JAMES, EPISTLE OF, a Catholic epistle of the New Testament, presumed to have been written by James, the brother of the Lord, addressed to Jewish Christians who, in accepting Christianity, had not renounced Judaism, and the sphere in which it moves is that of Christian morality, agreeably to the standard of ethics given in the Sermon on the Mount. The author looks upon Judaism as the basis of Christianity, and as on the moral side leading up to it, in correspondence with the attestation of Christ, that “salvation is of the Jews.”
JAMES, G. P. R., historical novelist, born in London; wrote as many as a hundred novels, beginning with “Richelieu” in 1829, which brought him popularity, profit, and honour; was burlesqued by Thackeray (1801-1860).
JAMES, SIR HENRY, military engineer; superintended the geological survey of Ireland, and became in 1854 director-general of the Ordnance Survey (1803-1877).
JAMES, HENRY, an American theological writer, a disciple of Swedenborg, and an exponent of his system (1811-1882).
JAMES, HENRY, American novelist, born in New York: studied law at Harvard, but was eventually drawn into literature, and after a spell of magazine work established his reputation as a novelist in 1875 with “Roderick Hudson”; most of his life has been spent in Italy and England, and the writing of fiction has been varied with several volumes of felicitous criticism, chiefly on French life and literature; his novels are characterised by a charming style, by a delicate discriminating analysis of rather uneventful lives, and by an almost complete absence of strong dramatic situation; b. 1843.
JAMES, JOHN ANGELL, most influential Congregationalist of his time, born in Dorsetshire; was pastor of Carr’s Lane Chapel, Birmingham, from 1805 to 1859; won the esteem of all parties; published the “Anxious Inquirer,” and many other works (1785-1859).
JAMES, ST., James, the son of Zebedee, the patron saint of Spain; his attribute the sword, by which he was decapitated.
JAMES RIVER, an important river of Virginia, U.S., formed by the junction of the Jackson and the Cowpasture, and flows in a south-easterly direction across Virginia, falling into the Atlantic at the S. end of Chesapeake Bay. It has a course of 450 m., and is navigable as far as City Point.
JAMESON, ANNA, nee Murphy, English literary lady and art critic, born in Dublin; authoress of “Sacred and Legendary Art,” “Legends of the Monastic Orders,” “Legends of the Madonna,” &c.; left unfinished at her death a work on Our Lord and John the Baptist as represented in art, which was completed afterwards by Lady Eastlake (1794-1860).
JAMESON, GEORGE, a Scotch portrait-painter, born in Aberdeen; many of his portraits are to be met with in Scottish mansion-houses; his work has been unduly lauded, and himself extravagantly designated the “Scottish Vandyck” (1586-1644).