Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/41

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
DAR
27
DAR

result was the founding of the Irish Institution, which now adorns a portion of the ground of the Royal Dublin Society, which had been occupied by part of the exhibition building. To follow the career of Mr. Dargan would be to comment on almost every great undertaking in the land. We believe the estimate is not overstated which attributes to him the construction of over one thousand miles of railway, and one hundred miles of canals, embankments, and tunnels. He was one of the most remarkable instances on record—not unfrequent as such instances are in modern times—of men who are the architects of their own fortunes, and the promoters, at the same time, of the progress and prosperity of the country to which they belong. He possessed in truth, in a singular degree, the qualities which can alone place a man in the van of civilization and industrial progress. Prompt, sagacious, clear-sighted, and far-seeing, he estimated character by instinct, and was thus seldom mistaken in those whom he selected to carry out his objects. Two appellations by which he was known will illustrate his character—"The workmen's friend," and "The man with his hand in his pocket." The former he well merited by the justice and wise liberality of his dealings with the artisan class. The latter name, while it originated in Jones' celebrated statue (in which he is represented in that attitude), and perpetuated by a not infelicitous poem, is indicative of his readiness to spend his money freely when his judgment or his patriotism suggested it. Mr. Dargan received an intimation from the queen that a baronetcy was at his acceptance, but he declined the distinction. He died in February, 1867.—J. F. W.

DARIUS I., son of Hystaspes, was one of the Persian princes by whom Smerdis the Magian was slain, 521 b.c.; and, in accordance with the compact which they formed for the purpose of determining the succession to the vacant throne, the neighing of his steed before those of the others on a certain day, placed him at the head of the great empire of Cyrus. Having made arrangements for the efficient administration of the twenty provinces into which he divided it, and crushed the revolt of Oroctes in Asia Minor, he granted the Jews permission to resume the building of the temple (Ezra vi.), and conducted an expedition against the insurgent Babylonians, which, after a siege of twenty months, inflicted a second desolating overthrow on the doomed Chaldean capital. His invasion of Scythia in the following year, 516 b.c., was defeated by the cautious policy of the foe, and the difficulty of procuring supplies in their inhospitable country. He was compelled to retire with great loss, after having penetrated beyond the Don. His conquest of India followed; but the most memorable events of his reign were the wars with Greece, for which he found occasion in the assistance which the Athenians gave to the revolted Ionians in their attack upon Sardis. The first expedition was placed under the command of Mardonius; but a repulse in Thrace, and the loss of a large portion of his armament in a severe storm off Mount Athos, compelled that general to return disappointed. Another and more formidable army, under Datis and Artaphernes, commenced its operations with better fortune. Maxos submitted; Eretreia was pillaged; and the Persian commanders, crossing to the Attic territory, encamped on the plain of Marathon, where the Athenians, disappointed of assistance from Sparta, could only muster ten thousand men against a force which has been estimated at twenty times that number. The arguments of Miltiades, however, persuaded his colleagues to risk a battle; and, being intrusted with the chief command for the occasion, he gained the victory which has made his own name and that of Marathon so famous in Grecian history. Chagrined and indignant, Darius ordered the preparation of a new armament, greater than either of the preceding; but before it was ready, rebellion broke out in Egypt, and he was vigorously collecting his resources for the double exigency, when he died, 485 b.c.—W. B.

DARIUS II., surnamed Nothus, because he was an illegitimate son of Artaxerxes I., held the satrapy of Hyrcania when his brother Sogdianus seized on the Persian throne, 425 b.c., after assassinating Xerxes II., the legal heir and successor of Artaxerxes. Collecting a large army, and drawing over to his side some of the other satraps and chief officers of the empire, Darius marched against the usurper, who speedily surrendered, and was put to death. A similar fate attended another brother, Aristes, who attempted to dispute his claims to the throne with the aid of a strong body of Greek mercenaries. These revolutions must have greatly disturbed the careful arrangements which Artaxerxes had made for the efficiency of the administration; and Darius took the wrong way of securing a tranquil reign, when he granted so much influence to his intriguing queen Parysatis, and allowed his favourite eunuchs to plunge him in sensual pleasures. The rebellion of Pisuthnes in Lydia, however, was put down by the skilful policy of Tissaphernes; and the conspiracy of Artoxares, one of the household officers, was discovered before its suppression had become difficult. Subsequent insurrections also in Egypt and Media were quelled. He died 405 b.c.—W. B.

