appointed private secretary to Earl Grey, whose daughter he had married in the previous year. He was shortly after nominated one of the secretaries of the treasury, but went out of office with his party In 1834. On the return of Lord Melbourne to power, his lordship was promoted to the post of secretary to the admiralty, which he held for four years, but in 1839, following the lead of his wayward and crotchetty brother-in-law, Lord Howick, he resigned his office and quitted the ministry. He continued, however, to give a general support to Lord Melbourne's government; and when Lord John Russell was appointed premier in 1846, Viscount Halifax was made chancellor of the exchequer. His annual budgets were severely criticized by the opposition, and but languidly supported by his own party. But he had to contend with unexampled difficulties arising out of the Irish famine, the mania for railway speculations, and the consequent panic and stagnation of trade, and he probably deserved more credit for his skill as a financier than he has ever yet received. He retired from office with his party in March, 1852; but on the formation of Lord Aberdeen's ministry ten months later, he was appointed president of the board of control, and continued to hold this important post in the administration of Lord Palmerston. He resigned along with his chief in 1858, but returned to power with him in the following year. On the abolition of the East India Company's government consequent upon the Indian mutiny, he was appointed secretary for India, a post which he held till February, 1866, when he was raised to the peerage; having been previously known as Sir Charles Wood. Though deficient in the graces of oratory, he is listened to with attention in the house, on account of the breadth and comprehensiveness of his views, and his perfect mastery of his subject.—J. T.
WOOD, Robert, a learned English writer. In 1751 he made the tour of Greece, Egypt, and Palestine in company with two others; and on his return published a handsome work, entitled "The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tadmor in the Desert," illustrated by several engravings. He subsequently published a similar work respecting Baalbec. In 1759 he was appointed under-secretary of state under the earl of Chatham, and continued to fill that position for some time. He was the author of an "Essay on the Original Genius of Homer." He died September 9, 1771.—F.
WOOD. See Green.
WOODFALL, William, a famous parliamentary reporter of the last century, called "Memory Woodfall," was born about 1745, and was the youngest son of the printer of the Public Advertiser, the author of Darby and Joan; being thus the brother of Henry Sampson (Junius) Woodfall. After a varied life as bookseller's apprentice and printer, and even as player, he became at once manager and printer of the Morning Chronicle. He gained a great reputation as a parliamentary reporter, being able to sit for sixteen hours continuously in parliament, and without taking a single note, write off correctly and immediately sixteen columns of debate. When he went, in 1784, to Dublin to report the debate in the Irish parliament on the commercial propositions, crowds followed him in the streets, so great was his fame. In 1789 he started a London paper of his own, the Diary, and, instead of the meagre summary of other journals, could and did, with his wonderful reporting faculty, present to his readers each morning a full report of the parliamentary debate of the preceding night. In time, however, by employing relays of reporters, the other newspapers out-reported him, and the Diary expired. Woodfall died in 1803.—F. E.
WOODHOUSE, Robert, an eminent English mathematician and astronomer, died on the 28th of December, 1827. He was educated at Cambridge, where he became senior wrangler, and a fellow of Caius college. In 1820 he was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics, in 1822 Plumian professor of astronomy, and in 1824 keeper of the observatory. His treatise on physical astronomy is of the highest authority. Of his numerous mathematical writings the most important is his "Isoperimetrical Problems," a treatise which was of great service in advancing our knowledge of the calculus of variations.—W. J. M. R.
WOODHOUSELEE, Lord. See Tytler.
WOODVILLE, Elizabeth. See Elizabeth Woodville.
WOODVILLE, William, an English botanist, was born at Cockermouth in 1762, and died in London in 1805. He was apprenticed to an apothecary, and prosecuted the study of medicine at Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1775. He settled first at Cockermouth, and then in London, where he became physician to the Middlesex dispensary and the small-pox hospital. He studied the medicinal qualities of plants, and published an illustrated work on medical botany in 4 vols. 4 to. He wrote also "A History of the Small-pox in Great Britain," being a strenuous advocate for vaccination.—J. H. B.
