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DRAMBURG DRAPER 247 ed in which serious pantomimes, or dramas without words, were performed, accompanied throughout with expressive music. By de- grees the actors ventured a few extempore phrases or jests. This license was gradually extended, until dialogue was regularly intro- duced, and the music was only used to accom- pany the movement of the actors. Melodrama is now understood to be a drama wherein the passion and development of character are sub- servient to the action and plot ; whereas trage- dy is a drama where the action and plot are subservient to the passion and development of character. Farce is a humorous piece of buf- foonery, in which probability may be outraged both in the incidents and character, and stands in relation to comedy as melodrama does to tragedy. Vaudeville is an invention of the French stage. It has its name from vau de Vire, which was originally a satirical song containing a keen, witty thought, and applicable to some popular person or event. It was a lyric epigram invented in that part of Normandy called Val or Vau de Vire, and carried thence to Paris, where these musical satires became the vogue. Presently the writers of small comedies threw their keenest epigrams into verses which might be sung to any air that would happily suit them, and were called vaudevilles. The comic pieces through which they were scattered eventually received the name. When the work is but slightly speckled with these musical epigrams, it is distinguished as a comedie vau- deville or a drame vaudeville. Pantomime is a drama without language, composed of gesture accompanied with music. It is probably the most ancient form of drama, and has changed less in its essential character than any other. The most perfect and most elegant kind of pan- tomime is the ballet, where graceful dances are interspersed. Further accounts of the dramatic literature of the principal nations will be found under the titles of the respective countries. DRAMBURG, a town of Prussia, in the prov- ince of Pomerania, 53 m. E. by N. of Stettin ; pop. in 1871, 5,473. It has a Protestant gym- nasium, a normal school, and several woollen factories, tanneries, and distilleries. DRAMMEN, a commercial town of Norway, on the. S. coast, in the province and 20 m. S. W. of the city of Christiania ; pop. in 1866, 13,032. It lies on both sides of the river Drammen, and is composed of three small vil- lages, separated by channels of the river. The commerce of which Drammen is the centre gives it the third rank among the cities of Norway, and in respect to its timber trade it stands first. It manufactures tobacco, earth- ernware, sail cloth, rope, carriages, leather, &c. ; and besides exporting timber, has a com- merce in iron ware and agricultural produce. About 40,000 tons of shipping are annually employed in its port. It suffered consider- ably in 1850 and 1857 from conflagrations. DRANESVILLE, a village of Halifax co., Vir- ginia, 20 m. W. by N. of Washington, where a battle was fought Dec. 20, 1861, by a brigade of the Union army of the Potomac under Gen. Ord, and a confederate detachment under Gen. Stuart. The engagement was mainly an artillery duel, in which, the Union guns being better served, the confederates suffered most, and withdrew. The Union loss was 69 killed and wounded ; that of the confederates more than twice as many. This skirmish was the first success gained by the army of the Poto- mac, and called forth a special congratulatory letter from the secretary of war. DRAPER. I. John William, an American chemist and physiologist, born at St. Helens, near Liverpool, England, May 5, 1811. He received his early education in the Wesleyan Methodist school at Woodhouse Grove, and was then placed under private instructors, devoting much attention to chemistry and natural philosophy. The higher mathematics were also a part of his early training. He subsequently went to the university of Lon- don, where he prosecuted his chemical studies. Some of his ancestors had been attracted to America before the revolution, a greater part of his family connections followed, and in 1833 he joined them. He continued his chemical and medical studies at the university of Penn- sylvania, where he took the degree of M. D. in 1836, with the rare distinction that his thesis was selected for publication by the medical faculty. A few weeks later he was appointed professor of chemistry, natural philosophy, and physiology in Hampden-Sidney college, Vir- ginia. During his residence there his time was occupied in chemical and physiological investi- gations, many of the latter appearing in the " American Journal of Medical Sciences." In 1839 he was called to the chair of chemistry and natural history in the academic depart- ment of the university of the city of New York, where, besides instruction in those branches, he delivered lectures to the ad- vanced undergraduates on physiology. In 1841 he was appointed professor of chemistry in the university medical college, and in 1850 physiology was added to the chair of chemis- try. He is now (1874) president both of the scientific and the medical department of the university. Although his researches have been mostly experimental, involving great labor and cost, he has written voluminously and with high reputation. Besides contributions to va- rious other scientific journals, he furnished to the " London and Edinburgh Philosophical Journal" and to the "American Journal of Science and Arts" between 1837 and 1857 about 40 memoirs, principally on topics pre- viously little understood. For an account of some of these investigations, see ACTINISM, Ac- TINOMETEB, and PHOTOGRAPHY. He is the au- thor of many literary works, reviews, &c., the latter for the most part published anonymously ; of a " Treatise on the Forces which produce the Organization of Plants " (4to, New York, 1844); of a popular "Text Book on Chern-