dated 1183, contains the first mention of Darlington as a borough, rated at £5, while half a mark was due from the dyers of cloth. The next account of the town is in Bishop Hatfield’s Survey (c. 1380), which states that “Ingelram Gentill and his partners hold the borough of Derlyngton with the profits of the mills and dye houses and other profits pertaining to the borough rendering yearly four score and thirteen pounds and six shillings.” Darlington possesses no early charter, but claimed its privileges as a borough by a prescriptive right. Until the 19th century it was governed by a bailiff appointed by the bishop. The mention of dyers in the Boldon Book and Hatfield’s Survey probably indicates the existence of woollen manufacture. Before the 19th century Darlington was noted for the manufacture of linen, worsted and flax, but it owes its modern importance to the opening of the railway between Darlington and Stockton on the 27th of September 1825. “Locomotive No. 1,” the first that ever ran on a public railway, stands in Bank Top station, a remarkable relic of the enterprise. As part of the palatinate of Durham, Darlington sent no members to parliament until 1862, when it was allowed to return one member. The fairs and markets in Darlington were formerly held by the bishop and were in existence as early as the 11th century. According to Leland, Darlington was in his time the best market town in the bishopric with the exception of Durham. In 1664 the bishop, finding that the inhabitants of the town had set up a market “in the season of the year unaccustomed,” i.e. from the fortnight before Christmas to Whit Monday, prohibited them from continuing it. The markets and fairs were finally in 1854 purchased by the local authority, and now belong to the corporation.
DARLINGTONIA (called after William Darlington, an American
botanist), a Californian pitcher-plant, belonging to the order
Sarraceniaceae. There is only one species, D. californica, which
is found at 5000 ft. altitude on the Sierra Nevadas of California,
growing in sphagnum-bogs along with sundews and rushes.
The pitcher-like leaves form a cluster, and are 1 to 2 ft. high,
slender, erect, and end in a rounded hooded top, from which
hangs a blade shaped like a fish-tail which guards the entrance to
the pitcher. Insects are attracted to the leaves by the bright
colouring, especially of the upper part; entering they pass down
the narrow funnel guided by downward pointing hairs which also
prevent their ascent. They form a putrefying mass in the bottom
of the pitcher, and the products of their decomposition are
presumably absorbed by the leaf for food.
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| Darlingtonia californica. |
DARLY, MATTHIAS, 18th-century English caricaturist,
designer and engraver. This extremely versatile artist not only
issued political caricatures, but designed ceilings, chimney-pieces,
mirror frames, girandoles, decorative panels and other
mobiliary accessories, made many engravings for Thomas
Chippendale, and sold his own productions over the counter.
He was apparently an architect by profession. The first publication
which can be attributed to him with certainty is a coloured
caricature, “The Cricket Players of Europe” (1741). In 1754
he issued A new Book of Chinese Designs, which was intended to
minister to the passing craze for furniture and household decorations
in the Chinese style. It was in this year that he engraved
many of the plates for the Director of Thomas Chippendale. He
published from many addresses, most of them in the Strand or
its immediate neighbourhood, and his shop was for a long period
perhaps the most important of its kind in London. In his book
Nollekens and his Times, J. T. Smith, writing of Richard Cosway,
says:—“So ridiculously foppish did he become that Matth.
Darly, the famous caricature print seller, introduced an etching
of him in his window in the Strand as the ‘Macaroni Miniature
Painter.’” Darly was for many years in partnership with a man
named Edwards, and together they published many political
prints, which were originally issued separately and collected
annually into volumes under the title of Political and Satirical
History. Darly was a member both of the Incorporated Society
of Artists and the Free Society of Artists, forerunners of the
Royal Academy, and to their exhibitions he contributed many
architectural drawings, together with a profile etching of himself
(1775). Upon one of these etchings, published from 39 Strand,
he is described as “Professor of Ornament to the Academy of
Great Britain.” Darly’s most important publication was The
Ornamental Architect or Young Artists’ Instructor (1770–1771),
a title which was changed in the edition of 1773 to A Compleat
Body of Architecture, embellished with a great Variety of Ornaments.
He also issued Sixty Vases by English, French and
Italian Masters (1767). In addition to his immense mass of
other productions Darly executed many book plates, illustrated
various books and cabinet-makers’ catalogues, and gave lessons
in etching. His skill as a caricaturist brought him into close
personal relations with the politicians of his time, and in 1763
he was instrumental in saving John Wilkes, whose partisan he
was, from death at the hands of James Dunn, who had determined
to kill him. Darly, who described himself as “Liveryman and
block maker,” issued his last caricature in October 1780, and as
his shop, No. 39 Strand, was let to a new tenant in the following
year, it is to be presumed that he had by that time died, or
become incapable of further work. As a designer of furniture
Darly travelled in a dozen years or so from the extremes of
pseudo-Chinese affectation to classical severity of the type
popularized by the brothers Adam.
DARMESTETER, JAMES (1849–1894), French author and
antiquarian, was born of Jewish parents on the 28th of March
1849 at Château Salins, in Alsace. The family name had
originated in their earlier home of Darmstadt. He was educated
in Paris, where, under the guidance of Michel Bréal and Abel
Bergaigne, he imbibed a love for Oriental studies, to which for a
time he entirely devoted himself. He was a man of vast intellectual
range. In 1875 he published a thesis on the mythology
of the Zend Avesta, and in 1877 became teacher of Zend at the
École des Hautes Études. He followed up his researches with his
Études iraniennes (1883), and ten years later published a complete
translation of the Zend Avesta, with historical and philological
commentary (3 vols., 1892–1893), in the Annales du musée
Guimet. He also edited the Zend Avesta for Max Müller’s Sacred
Books of the East. Darmesteter regarded the extant texts as far
more recent than was commonly believed, placing the earliest in
the 1st century B.C., and the bulk in the 3rd century A.D. In
1885 he was appointed professor in the Collège de France, and
was sent to India in 1886 on a mission to collect the popular
songs of the Afghans, a translation of which, with a valuable
essay on the Afghan language and literature, he published on
his return. His impressions of English dominion in India
