisting of three divisions, one above the other, and built entirely of the most beautiful gray marble, the immense blocks of which are put together with admirable art, without mortar. Marble stairs, so wide and easy of ascent, that ten horsemen can ride up them abreast, lead from the lower divisions to the higher. At the entrance of the portico, to which the steps belonging to the first division lead, fabulous animals are seen, wrought in the still remaining pilasters, as if to guard the palace. Similar steps lead to the second division, to a colonnade, several columns of which still exist, fifty feet high, and of such a circumference that three men can hardly clasp them. This colonnade leads to several detached buildings, of which the largest stands in the same division; the others, farther back, form the third division. These houses contain a number of chambers, of different sizes, and seem to have been real dwellings. They are ornamented with a number of images representing processions, people of all ranks, combats of fabulous animals with one another and with men. In the wall of the rock against which the building stands, are two large tombs. At a considerable height from the ground, a façade is hewn in the rock itself, behind which is a chamber that can be entered only by a passage broken through, as no regular entrance has been found. Beneath, the rock is cut perpendicularly, in order to make the monument entirely inaccessible. The best representation of the ruins is to be found in Niebuhr. The result of the most recent investigations, compared with the information contained in the ancient writers, is, that the monuments of Persepolis are actually of Persian origin, and the tombs, those of Persian kings, belonging to the buildings called Chilminar, with which they are connected by subterranean passages. Though the buildings belong to Persian antiquities, yet it is probable that the Persians themselves did not construct them, but caused them to be erected by others; and their truly Asiatic character affords foundation for the supposition that they were built in imitation of the architecture of the Medes (to whom the Persians were indebted, in general, for their civilization), under the direction of the priests. The ruins of Persepolis proper are most probably not all of the same age, but the work of several Persian kings. Persepolis was not destined for a temple, for the Persians.