QUESNEL, PASQUIER, a French Jansenist theologian, born in Paris; was the author of a great many works, but the most celebrated is his “Reflexions Morales”; was educated at the Sorbonne, and became head of the congregation of the Oratory in Paris, but was obliged to seek refuge in Holland with Arnauld on embracing Jansenism; his views exposed him to severe persecution at the hands of the Jesuits, and his “Reflexions” were condemned in 101 propositions by the celebrated bull Unigenitus; spent his last years at Amsterdam, and died there (1634-1719).

QUETELET, ADOLPHE, Belgian astronomer and statistician, born at Ghent; wrote on meteorology and anthropology, in the light especially of statistics (1796-1874).

QUETTA, a strongly fortified town in the N. of Beluchistan, commanding the Bolan Pass, and occupied by a British garrison.  It is also a health resort from the temperate climate it enjoys.

QUEUES, BAKERS’, “long strings of purchasers arranged in tail at the bakers’ shop doors in Paris during the Revolution period, so that first come be first served, were the shops once open,” and that came to be a Parisian institution.

QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS, Francisco Gomez de, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid, of an old illustrious family; left an orphan at an early age, and educated at Alcala, the university of which he left with a great name for scholarship; served as diplomatist and administrator in Sicily under the Duke of Ossuna, the viceroy, and returned to the Court of Philip IV. in Spain at his death; struggled hard to purify the corrupt system of appointments to office in the State then prevailing but was seized and thrown into confinement, from which, after four years, he was released, broken in health; he wrote much in verse, but only for his own solace and in communication with his friends, and still more in prose on a variety of themes, he being a writer of the most versatile ability, of great range and attainment (1580-1645).

QUIBERON, a small fishing village on a peninsula of the name, stretching southward from Morbihan, France, near which Hawke defeated a French fleet in 1759, and where a body of French emigrants attempted to land in 1795 in order to raise an insurrection, but were defeated by General Hoche.

QUICHUAS, a civilised people who flourished at one time in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and spoke a highly-cultivated language called Quichua after them.

QUICK, ROBERT HEBERT, English educationist; wrote “Essays on Educational Reformers”; was in holy orders (1832-1891).

QUICKSAND, sandbank so saturated with water that it gives way under pressure; found near the mouths of rivers.