other. Thales strongly advised his countrymen to enter into a confederation with the other Ionians, in order that by a union of forces they might defy the invasion with which they were threatened, first by the Lydians, and afterwards by the Persians. This wise advice was rejected, and the consequence was that his country was within a short period subjugated successively by those two powers. This happened about 550 b.c. His astronomical knowledge is said to have been so great that he was able to calculate eclipses of the sun. He died about 545 b.c., at the age of ninety.—J. F. F.
THEDEN, John Christian Anthony, a celebrated surgeon of the Prussian army, was born at Steinbeck in Mecklenburg in 1714. It is said that he was originally apprenticed to a tailor; but becoming disgusted with his trade, he contrived to become the pupil of a surgeon. After studying at Rostock, Hamburg, Lubeck, and Dantzic, he went to Berlin in 1742. He there obtained the appointment of chief surgeon in the army during the second war in Silesia, and ultimately became the chief of the surgical staff to Frederick the Great. He was distinguished as much for his humanity and constant exertions for the well-being of the sick and wounded, as for his surgical skill. He died on the 2nd October, 1797, after having served his country for more than fifty years. Amongst his published works are "Observations and Experiments in Surgery and Medicine," Berlin, 1771; and "Instructions for Junior Army Surgeons," Berlin, 1774.—F. C. W.
THEED, William, R.A., was born in 1764, became a student of the Royal Academy in 1786, and for some years practised as a portrait and historical painter. But not meeting with much success he went to Rome, where he secured the friendship of Flaxman, and under whose guidance he studied modelling and sculpture. He returned to England in 1793, and was engaged by Wedgwood to make designs and models for his pottery, and later by Messrs. Rundell and Bridge to design their high-class goldsmith's work. On his own account he produced various works in bronze and marble, including "Thetis with the Arms of Achilles," which is in the royal collection; "Bacchanalians," and other classical subjects; also in his later years a great many monuments. Mr. Theed was elected A.R.A. in 1811, and R.A. in 1813. He died in 1817.—J. T—e.
* THEED, William, son of the above, born about the beginning of the century, has attained considerable distinction as a sculptor. He acquired merely the rudiments of his art from his father, who died whilst he was very young. He learned most at Rome, where he spent several years. Among his earlier works are several classical and scriptural groups and statues, such as "Psyche," "Prometheus," "Rebekah at the Well," "The Prodigal's Return," &c.; but like most of our sculptors he has suffered himself to be drawn away from the poetry to the more profitable prose of art. Almost the only works of an imaginative kind produced by him of late years have been the series of historical reliefs in bronze for the houses of parliament, and those for the duchess of Gloucester's monument in St. George's chapel, with the colossal statue of the Bard for the Mansion-house; unless, indeed, such works as the statue of Burke for St. Stephen's hall, and that in bronze of Malcolm Canmore for her majesty, are to be classed with imaginative works. Besides his portrait-statues and busts, Mr. Theed has been much engaged on works of a monumental character. Such are the monument to Sir James Mackintosh in Westminster abbey; the marble statue of Sir William Peel for Greenwich hospital; that of the historian Hallam for St. Paul's; and the colossal bronze statue of Sir Isaac Newton for Grantham. Mr. Theed was much patronized by the prince-consort; and since the prince's death he has been commissioned by her majesty to execute a marble bust of the prince, and a statue of him in the Highland costume for Balmoral.—J. T—e.
THELLUSSON, Peter, owes his celebrity solely to the eccentricity of his will. Descended from a Huguenot family which had settled in Geneva, he established himself in England about the middle of the last century, and having accumulated a large fortune, he died on 21st of July, 1797. His ambition was to found in England two or three families whose territorial grandeur should overshadow the greatest landowners of the realm. To accomplish this object he did not hesitate to sacrifice the interests of his children and immediate heirs. By a will executed in 1796, after bequeathing to his sons and daughters a portion of his wealth, he devised the residue, consisting of real estate worth £4500 yearly and personal property to the amount of £600,000, to trustees for the purposes of accumulation. None of his living progeny were to touch this vast fortune, which was to be all invested for the benefit of the eldest male descendants of his three sons who should be alive when the last of Peter's then living offspring should have died. Calculations were made that this extraordinary arrangement would result in an accumulation of from £19,000,000 to £32,000,000, and but for its technical accuracy, in which no lawyer could find a flaw, the will would have been set aside on public grounds. Litigation, however, seized the document as lawful prey. Yet, on 25th June, 1805, the legality of its provisions was confirmed by the house of lords. The legislature had previously expressed its repugnance to "the vanity, illiberality, and folly" of the posthumous miser, by passing an act (39, 40 Geo. III., c. 98) to restrain testators from directing the accumulation of property for a longer period than twenty-one years after death. Of the nine lives existing in 1797, the last survivor died in February, 1856, when a new crop of lawsuits immediately bloomed. The question who were at that time the eldest male lineal descendants of Peter Thellusson, was carried from one court of law to another, till it was finally decided in the house of lords on the 9th of June, 1859. There it was decreed that Lord Rendlesham was legally the elder of his uncle, Arthur Thellusson (in personal age forty years his senior), because he was the direct heir and representative of the first Lord Rendlesham, Peter Thellusson's firstborn son. The litigation on this famous will for a period of sixty-two years, had so pruned the large fortune which was the subject of it, that the end which Peter had in view was effectually defeated.—R. H.
THELWALL, John, who enjoyed a transitory fame as a political martyr at the end of the last century, was born in 1766 in Chandos Street, Covent Garden, London, where his father carried on the trade of a silk mercer. He was educated in private schools at Lambeth and Highgate, and became a student at the Royal academy. Achieving no triumphs in the art of painting, he was placed by his father with a tailor, and afterwards was recalled home by his father's death and intrusted with the management of the business. His mind, however, soared above the dull routine of trade; reading and speculation became his constant occupation. He studied law for a time, and then medicine, but attained to no proficiency in either science. The French revolution broke out just as he was entering manhood. Political passions were aroused in England as well as in France, and the young men of the age formed debating societies, parliamentary reform associations, a Constitutional Information Society, and a Friends of the People Society. Thelwall was a member of more than one of these, and possessing great fluency and some oratorical power, he secured a prominent position among his fellows, became a popular speaker at public meetings, and gave a series of lectures in 1792 on political subjects. In 1794 the government took alarm, and instituted the prosecution of Horne Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and other members of political societies, as being guilty of high treason. After a long and exciting state trial the accused were acquitted. Thelwall's influence then rapidly declined. He travelled about the country lecturing; but meeting with little encouragement, he took a small farm near Hay in Brecknockshire. Farming brought him no more solid benefit than a final separation from the life of a professional politician. He resumed the practice of lecturing; but confining himself to the subject of elocution, of which he was an excellent master, success attended his efforts. After an itinerant course of some years he settled in London as a teacher of elocution, and prospered. He succeeded in curing many pupils of stammering and other impediments of speech. On this and kindred subjects he wrote one or two treatises. During a lecturing tour in the west of England, he died at Bath of disease of the heart on 17th February, 1834. Thelwall, it may be mentioned, was in his younger days one of Coleridge's intimate friends.—R. H.
THEMISON, a celebrated physician, the founder of the sect of Methodici, was a native of Laodicea. It is believed that he lived in the first century b.c., and that he practised in Rome. He was a disciple of Asclepiades. Discarding inquiries into the remote causes of disease and the doctrine of critical days, he reduced medicine into the practice of a few simple rules. He considered that a regard to the constituent principles of disease, and to circumstances common to must maladies, was all that was necessary, his division of diseases was into chronic and
