been converted into promenades. Cuneo was founded about 1120 by refugees from local baronial tyranny, who, after the destruction of Milan by Barbarossa, were joined by Lombards. In 1382 it swore fealty to Amedeus VI., duke of Savoy. It was an important fortress, and was ceded by the treaty of Cherasco (1796), with Ceva and Tortona, to the French. In 1799 it was taken after ten days’ bombardment by the Austrian and Russian armies, and, in 1800, after the victory of Marengo, the French demolished the fortifications.
CUNEUS (Latin for “wedge”; plural, cunei), the architectural
term applied to the wedge-shaped divisions of the Roman
theatre separated by the scalae or stairways; see Vitruvius v. 4.
CUNITZ, MARIA (c. 1610–1664), Silesian astronomer, was the eldest daughter of Dr Heinrich Cunitz of Schweinitz, and the wife (1630) of Dr Elias von Löven, of Pitschen in Silesia—both of them men of learning and distinction. From her universal accomplishments she was called the “Silesian Pallas,” and the publication of her work, Urania propitia (Oels, 1650), a simplification of the Rudolphine Tables, gained her a European reputation. It was composed at the village of Lugnitz, close by the convent of Olobok (Posen), where, with her husband, she had taken refuge at the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and was dedicated to the emperor Ferdinand III. The author became a widow in 1661, and died at Pitschen on the 24th of August 1664.
See A. G. Kästner, Geschichte der Mathematik, iv. 430 (1800); N. Henelii, Silesiographia renovata, cap. vi. p. 684; J. C. Eberti’s Schlesiens wohlgelehrtes Frauenzimmer, p. 25 (Breslau, 1727); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Schimmelpfennig); &c.
CUNNINGHAM, ALEXANDER (c. 1655–1730), Scottish classical
scholar and critic, was born in Ayrshire. Very little is known
of his uneventful life. It is probable that he completed his
education at Leiden or Utrecht. He was tutor to the son of
the first duke of Queensberry, through whose influence he was
appointed professor of civil law in the university of Edinburgh.
In 1710, the Edinburgh magistrates, regarding the university
patronage as their privilege, appointed another professor, ignoring
the appointment of Cunningham, who had been installed in the
office for at least ten years. Cunningham thereupon left England
for the Hague, where he resided until his death. He is chiefly
known for his edition of Horace (1721) with notes, mostly critical,
which included a volume of Animadversiones upon Richard
Bentley’s notes and emendations. They marked him as one of
the most able critics of Bentley’s (in many cases) rash and tasteless
conjectural alterations of the text. Cunningham also edited
the works of Virgil and Phaedrus (together with the Sententiae of Publilius Syrus and others). He had also been engaged for some years in the preparation of an edition of the Pandects and of a work on Christian evidences.
Life by D. Irving in Lives of Scottish Writers (1839).
The above must not be confused with Alexander Cunningham, British minister to Venice (1715–1720), a learned historian and author of The History of Great Britain (from 1688 to the accession of George I.), originally written in Latin and published in an English translation after his death.
CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN (1784–1842), Scottish poet and man
of letters, was born at Keir, Dumfriesshire, on the 7th of December
1784, and began life as a stone mason’s apprentice. His father
was a neighbour of Burns at Ellisland, and Allan with his brother
James visited James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who became
a friend to both. Cunningham contributed some songs to Roche’s
Literary Recreations in 1807, and in 1809 he collected old ballads
for Robert Hartley Cromek’s Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway
Song; he sent in, however, poems of his own, which the editor
inserted, even though he may have suspected their real authorship.
In 1810 Cunningham went to London, where he supported
himself chiefly by newspaper reporting till 1814, when he became
clerk of the works in the studio of Francis Chantrey, retaining this
employment till the sculptor’s death in 1841. He meanwhile
continued to be busily engaged in literary work. Cunningham’s
prose is often spoiled by its misplaced and too ambitious rhetoric;
his verse also is often over-ornate, and both are full of mannerisms.
