TKLL, WILLIAM. 



TELLER, WILHELM ABRAHAM. 



954 



but after seeing the excesses of the French Revolution, he always 

 studiously avoided conversing ou political subjects. In all the rela- 

 tions of life ho commanded respect and esteem ; and he was par- 

 ticularly remarkable for liis facility of access to the deserving, and 

 especially for his ready communication of professional information to 

 foreigners; a circumstance which, added to his connection with the 

 Gotha canal and some other continental works, procured for him the 

 highest respect on the continent of Europe. The Russian government 

 frequently applied to him for advice respecting the construction of 

 roads and canals ; and the sixty-seventh plate in his atlas represents 

 the details of a road designed by him from Warsaw to the Russian 

 frontier. The emperor Alexander of Russia acknowledged his sense of 

 his services on one occasion, in 1808, by sending him a diamond ring 

 with u suitable inscription. Although he was not connected with the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers at its formation, he accepted their in- 

 vitation in 1820, and became their president ; and from that time he 

 was unremitting in his attention to the duties of the office, having 

 become, by his partial retirement from business, a pretty regular 

 resident in the metropolis. He ardently loved his profession, and 

 was, observes Mr. Rickman, so energetic in any task before him, 

 that all other motives became subordinate to it. He never married, 

 and hardly had a fixed habitation until a late period of life. He 

 was of athletic form, and reached the age of seventy without any 

 serious illness; but in 1827 he was afflicted with a severe and painful 

 disorder, after which he became subject to bilious attacks, under one 

 of which he died, on the 2nd of September 1831, at hi? residence in 

 ALiugdon Street, Westminster, at the age of seventy-seven. He was 

 buried in Westminster Abbey. The acquisition of property was 

 always a secondary consideration with Telford; and in certain cases, 

 especially of abortive speculations, he was ingenious in finding argu- 

 ments for giving his assistance gratuitously. Even in increasing his 

 charges as his reputation and experience increased the value of his 

 services, he seems to have been actuated chiefly by a sense of what 

 was due to others in his profession, whose remuneration was in some 

 degree dependent upon his own. After his mother's death he had few 

 family connections to provide for, and he had a great objection to 

 raisiug any individual above his station in life, which is stated by his 

 biographer as his reason for not leaving his property to relations. His 

 will, printed in the appendix to his ' Life,' provides for the payment 

 of handsome legacies to many personal friends ; of 2000Z. to provide 

 annual premiums to be given by the Institution of Civil Engineers; 

 and of 1000^. each in trust to the ministers of Westerkirk and Lang- 

 holm, for the purchase of books for the parish libraries. His scientific 

 books, prints, drawings, &c. are bequeathed to the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers. Telford became a Fellow of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh in 1803, and of that of England in 1827. 



(Life, edited by Rickman; Chambers, Scottish Biographical Dic- 

 tionary ; Annual Biography, vol. xix.) 



TELL, WILLIAM, a simple countryman of the village of Biirglen 

 near Altorf in Switzerland, who lived towards the end of the 13th 

 and during the first half of the 14th century. His early life is 

 unknown, and his name would probably never have been heard of in 

 history, if the tyranny of the Austrians had not called him from his 

 obscurity. At the beginning of the 14th century, when Albert I. of 

 Austria was endeavouring to suppress the spirit of freedom and inde- 

 pendence in the three Waldstadte, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, 

 and was using every means to add them to his family estates, he sent 

 bailiffs (Landvogte) into these cantons, who perpetrated the most 

 flagrant acts of tyranny, and treated the people like a conquered 

 nation. The principal men of the three Waldstadte, in 1307, formed 

 a league, which was headed by Walter Furst, Arnold von Melchthal, and 

 Werner Stauffacher. William Tell, who had married a daughter of 

 Walter Furst, also belonged to the league, though without taking any 

 prominent part in it. The object of these men was gradually and 

 secretly to increase their numbers, and to seize on any favourable 

 opportunity for delivering their country from its oppressors, and if 

 possible without bloodshed. While the confederates were daily gaining 

 new strength, Hermann Gessler of Brunegg, one of the bailiffs of 

 Albert I., who had taken up his residence in the canton of Uri, after 

 various other vexatious acts, caused the ducal hat of Austria to be 

 raised on a pole in the maaket-place of Altorf, and commanded that 

 every one who passed the pole should uncover his head as a token of 

 respect for the house of Austria. William Tell with his little boy 

 happened one day to pass the pole without paying any regard to the 

 orders of the bailiff; and he was immediately seized and taken before 

 Gessler. Tell had the reputation of being an excellent bowman, and 

 Gessler devised a mode of punishment which should put his skill to a 

 severe test. He ordered Toll's boy to ba placed at a considerable 

 distance from his father, and an apple to be fixed on his head. A 

 crossbow and arrow were handed to Tell, who, without being observed, 

 contrived to get two arrows, and he was ordered to shoot the apple 

 from his own child's head. The tyrant added, that if he missed the 

 apple, he should die. Tell succeeded in hitting the apple. Gessler had 

 expected that Tell would kill or hurt his child, and in his disappoint- 

 ment he tried to find out some pretext for punishing the presumptuous 

 peasant : he asked him why he had taken a second arrow 1 Tell boldly 

 replied : " It was intendeed for thee, if the first had hit my child." 

