PATON SIR JOSEPH NOEL, poet and painter, born at Dunfermline; became a pattern designer, but afterwards studied in Edinburgh and London, and devoted himself to art; his early subjects were mythical and legendary, later they have been chiefly religious; he was appointed Queen’s Limner for Scotland in 1865, knighted in 1867, and in 1876 received his LL.D. from Edinburgh University; his “Quarrel” and “Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania” are in the National Gallery, Edinburgh; the illustrations of the “Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow,” and the series of religious allegories, “Pursuit of Pleasure,” “Lux in Tenebris,” “Faith and Reason,” &c., are familiar through the engravings; “Poems by a Painter” appeared in 1861; b. 1821.

PATRAS (37), on the NW. corner of the Morean Peninsula, on the shores of the Gulf of Patras; has a fine harbour; is the chief western port of Greece, shipping currants, olive-oil, and wine, and importing textiles, machinery, and coal; it is a handsome city, in the present century rebuilt and fortified.

PATRIARCH, in Church history is the name given originally to the bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, and later to those also of Constantinople and Jerusalem, who held a higher rank than other bishops, and exercised a certain authority over the bishops in their districts.  The title is in vogue in the Greek, Syrian, Armenian, and other Churches.  It was originally given to the chief of a race or clan, the members of which were called after him.

PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS, the two classes into which, from the earliest times, the population of the Roman State was divided, the former of which possessed rights and privileges not conceded to the latter, and stood to them as patrons to clients, like the baron of the Middle Ages to the vassals.  This inequality gave rise to repeated and often protracted struggles in the commonalty, during which the latter gradually encroached on the rights of the former till the barrier in civic status, and even in social to some extent, was as good as abolished, and members of the plebeian class were eligible to the highest offices and dignities of the State.

PATRICK, ORDER OF ST., an Irish order of knighthood, founded in 1783 by George III., comprising the sovereign, the Lord-Lieutenant, and twenty-two knights, and indicated by the initial letters K.P.

PATRICK, ST., the apostle and patron saint of Ireland; his birthplace uncertain; flourished in the 5th century; his mission, which extended over great part of Ireland, and over thirty or forty years of time, was eminently successful, and at the end of it he was buried in Downpatrick, henceforth a spot regarded as a sacred one.  Various miracles are ascribed to him, and among the number the extirpation from the soil of all venomous reptiles.

PATRICK, SIMON, English prelate; distinguished himself, when he was rector of St. Paul’s, by his self-denying devotion during the Plague of London; became bishop in succession of Chichester and Ely, and was the author of a number of expository works (1652-1707).