VANE, SIR HENRY, a notability of the Civil War period in England; was a Puritan of the republican type, born in Kent; studied at Oxford; emigrated for a time to New England, but returned, entered Parliament, took an active part against the Royalists, withstood Cromwell, and was openly rebuked by him; his opposition to the Protectorate led to his imprisonment for a time; at the Restoration he was arrested and beheaded on Tower Hill (1612-1662).

VAR (288), a department in the SE. of France; is in part mountainous, with fertile valleys; yields wine, tobacco, and various fruits.

VARENNES, a small town near Verdun, in France, where in 1791 Louis XVI. was intercepted in his attempt to escape from France.

VARNA (25), a port of Bulgaria, on a bay in the Black Sea; a place of considerable trade, specially in exporting corn; here the French and English allied forces encamped for four months in 1854 prior to their invasion of the Crimea.

VARNHAGEN, VON ENSE, German memoir writer, and excellent in that department; a man of many vicissitudes; memorable chiefly as the editor of his wife’s letters.  See RAHEL.

VARRO, MARCUS TERENTIUS, “the most learned of the Romans,” wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which only fragments remain, but enough to prove the greatness of the loss; was the friend of Pompey, then Caesar, then Cicero, but survived the strife of the time and spent his leisure afterwards in literary labours (116-27 B.C.).

VARUNA, in the Hindu mythology the god of the luminous heavens, viewed as embracing all things and as the primary source of all life and every blessing.  “In connection with no other god,” says M. Barth, “is the sense of the divine majesty and of the absolute dependence of the creature expressed with the same force.  We must go to the Psalms to find similar accents of adoration and supplication.”  He was the prototype of the Greek Uranus, the primeval father of gods and men.

VARUS, PUBLIUS QUINTILIUS, Roman consul, appointed by Augustus governor of Germany; being attacked by Arminius and overpowered with loss of three Roman legions under his command, he committed suicide; when the news of the disaster reached Rome Augustus was overwhelmed with grief, and in a paroxysm of despair called upon the dead man to restore him his legions.

VASARI, GIORGIO, Italian painter and architect, born in Arezzo; was the author of biographies of Italian artists, and it is on these, with the criticism they contain, that his title to fame rests (1511-1574).

VASSAR COLLEGE, a college 2 m.  E. of Poughkeepsie, New York, founded by Matthew Vassar, a wealthy brewer, in 1861 for the higher education of women.

VATHEC, an Oriental potentate and libertine, guilty of all sorts of crimes, and hero of a novel of the name by WILLIAM BECKFORD (q. v.).

VATICAN, THE, the palace of the Pope in Rome and one of the largest in the world; contains a valuable collection of works of art, and is one of the chief attractions in the city; it is a storehouse of literary treasures as well and documents of interest bearing on the history of the Middle Ages.