Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/256

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Childe
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Childers

active part in its management until it closed in 1882. It was here that he introduced the ‘chromatro,’ a lantern slide by which very beautiful effects of colour are produced upon the screen. It consists simply of two painted circles of glass, which are caused to revolve in opposite directions. Childe also frequently travelled in the provinces, and his lantern exhibitions at Manchester and most of the large provincial towns were very successful. He lived to the great age of ninety-three, dying in 1874, but retained to the last an active interest in the instrument which he had taken so conspicuous a part in perfecting and using.

[Information from private friends of Henry Langdon Childe; contemporary newspapers; Chadwick's Manual of the Magic Lantern.]

W. J. H.

CHILDE, JAMES WARREN (1780–1862), miniature painter, first appears as an exhibitor in the Royal Academy in 1798. In that year he was residing at 29 Compton Street, Soho, and seems to have been a brother of Elias Childe [q. v.], who resided at the same place. His first exhibited works were landscapes, chiefly taken from London and the immediate neighbourhood. He first appears as a miniature painter in 1815, and seems to have thenceforth adopted that particular line exclusively. From that year to 1853 he was a constant exhibitor of miniatures at the Royal Academy, and also at the Suffolk Street gallery. Most of his exhibited works were portraits of best known and most. popular actors and actresses of the day. His own children were also favourite subjects, some of whom also adopted art as a profession. Childe resided the greater part of his life at 39 Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and died at Searsdale Terrace, Kensington, on 19 Sept. 1862, aged 82.

[Redgrave's Dict. of English Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760-1880; Cat. of the Royal Academy and Society of British Artists; Times, 23 Sept. 1862.]

L. C.

CHILDERLEY, JOHN (1565–1645), divine, son of Ellis Childerley, a turner, was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, which he entered in 1575, and at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he graduated D.D. in 1603. He was for a time chaplain to the English colony in Stade, Hamburg, and subsequently chaplain to archbishops Bancroft and Abbott. He also held the rectories of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Dunstan's-in-the-East in London, and that of Shenfield in Essex. The latter was sequestered by the parliament in 1643. He died in 1645.

[Robinson’s Merchant Taylors’ Reg. i. 25; Wood’s Fasti (Bliss), i. 300.]

J. M. R.

CHILDERS, ROBERT CÆSAR (1838–1876), oriental scholar, born in 1838, was a son of the Rev. Charles Childers, English chaplain at Nice. He was appointed a writer in the Ceylon civil service at the end of 1860, and for three years acted as private secretary to the then governor, Sir Charles McCarthy. He then became office assistant to the government agent in Kandy; but shortly afterwards, in March 1864, his health broke down, and he was compelled to return home. While in the service he had taken great pains to understand the modes of thought and feeling of the Sinhalese, and had given up one of his vacations to acquire a more thorough knowledge of the native language and literature than was required by the rules of the service. Those who can realise how precious are the few holidays and leisure hours of a hard-worked official in the East will know how to appreciate such an act. It was in this vacation, spent at the Bentota Resthouse, that he began the study of Pali under the guidance of Yátrámullé Unnénsé, a Buddhist. scholar of great learning, and of peculiar dignity and modesty, for whom his distinguished pupil retained to the last a deep personal regard. After his return home ill-health and other causes prevented him for some time from carrying on his studies in the sacred language of the Buddhists. It was not till November of 1869 that he published his first contribution to the literature of the subject. This was the Pali text of the ‘Khuddaka Pat11a,' with English translations and notes, printed in the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.’ It. was the first Pali text printed in England, and, with one exception, the only portion of the Buddhist sacred books till then printed in Europe. There was at that time neither dictionary nor grammar of the language in any European tongue. Without these it was impossible that the rich stores of historical and ethical works hidden away in the Pali manuscripts could be made available for comparative history. These wants Childers set himself energetically to work to supply, though the task was one from which any scholar less enterprising and less self-sacrificing would have shrunk. To the preparation of the Pali dictionary he devoted the greater part of his time during the rest of his life; the work gradually rising in aim and scope under his hand. The first volume was published in 1872. In the autumn of that year he was appointed sub-librarian at the India Office, and early in the next year he accepted the appointment of professor of Pali and Buddhist literature at University College, London, the first instance of a professor being