Some of his songs, however, hold a high place among
British lyrics. “A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea” is one of the
best of our sea-songs, although written by a landsman; and many
other of Cunningham’s songs will bear comparison with it. He
died on the 30th of October 1842.
He was married to Jean Walker, who had been servant in a house where he lived, and had five sons and one daughter. Joseph Davey Cunningham (1812–1851) entered the Bengal Engineers, and is known by his History of the Sikhs (1849). Sir Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893) also entered the Bengal Engineers, attaining the rank of major-general; he was director general of the Indian Archaeological Survey (1870–1885), and wrote an Ancient Geography of India (1871) and Coins of Medieval India (1894). Peter Cunningham (1816–1869) published several topographical and biographical studies, of which the most important are his Handbook of London (1849) and The Life of Drummond of Hawthornden (1833). Francis Cunningham (1820–1875) joined the Indian army, and published editions of Ben Jonson (1871), Marlowe (1870) and Massinger (1871).
The works of Allan Cunningham include Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1829–1833); Sir Marmaduke Maxwell (1820), a dramatic poem; Traditionary Tales of the Peasantry (1822), several novels (Paul Jones, Sir Michael Scott, Lord Roldan); the Maid of Elwar, a sort of epic romance; the Songs of Scotland (1825); Biographical and Critical History of the Literature of the Last Fifty Years (1833); an edition of The Works of Robert Burns, with notes and a life containing a good deal of new material (1834); Biographical and Critical Dissertations affixed to Major’s Cabinet Gallery of Pictures; and Life, Journals and Correspondence of Sir David Wilkie, published in 1843. An edition of his Poems and Songs was issued by his son, Peter Cunningham, in 1847.
CUNNINGHAM, WILLIAM (1805–1861), Scottish theologian and ecclesiastic, was born at Hamilton, in Lanarkshire, on the 2nd of October 1805, and educated at the university of Edinburgh. He was licensed to preach in 1828, and in 1830 was ordained to a collegiate charge in Greenock, where he remained for three years. In 1834 he was transferred to the charge of Trinity College parish, Edinburgh. His removal coincided with the commencement of the period known in Scottish ecclesiastical history as the Ten Years’ Conflict, in which he was destined to take a leading share. In the stormy discussions and controversies which preceded the Disruption the weight and force of his intellect,
the keenness of his logic, and his firm grasp of principle made him one of the most powerful advocates of the cause of spiritual independence; and he has been generally recognized as one of three to whom mainly the existence of the Free Church is due, the others being Chalmers and Candlish. On the formation of the Free Church in 1843, Cunningham was appointed professor
of church history and divinity in the New College, Edinburgh, of which he became principal in 1847 in succession to Thomas Chalmers. His career was very successful, his controversial sympathies combined with his evident desire to be rigidly impartial qualifying him to be an interesting delineator of the more stirring periods of church history, and a skilful disentangler of the knotty points in theological polemics. In 1859 he was appointed moderator of the General Assembly. He had received the degree of D.D. from the university of Princeton in 1842. He died on the 14th of December 1861. He was one of the founders of the Evangelical Alliance. A theological lectureship at the New College, Edinburgh, was endowed in 1862, to be known as the Cunningham lectureship.
A Life of Cunningham, by Rainy and Mackenzie, appeared in 1871.
CUNNINGHAM, WILLIAM (1849– ), English economist, was born at Edinburgh on the 29th of December 1849. Educated at Edinburgh Academy and University and Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated 1st class in the Moral Science tripos in 1873, and in the same year took holy orders. He was university lecturer in history from 1884 to 1891, in which year he was appointed professor of economics at King’s College, London, a post which he held until 1897. He was lecturer in economic history at Harvard University (1899), and Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge (1885). He became vicar of Great St Mary’s, Cambridge, in 1887, and was made a fellow of the British Academy. In 1906 he was appointed archdeacon of Ely. Dr Cunningham’s
