hundred pictures now attributed to him, as he had not possibly the time to do it in. His style is very masterly; his execution being, indeed, very near perfection. His subjects and his style are like those of Peter Laer, and he was imitated by his two brothers, Pieter (1625-83) and Jan (1629-66), and by Jan van Hugtenburg (1646-1733); and these are the painters of most of the pictures attributed to Philip Wouvverman. This painter's monogram, formed from P. H. S., signifies simply Philippus. He appears to have wanted the power of making friends, and seems to have been slandered by some of his contemporaries.—R. N. W.
WRANGEL, Carl Gustav, son of the succeeding, was born in 1613, and accompanied his father in various expeditions. After the armistice of 1629 he went to Holland to study the art of shipbuilding, and thence to Paris. Gustavus Adolphus recalled him to Sweden, and made him a gentleman of the bedchamber. At the battle of Lutzen, when the king was supposed to have been killed, Wrangel contributed very mainly to the victory gained by the Swedes. Raised to the rank of colonel, he bore a great part in the victory of Chemnitz, seized by a stratagem the castle of Fetschen, and took Heldrungen and Resdingen at the sword's point. Subsequently he contributed greatly to the victory of Leipsic. He afterwards distinguished himself equally as a naval officer in the war with Denmark. The Swedish fleet being blockaded in Fredricsort in Schleswig, Wrangel was sent to concert measures with the Swedish admiral. Clan Flemming, and not only did he extricate the squadron from peril, but, in conjunction with the Dutch, he defeated the Danish fleet near the island of Femern, and subsequently gained possession of Bernholm. In 1645 he succeeded Torstenson in the command of the Swedish army in Germany. He forced the enemy to retire near Frankfort-on-the-Maine; afterwards, having effected a junction with Turenne, he overran Bavaria, laid siege ineffectually to Augsburg, and went into winter quarters in Suabia. In the following year he compelled the elector of Bavaria to separate from Austria and consent to an armistice. In 1647 Wrangel joined the Swedish troops which were about to invade Bohemia, and was very near taking the Emperor Frederick III. prisoner in his camp. He retained the command of the northern army of Sweden until the peace of Westphalia, when he was rewarded with the title of count, and various estates in Sweden, Germany, and Finland. When Charles Gustavus undertook his expedition against Poland, Wrangel took the command, and having landed his army, blockaded the port of Dantzic. After driving the enemy out of Pomerania, he marched upon Jutland, and seized the fortress of Fredriksudde, 1657. When Charles Gustavus laid siege to Copenhagen, Wrangel besieged and took the castle of Kronenburg; and in 1659 he seized upon the Danish isles of Langeland and Alsen. In 1674, though old and infirm, he again took the command of the army in Pomerania, but he was shortly compelled by ill health to retire to his estate on the island of Rugen, where he died in 1676.—F. M. W.
WRANGEL, Hermann, a Swedish general, was born in 1587, and served under Charles IX. in the wars against Poland, Russia, and Denmark. He conducted the siege of Ivanogrod (1609) with such success that, after the town fell into the hands of the Swedes, he was appointed to the command of it. In 1621 he was created Field-marshal by Gustavus Adolphus, and commanded the army sent against the Poles. After the armistice (1629) he was employed by Gustavus in various negotiations, and was instrumental in bringing about a peace with Poland in 1635. In 1636 he received the command of a corps d'armée in Pomerania, and achieved various successes; but owing to disputes with General Banier he was recalled by Quern Christina, and appointed governor-general of Livonia, an office which he held till his death in 1644.—F. M. W.