WOODWARD, John, one of the founders of modern geological science, was born in Derbyshire in 1665. After receiving a good school education, he was led during a stay with a friend in Gloucestershire to study the geology of the district, with its shelly limestones; and his curiosity on the subject once awakened, he travelled through England to gratify and satisfy it. After long consideration of the phenomena which he had inspected, and inquiry respecting geological phenomena on the continent, he published in 1696 his "Natural History of the Earth," the appearance of which marks an era in the progress of modern geology. In this work, with all its errors. Woodward, as Dr. Whewell has remarked, shows himself fully aware of the general law of stratification, and his enunciation of it was commonly recognized and followed into detail by subsequent observers and students. Woodward died in 1728, bequeathing his geological collections to the university of Cambridge, and founding there a Woodwardian professorship of geology.—F. E.
WOOLLETT, William, an excellent English line-engraver, was born at Maidstone on the 27th August, 1735, and learned his art under John Tinney, an obscure engraver established in London. Woollett's great excellence was in landscape engraving. In this branch he is perhaps still unrivalled. In his treatment of the figure, especially of the nude, he was not so successful, being greatly surpassed both by Sir R. Strange and W. Sharp. Still, in the bold style in which he educated himself, he displayed a most masterly use of the etching-needle and graver combined. He has left us plates of many of the finest landscapes painted in England in his day, his greatest works being after Wilson and West. He engraved nine of Wilson's principal landscapes, namely. Phaeton, Niobe, Celadon and Amelia, Ceyx and Alcyone, Meleager and Atalante, Apollo and the Seasons, Cicero at his Villa, its companion Solitude, and Snowdon. Of his historical pieces the best are, "The Death of General Wolfe," and "The Battle of the Hogue," both after West. Woollett was appointed engraver to George III. He died at the early age of fifty on the 23rd May, 1785, and was buried in Old St. Pancras churchyard, but there is a monument to his memory in the cloisters of Westminster abbey. His contemporaries speak of him not only as an excellent artist, but also as a good man.—R. N. W.
WOOLSTON, Thomas, was born at Northampton in 1669, and was educated at Sidney Sussex college, Cambridge, where he entered in 1685. After taking his degrees in arts, he was elected a fellow of that college, and continued to reside in the university for many years, applying himself chiefly to the study of theology, in which he took the degree of bachelor. He published his first work in 1705, "The Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion against the Jews and Gentiles Revived." An interval of fifteen years followed, during which his theological views appear to have undergone a great change or development in the unhappy direction of unbelief, and of hostility to the teachers of christian truth. He had imbibed from Origen a fondness for the allegorical way of interpreting scripture, and he had gradually come to view the Mosaic and gospel histories as parables, or allegories, and nothing more. In 1720 he published three Latin tracts, two of which were in the shape of letters addressed by Origen to Dr. Whitby, Dr. Waterland, and Dr. Whiston, entitled "Origenis Adamantii Epistolæ ad Doctores Whitbeium, &c., circa fidem vere orthodoxam et scripturarum interpretationem," in which he began more distinctly to unfold these allegorical views. These letters were immediately followed by other two addressed to Dr. Bennet of London—one upon the question, "Whether the People called Quakers do not the nearest of any other sect of religion resemble the primitive Christians, in principles and practice?" The other, "In Defence of the Apostles and Primitive Fathers of the Church against the Ministers of the letter, and literal commentators of this age," to both of which letters he soon after published an answer by his own hand, "in all of which his view appears to have been rather to be severe upon the clergy, than to defend either apostles, or fathers, or quakers." In 1723 and 1724 appeared four pamphlets, entitled "Free Gifts to the Clergy," and his own "Answer" to them, in all of which he continued his attacks upon the clergy in a tone of growing contempt. By this time he had
