JAMESON, DR. LEANDER STARR, leader of the raid upon Johannesburg, born at Edinburgh; studied medicine in his native city and in London; established himself at Kimberley in 1878, and under the patronage of Mr. Rhodes became the popular administrator for the South Africa Company at Fort Salisbury in 1891; from Mafeking in December of 1896 he started, with a body of 500 troopers, upon his ill-fated incursion into the Transvaal to assist the Uitlanders of Johannesburg; at Krugersdorp the raiders, exhausted by a 24 hours’ ride, were repelled by a superior force of Boers, and compelled to surrender; having been handed over to the British authorities, “Dr. Jim,” as he was familiarly called, was tried in London, and condemned to 15 months’ imprisonment, but was liberated on account of ill-health after about five months’ incarceration; b. 1853.

JAMESON, ROBERT, naturalist, born in Leith; appointed professor of Natural History in Edinburgh University in 1804; wrote several works on mineralogy and geology (1773-1853).

JAMES’S PALACE, ST., a palace, a brick building adjoining St. James’s Park, London, where drawing-rooms were held, and gave name to the English Court in those days as St. Stephen’s does of the Parliament.

JAMIESON, DR. JOHN, a Scotch antiquary, born in Glasgow; bred for the Church; was Dissenting minister in Nicolson Street Church, Edinburgh; widely known as author of the “Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language”; wrote other works of less note (1759-1838).

JAMYN, AMADIS, a French poet, a protege of Ronsard’s; was a good Greek scholar.

JAN MAYEN LAND, a volcanic island, 35 m. in length, situated in the Arctic Ocean between Iceland and Spitzbergen; is the head-quarters of considerable seal and whale fisheries; discovered in 1611 by a Dutch navigator.

JANE EYRE, a novel by Charlotte Bronte; published in 1847.

JANICULUM, one of the hills of Rome, on the right bank of the Tiber.

JANIN, JULES GABRIEL, critic and novelist, born at St. Etienne, France; took to journalism early, and established a reputation by his lively dramatic criticisms in the Journal des Debats; his gift of ready composition betrayed him into a too prolific output of work, and it is doubtful if any of his many novels and articles will long survive his day and generation; they, however, brought him wealth and celebrity in his own lifetime; he succeeded in 1870 to Sainte-Beuve’s chair in the French Academy (1804-1874).

JANIZARIES, a Turkish military force organised in 1330, and more perfectly in 1336; composed originally of Christian youths taken prisoners in war or kidnapped, and trained as Mohammedans; from being at first 10,000, and fostered by the privileges granted them, increased to 300,000 or 400,000 strong, till they became unruly and a danger to the State, when, after various unsuccessful attempts to crush them, they were in 1826 overborne by the Sultan Mahmoud II. and dissolved.