WRAXALL, Sir Nathaniel, Bart., chiefly known as a writer of memoirs, was born at Bristol in 1751. He entered the civil service of the East India Company, and returning to Europe in 1772, travelled extensively for seven years on the continent. According to his own account, he was employed during one of these years on a confidential mission to George III. from his sister Caroline Matilda, whom her husband Christian of Denmark, seventh king of Denmark, had divorced, and who was relegated to Zell in Hanover. His "Cursory Remarks" on the North of Europe appeared in 1775, and was followed in 1777 by his "Memoirs of the Kings of France of the house of Valois;" in 1795 by a "History of France, from the accession of Henry III. to the death of Louis XIV.;" and in 1797 by one of the most amusing of his books—his "Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, and Vienna." In 1780 he entered the house of commons as member for Hindon, retiring from it about 1793. In 1813 he was created a baronet; and in 1815 appeared his "Historical Memoirs of my own time," for some remarks in which Count Woronzow, the Russian ambassador, prosecuted him for libel, when he was fined, and suffered a few months' imprisonment. He died in 1831. In 1836 appeared his posthumous memoirs of his own time. Wraxall was a contributor to a department in which English literature is very deficient. His memoirs, however, want point, but they are full of amusing gossip, and are never wilfully untrue.—F. E.
WREN, Sir Christopher, the greatest of English architects, was born at the rectory. East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on the 20th of October, 1631, and not, as is stated in the Parentalia and by all subsequent biographers, 1632. His father. Dr. Christopher Wren, was chaplain to Charles I., and dean of Windsor, as well as rector of East Knoyle; his uncle. Dr. Matthew Wren, was successively bishop of Hereford, Norwich, and Ely. Being, like his great contemporary Newton, a very small and weakly child, Christopher Wren was educated at home with great care under a private tutor, the Rev. W. Shepheard; but his mathematical and scientific studies, for which at an early age he showed an astonishing aptitude, were superintended by his father, a man of considerable attainments, and the Rev. William Holder, incumbent of Bletchington, Oxon., who afterwards married Sir Christopher's sister. Before going to the university the boy was placed for a short time at Westminster school under the famous Dr. Busby. In 1646 he was entered as a gentleman-commoner at Wadham college, Oxford. Already his attainments had attracted notice. He had in 1645 invented an astronomical instrument, partaking of the character of an orrery, and dedicated it to his father in a Latin poem; and now, or soon after, he invented other instruments of use in gnomonic and pneumatic investigations, and a machine for sowing corn "equally and without waste." His proficiency procured him the friendship of Dr. Wilkins, warden of Wadham, Seth Ward, Savilian professor of astronomy, Hooke, and other distinguished scientific men resident at Oxford, who introduced him to the meetings of the Philosophical Society, then held at Dr. Wilkins' lodgings, and out of which grew the Royal Society. Wren at this time also paid particular attention to the study of anatomy and microscopic science. He was appointed demonstrating assistant to Sir Charles Scarborough; and among other novelties introduced by him were a new and more scientific manner of dissecting the brain, and the process of injecting different liquids into the veins of living animals, a process which he described and exhibited before the society at Oxford, and which was regarded as a discovery of vast value by anatomists throughout Europe. He also made the drawings for Willis' great work on the anatomy of the brain. Cerebri Anatome, &c., 4to, 1664, and many of those for Hooke's Micrographia. Altogether his career at Oxford was one of rare distinction. In grave treatises as well as in private discourse he was spoken of as a prodigy, and Evelyn makes a special entry in his Diary of having seen at Oxford "that miracle of a youth Christopher Wren." In 1650 he proceeded B.A., and M.A. in 1653, when he was elected fellow of All Souls. In 1661 he became D.C.L. at Oxford, and ad eundem gradum at Cambridge.
Thus far we have followed his course at the university. He was soon to take a prominent place among the scientific men of the metropolis. In 1657, being then in his twenty-sixth year, he was elected professor of astronomy at Gresham college, at that time a position of importance. His inaugural lecture (an elaborate composition, printed in the Parentalia) was greatly admired, and the most eminent among his scientific contemporaries were thenceforth in the habit of attending his weekly lectures. It was after one of these lectures (28th November, 1660) that the foundation of the Royal Society was settled; and the young professor was requested to draw up the preamble of the charter. (Weld's Hist. of Royal Soc., vol. i.) Wren was among the most active of the members of the infant society. He communicated numerous papers on a great variety of subjects, and he devised and conducted a large proportion of the experiments which it was then the custom to exhibit at the meetings of the society, especially when royal or eminent persons were present. His scientific labours included an explanation of the theory of the planet Saturn, which he was the first to establish; the solution of a
