CZERNY, CHARLES, a musical composer and pianist, born at Vienna; had Liszt and Thalberg for pupils (1791-1857).

CZERNY, GEORGE, leader of the Servians in their insurrection against the Turks; assisted by Russia carried all before him; when that help was withdrawn the Turks gained the advantage, and he had to flee; returning after the independence of Servia was secured, he was murdered at the instigation of Prince Milosch (1766-1817).

D

DACCA (82), a city 150 m.  NE. of Calcutta, on a branch of the Brahmaputra, once the capital of Bengal, and a centre of Mohammedanism; famous at one time for its muslins; the remains of its former grandeur are found scattered up and down the environs and half buried in the jungle; it is also the name of a district (2,420), well watered, both for cultivation and commerce.

DACIA, a Roman province, N. of the Danube and S. of the Carpathians.

DACIER, ANDRE, a French scholar and critic, born at Castres, in Languedoc; assisted by his wife, executed translations of various classics, and produced an edition of them known as the “Delphin Edition” (1651-1722).

DACIER, MADAME, distinguished Hellenist and Latinist, wife of the preceding, born in Saumur (1651-1720).

DACOITS, gangs of semi-savage Indian brigands and robbers, often 40 or 50 in a gang.

DA COSTA, ISAAC, a Dutch poet, born at Amsterdam, of Jewish parents; turned Christian, and after the death of Bilderdijk was chief poet of Holland (1798-1860).

DAEDALUS, an architect and mechanician in the Greek mythology; inventor and constructor of the Labyrinth of Crete, in which the Minotaur was confined, and in which he was also imprisoned himself by order of Minos, a confinement from which he escaped by means of wings fastened on with wax; was regarded as the inventor of the mechanic arts.

DAGHESTAN (529), a Russian province W. of the Caspian Sea, traversed by spurs of the Caucasus Mountains; chief town Derbend.

DAGO, a marshy Russian island, N. of the Gulf of Riga, near the entrance of the Gulf of Finland.

DAGOBERT I., king of the Franks, son of Clotaire II., reformed the laws of the Franks; was the last of the Merovingian kings who knew how to rule with a firm hand; the sovereign power as it passed from his hands was seized by the mayor of the palace; d. 638.

DAGON, the national god of the Philistines, represented as half-man, sometimes half-woman, and half-fish; appears to have been a symbol to his worshippers of the fertilising power of nature, familiar to them in the fruitfulness of the sea.

DAGUERREOTYPE, a process named after its inventor, Louis Daguerre, a Frenchman, of producing pictures by means of the camera on a surface sensitive to light and shade, and interesting as the first step in photography.

DAHL, a Norwegian landscape-painter, born at Bergen; died professor of Painting at Dresden (1788-1857).