England and America, Cunard heartily entered into the scheme, came to England, and accepted the Government tender for carrying it out. A company was formed, the members of which were Cunard, Messrs Burns of Glas gow, and Messrs Maclver of Liverpool, these two firms being then proprietors of rival lines of coasting steamers between Glasgow and Liverpool. For the first contract with the Government four steam-vessels were built, and the first voyage was successfully made by the " Britannia " from Liverpool to Boston, U.S., between July 4 and 19, 1840. Such was the small beginning of an undertaking which in the course of thirty-seven years has grown into one of the vastest of private enterprises, and may even rank in importance, as to the extent of interests involved in it, and the number of hands employed, with railway and other public companies. In 1852 the company began to substi tute iron screw steamers for the wooden vessels with paddle- wheels in use up to that time. The Cunard fleet has always borne the highest character for the build, manning, management, and provisioning of the ships ; and the reward of the scrupulous care exercised has been a rare immunity from what are called " casualties." In acknowledgment of his energetic and successful services Cunard was, in 1859,
created a baronet. He died in London, April 28, 1865.CUNEIFORM WRITING. The cuneiform or “wedge-shaped” system of writing takes its name from the wedge-like form of its characters, which were once extensively used over Western Asia. It has sometimes been called “arrow-headed” from the supposed resemblance of the several strokes which compose a character to the head of an arrow. The characters were originally hieroglyphics, each denoting an object or idea, and, like the Chinese, were gradually corrupted into the forms we see on the Assyrian monuments. They were invented by the primitive Accadian population of Chaldea, who spoke an agglutinative language, and were borrowed from them by their Semitic conquerors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. The characters had come to be used phonetically as well as ideographically even in Accadian times; but they were not redacted into a systematic syllabary until the Semites changed the Accadian words they represented into as many phonetic values. The abundance of clay in Babylonia caused this material to be largely employed for writing purposes, and the impress of the metal style upon it gave the characters their wedge-like appearance. The Semites carried the new syllabary with them into Assyria, and, as in Babylonia, continued to employ it both as a syllabary and as a collection of ideographs; that is to say, a character might not only denote a mere unmeaning syllable, but an idea as well. As each character had answered to several different Accadian words, the Assyrian syllabary by changing these words into phonetic values became necessarily polyphonous. In the 9th century B.C. the Alarodian tribes of Armenia borrowed a selected number of characters and ideographs from the Assyrian syllabary, giving to each character one value only. At a subsequent date the “Turanian” population of Media and northern Susiania did the same, producing the syllabary of the Protomedic transcripts which accompany the Persian and Babylonian inscriptions of the Achæmenian kings. The Persian cuneiform alphabet of 40 characters was itself taken from the same source under the reign of Darius; the meaning of each character, when used as an ideograph, being expressed in Persian, and the initial letter of the Persian word being then assigned to it as a value. The cuneiform system of writing had been in use in southern Susiania in very early times, and accordingly the forms of the characters employed there agree with those found in the oldest Chaldean inscriptions. Indeed it is probable that it was invented by the Accadians before they had descended into Babylonia from the mountains of Elam, about 3000 B.C. As employed in Babylonia and Assyria, the cuneiform writing tended to become more and more simplified, unnecessary wedges being discarded, and we may therefore divide it into Archaic, Hieratic, Assyrian, and Later Babylonian. See Inscriptions.
CUNITZ, Maria, a celebrated astronomer, born about the beginning of the 17th century, was the eldest daughter of a doctor of medicine in Silesia, and the wife of a Dutch physician, Elias de Loewen, whom she married in 1630. She is said to have understood Polish, German, French. Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and to have had an extraordinary general culture, but her principal study was mathematics and astronomy. Her tables, published under the title Urania Propitia, sive Talvlce Astronomicce, which gained for her a great reputation, were composed in a Polish convent, where, with her husband, she had taken refuge at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. They were printed in Latin and German (Oels, 1650, and Frankfort, 1651), and dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand III.
CUNNINGHAM, Allan (1784-1842), a Scottish poet and prose writer, was born at Blackwood, in Dumfriesshire, and began life as a stone mason s apprentice. He com menced literary work as collector of ballads for Cromek s Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway SOIH/; but, instead of collecting ballads, he sent in poems of his own, which the editor inserted without suspicion. In 1810 he repaired to London, where he supported himself partly by working in the studio of Bubb the statuary, and partly as a newspaper reporter, till 1814, when he obtained the situation of clerk of the works in the studio of Francis Chantrey, in which he continued till the sculptor s death in 1841. He mean while 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, how ever, from their brightness, vigour, and warmth of feeling, hold a high place in our lyrical literature.
His chief works are Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1829-1833), Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, a dramatic poem, Traditionary Talcs of the Peasantry/, several novels (Paid Jones, Sir Michael Scott, Lord Roldan], the Maid of Shear, 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, anil Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Sir David Wilkie, finished two days before his own decease, and published in 1843. An edi tion of his Poems and Songs was issued bj r his son, Peter Cunningham, in 1847.
and antiquarian litterateur, was born in London, April 7, 1816. He was the son of the Scottish poet Allan Cunningham, and was educated at Christ s Hospital. He led a singularly uneventful life ; for at the age of eighteen he was appointed by Sir Robert Peel, in recognition of his father s genius and reputation, to a junior clerkship in the audit office, and after twenty years faithful and efficient service he was promoted to a chief clerkship. This post he filled till 1860, when he retired from the public service. His literary career began before his official, and his first published work was The Life of Drummond of Hawthorndcn, ivitli large selections from his poetical works. This volume appeared in 1833. His most important topographical work is the Handbook of London, the first edition of which was published in 2 vols. in 1849, and the second in 1 vol. in 1850. It bears a high character for fulness and accuracy of information, and is made particularly attractive by the intermingling of authentic anecdote and incident with the necessary details of names and dates. Among
Cunningham s other publications are, Songs of England
