When the question of confederation was discussed a few years later he opposed the scheme, believing there was nothing to justify the union at the time, although he admitted “that commercial intercourse may increase sufficiently to render confederation desirable.” In 1873 he accepted the portfolio of minister of justice in the Mackenzie government, and during the six months that he was in office passed the Electoral Law of 1874 and the Controverted Elections Act. Dorion sat as member of the assembly for the province of Canada for the city of Montreal from 1854 to 1861, for the county of Hochelaga from 1862 to 1867; as member of the House of Commons for the county of Hochelaga from 1867 to July 1872, and for the county of Napierville from September 1872 to June 1874, when he was appointed chief justice of the province. In 1878 he was created a knight bachelor. He died at Montreal on the 31st of May 1891. No more able or upright judge ever adorned the Canadian bench. He had a broad, clear mind, vast knowledge, and commanded respect from the loftiness of his character and the strength of his abilities. The keynote of his life was an unswerving devotion to duty.
See Dorion, a Sketch, by Fennings Taylor (Montreal, 1865); and “Sir Antoine Amié Dorion,” by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in The Week (1887). (A. G. D.)
DORIS, in ancient geography, a small district in central Greece, forming a wedge between Mts. Oeta and Parnassus, and containing the head-waters of the Cephissus, which passes at the gorge of Dadion into the neighbouring land of Phocis. This little valley, which nowhere exceeds 4 m. in breadth and could barely give sustenance to four small townships, owed its importance partly to its command over the strategic road from Heracleia to Amphissa, which pierced the Parnassus range near Cytinium, but chiefly to its prestige as the alleged mother-country of the Dorian conquerors of Peloponnesus (see Dorians). Its history is mainly made up of petty wars with the neighbouring Oetaeans and Phocians. The latter pressed them hard in 457, when the Spartans, admitting their claim to be the Dorian metropolis, sent an army to their aid, and again during the second Sacred War (356–346). Except for a casual mention of its cantonal league in 196, Doris passed early out of history; the inhabitants may have been exterminated during the conflicts between Aetolia and Macedonia.
See Strabo, pp. 417, 427; Herodotus i. 56, viii. 31; Thucydides i. 107, iii. 92; Diodorus xii. 29, 33; W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, chap. xi. (London, 1835). (M. O. B. C.)
DORISLAUS, ISAAC (1595–1649), Anglo-Dutch lawyer and diplomatist, was born in 1595 at Alkmaar, Holland, the son of a minister of the Dutch reformed church. He was educated at Leiden, removed to England about 1627, and was appointed to a lectureship in history at Cambridge, where his attempt to justify the Dutch revolt against Spain led to his early resignation. In 1629 he was admitted a commoner of the College of Advocates. In 1632 he made his peace at court, and on two occasions acted as judge advocate, in the bishops’ war of 1640 and in 1642 in the army commanded by Essex. In 1648 he became one of the judges of the admiralty court, and was sent on a diplomatic errand to the states general of Holland. He assisted in preparing the charge of high treason against Charles I., and, while negotiating an alliance between the Commonwealth and the Dutch Republic, was murdered at the Hague by royalist refugees on the 10th of May 1649. His remains were buried in Westminster Abbey, and moved in 1661 to St Margaret’s churchyard.
DORKING, a market town in the Reigate parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 26 m. S.S.W. of London, on the London, Brighton & South Coast and the South-Eastern & Chatham railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7670. It is pleasantly situated on the river Mole, in a sheltered vale near the base of Box Hill. It is the centre of an extensive residential district. The parish church of St Martin’s is a handsome edifice rebuilt in 1873. Lime of exceptionally good quality is burnt to a large extent in the neighbourhood, and forms an important article of trade; it is derived from the Lower Chalk formation. Dorking has long been famous for a finely flavoured breed of fowl distinguished by its having five toes. Several fine mansions are in the vicinity of the town, notably that of Deepdene, containing part of a gallery of sculpture collected here by Thomas Hope, the author of Anastasius. A Roman road, which crossed from the Sussex coast to the Thames, passed near the present churchyard of St Martin.
DORLÉANS, LOUIS (1542–1629), French poet and political pamphleteer, was born in 1542, in Paris. He studied under Jean Daurat, and after taking his degree in law began to practise at the bar with but slight success. He wrote indifferent verses, but was a redoubtable pamphleteer. After the League had arrested the royalist members of parliament, he was appointed (1589) advocate-general. His “Avertissement des catholiques anglais aux Français catholiques du danger où ils sont de perdre la religion et d’expérimenter, comme en Angleterre, la cruauté des ministres s’ils reçoivent à la couronne un roi qui soit hérétique” went through several editions, and was translated into English. One of his pamphlets, Le Banquet ou après-dînée du comte d’Arète, in which he accused Henry of insincerity in his return to the Roman Catholic faith, was so scurrilous as to be disapproved of by many members of the League. When Henry at length entered Paris, Dorléans was among the number of the proscribed. He took refuge in Antwerp, where he remained for nine years. At the expiration of that period he received a pardon, and returned to Paris, but was soon imprisoned for sedition. The king, however, released him after three months in the Conciergerie, and by this means attached him permanently to his cause. His last years were passed in obscurity, and he died in 1629.
DORMER (from Lat. dormire, to sleep), in architecture, a window rising out of the roof and lighting the room in it: sometimes, however, pierced in a small gable built flush with the wall below, or corbelled out, as frequently in Scotland. In Germany, where the roofs are very lofty, there are three or four rows of dormers, one above the other, but it does not follow that the space in the roof is necessarily subdivided by floors. In some of the French châteaux the dormers (Fr. lucarne) are highly elaborated, and in some cases, as in Chambord, they form the principal architectural features. In these cases they are either placed flush with the wall or recede behind a parapet and gutter only, so as to rest on the solid wall, as they are built in stone. In Germany they assume larger proportions and constitute small gables with two or three storeys of windows. The term “dormer” arose from the windows being those of sleeping-rooms. In the phrase “dormer beam” or “dormant beam,” meaning a tie-beam, we have the same sense as in the modern “sleeper.”
DORMITORY (Lat. dormitorium, a sleeping place), the name given in monasteries to the monks’ sleeping apartment. Sometimes it formed one long room, but was more generally subdivided into as many cells or partitions as there were monks. It was generally placed on the first floor with a direct entrance into the church. The dormitories were sometimes of great length; the longest known, in the monastery of S. Michele in Bosco near Bologna (now suppressed), is said to have been over 400 ft. In some of the larger mansions of the Elizabethan period the space in the roof constitutes a long gallery, which in those days was occasionally utilized as a dormitory. The name “dormitory” is also applied to the large bedrooms with a number of beds, in schools and similar modern institutes.
DORMOUSE (a word usually taken to be connected with Lat. dormire, to sleep, with “mouse” added, cf. Germ. Schlafratte; it is not a corruption of Fr. dormeuse; Skeat suggests a connexion with Icel. dár, benumbed, cf. Eng. “doze”), the name of a small British rodent mammal having the general appearance of a squirrel. This rodent, Muscardinus avellanarius, is the sole representative of its genus, but belongs to a family—the Gliridae, or Myoxidae—containing a small number of Old World species. All the dormice are small rodents (although many of them are double the size of the British species), of arboreal habits, and for the most part of squirrel-like appearance; some of their most distinctive features being internal. In the more typical members of the group, forming the subfamily Glirinae, there are four pairs of cheek-teeth, which are rooted and have transverse enamel-folds. As the characters of the genera are given in the article Rodentia it will suffice to state that the typical genus Glis is represented by