DARIUS III., surnamed Codomannus, was satrap of Armenia when the life and reign of Arses were cut short, 536 b.c., by the same hand which had placed him on the throne of Persia. The eunuch Bagoas having thus obtained, by a second crime, a second disposal of the sovereignty, fixed his choice on Darius, whose descent from the royal line was likely to make him acceptable to the people, while the mildness of his disposition promised to give the ambitious minister a continuance of the power which he had so long wielded. The new monarch, however, displayed a spirit which had not been expected of him; and the attempt of Bagoas to remove him also by poison, issued in his own destruction. The wealth and power of the empire were still immense; and the character of Codomannus might have procured for him a quiet and prosperous reign, if the rapidly-rising influence of Alexander had not tempted him to incite the other Grecian states against Macedonia. The army of Alexander, more than thirty thousand strong, was speedily in Asia Minor; and a decisive defeat of the Persians, on the banks of the Granicus, opened his way to the conquests of its western provinces, 334 b.c. In the next year he met Darius on the confines of Syria, near Issus, and again defeated him, capturing his wife and children, whom he treated with an honourable respect and clemency. The time which the victor then spent in Phenicia, Palestine, and Egypt, was employed by the Persian monarch in organizing a new army; and they once more met in bloody conflict beyond the Tigris, near Arbela, but with no better result to the unhappy Darius. Vigorously pursued by Alexander as far as Parthia, and still struggling to retrieve his fallen fortunes, he was assassinated by one of his generals, 331 b.c.; and with him the ancient Persian empire ended, after an existence of rather more than two centuries.—W. B.

DARJES or DARIES, Joachim-Georg, a German philosopher, born at Gustrow in Mecklenburg in 1714, and died in 1791. He studied philosophy and theology at Rostock and Jena, in the latter of which he afterwards became very popular as a professor. His fame reached the ears of Frederick II., who appointed him to a chair in the town of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Darjes gave his attention chiefly to philosophy and law. He attacked some of the most important doctrines of Leibnitz and Wolf; but, like the latter, followed what was called the geometrical method in philosophy. In metaphysics and logic he differed little from the then celebrated Crusius. His writings, which are numerous, are characterized by great clearness and precision. The following may be mentioned—"Via ad Veritatem," "Elementa Metaphysica," "Institutiones Jurisprudentiæ universalis," "Meditationes ad Pandectas."—R. M., A.

* DARLEY, Felix O. C., an American artist and designer in outline after the manner of Retzsch, was born in Philadelphia, June 23, 1822. His parents wished to educate him for mercantile life, but the inclination for art was too strong, and all his leisure hours were employed in drawing. A series of rather rough sketches of characters from the streets of his native city, were offered by him to the publisher of an illustrated newspaper, who at once discerned their merit, and purchased them on liberal terms. Publishing-houses began to compete with each other for the services of the youthful artist, and his vocation in life was settled. In 1848 Mr. Darley removed to the city of New York, where he has since been employed. He has a keen perception both of the humorous and the pathetic, and seizes upon the peculiarities of national and individual character with marvellous quickness of observation; his obedient pencil embodying his conceptions with much force and truthfulness. In 1848-49 he produced two series of sketches in outline, six in each, to illustrate Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Legend of the Sleepy Hollow—they were published by the American Art-Union, republished in London, and became deservedly popular. But his finest work in outline consists of about thirty designs from Mr. Judd's novel of Margaret, which are as remarkable as the work that they illus-