DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS.  The dogma that Kings can do no wrong is based on a dictum of Hincmar Archbishop of Rheims, viz., that kings are subject to no man so long as they rule by God’s law.—­Hincmar’s Works, i. 693.

DIVINING ROD, a forked branch of hazel suspended between the balls of the thumbs.  The inclination of this rod indicates the presence of water-springs and precious metals.

  Now to rivulets from the mountains
  Point the rods of fortune-tellers.

Longfellow, Drinking Song.

[Illustration] Jacques Aymar of Crole was the most famous of all diviners.  He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth.  His marvellous faculty attracted the attention of Europe.  M. Chauvin, M.D., and M. Garnier, M.D., published carefully written accounts of his wonderful powers, and both were eye-witnesses thereof.—­See S. Baring-Gould, Myths of the Middle Ages.

DIVINITY.  There are four professors of divinity at Cambridge, and three at Oxford.  Those at Cambridge are the Hul’sean, the Margaret, the Norrisian, and the Regius.  Those at Oxford are the Margaret, the Regius, and one for Ecclesiastical History.

DIVI’NO LODOV’ICO, Ariosto, author of Orlando Furioso (1474-1533).

DIXIE’S LAND, the land of milk and honey to American negroes.  Dixie was a slave-holder of Manhattan Island, who removed his slaves to the Southern States, where they had to work harder and fare worse; so that they were always sighing for their old home, which they called “Dixie’s Land.”  Imagination and distance soon advanced this island into a sort of Delectable Country or land of Beulah.

This is but one of many explanations given of the origin of a phrase that, during the Civil War (1861-1865) came to be applied to the Seceding States.  The song “Dixie’s Land” was supposed to be sung by exiles from the region south of Mason and Dixon’s line.

  “Away down South in Dixie,
  I wish I were in Dixie,
  In Dixie’s Land
  I’d take my stand
  To live and die in Dixie.”

DIXON, servant to Mr. Richard Vere (1 syl.).—­Sir W. Scott, The Black Dwarf (time, Anne).

DIZZY, a nickname of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881).

DJA’BAL, son of Youssof, a sheikh, and saved by Maae’ni, in the great massacre of the sheikhs by the Knights Hospitallers in the Spo’rades.  He resolves to avenge this massacre, and gives out that he is Hakeem’, the incarnate god, their founder, returned to earth to avenge their wrongs and lead them back to Syria.  His imposture being discovered, he kills himself, but Loys [Lo’.iss], a young Breton count, leads the exiles back to Lebanon.  Djabal is Hakeem, the incarnate Dread, The phantasm khalif, king of Prodigies.

Robert Browning, The Return of the Druses, i.