 The bailiff) delighted with this opportunity of satisfying his vengeance, 



ordered Tell to be bound and to be conveyed in a boat across the lake 

 of Waldatiidtcn to the castlo at Kussnacht, the residence of Gesnler, 

 who himself accompanied the prisoner. When the boat was on the 

 lake, a storm arose, which became BO violent, that the rowers were 

 unable to manage the boat, and proposed to Geseler to unfetter Tell 

 and allow him to assist them, as he waa known to be an experienced 

 boatman and well acquainted with every part of the lake. Tell waa 

 freed from hia fetters, and taking the rudder in his hand, he steered 

 the boat towards a part of the rocky shore, where a flat ahelf jutted 

 out into the lake. When he was near this spot, he seized his bow, 

 jumped upon the projecting rock, and witli his foot pushed the boat 

 back into the waters. The storm however was abating, and Geasler 

 and his men were safely landed. Tell knew the road by which the 

 bailiff had to pass to Kussnacht, and lay in wait for him in a narrow 

 defile. When Gessler came, Tell shot him through the heart. This 

 happened towards the end of the year 1307. The event was followed 

 by a series of wars between the Swiss and the Austriana, which did 

 not terminate till the year 1499. 



The conduct of Tell was highly disapproved of by his friends, as 

 they wished to avoid bloodshed, and were not yet prepared to carry 

 their plans into execution. After this adventure Tell sinks again into 

 his former obscurity, though he is said to have taken part in the battle 

 of Morgarten, and to have perished, in 1350, in the river Schachen 

 during a great flood. 



But the truth of the story of Tell, notwithstanding its being com- 

 memorated down to this day by chapels and other public monuments, 

 has been doubted by several modern historians; while others, and 

 among them Johann von Muller, regard it as a genuine history. The 

 doubts about its truMi have arisen from the fact that a similar story 

 is told in the Wilkina Saga, and by Saxo Grammaticus, of a Danish 

 king Harold and one Toko. The same story is also told of one 

 William Tell and a count of Seedorf who had extensive possessions in 

 Uri, but must have lived early in the 12th century. Another singular 

 circumstance is that in the documents relating to the ancient Swiss con- 

 federacies, and published by Kopp at Luzern in 1835 (' Urkunden zur 

 Geschichte der eidgenossischen Biinde') there is no mention of a 

 Gessler among the bailiffs who resided in the castle of Kussnacht. 

 For these and other reasons, Grimm and Ideler (' Die Sage vom 

 Schusse dee Tell,' Berlin, 1826) consider the whole story of Tell as 

 fabulous. There are however facts which seem to confirm the 

 historical truth of at least the groundwork of the story. It waa not 

 many years after the death of Tell that it became customary for 

 annual processions to visit the spot where Tell had escaped from the 

 boat, and in 1388 the canton of Uri built the celebrated chapel of 

 Tell near the same spot, and it is stated that among the visitors of 

 that year there were one hundred and fourteen who had known Tell 

 himself. His adventure is moreover told to the same effect by all 

 the chroniclers who wrote at or soon after the alleged time of the 

 occurrence. 



TELLER, WILHELM ABRAHAM, son of Romanus Teller, 

 minister of St. Thomas's church at Leipzig, was born in that city, on 

 the 9th of January 1734. So early as at the age of twenty-two he 

 attracted the attention of the theological world by a Latin translation 

 of Kennicott on the Hebrew Text ; and after being for a year or two 

 preacher at the Nicolai church, very unexpectedly received the 

 appointment of professor of theology at Helmstiidt, from the Duke of 

 Brunswick, in 1761. On entering upon his new office, he published as 

 an inaugural disputation his ' Topice Scriptura,' which was considered 

 by Superintendant Bahrdt so heterodox in its opinions, that it was 

 with difficulty he could be prevailed upon not to protest against 

 Teller's appointment. Not deterred by this circumstance from. 

 expressing his own convictions, Teller published not long afterwards 

 his ' Lehrbuch des Christlichcn Glaubens,' a production that caused 

 no little noise at the time, exciting violent disapprobation in some 

 quarters, and obtaining him friends in others. Just before this work 

 appeared he had been invited to accept the professorship of theology 

 at Halle, then vacant by the death of Baumgarten, and had declined 

 it out of regard towards his patron the duke. But the persecution he 

 continued to experience from those to whom his opinions had rendered 

 him obnoxious made his residence at Helmstiidt so disagreeable, that 

 it was without the least reluctance he exchanged it, about three years 

 afterwards, 1767, for Berlin, with the appointment of Oberconsistorial- 

 Rath and Dean of Cologne. While it removed him from their imme- 

 diate attacks, the distinction thus conferred upon him also in some 

 measure awed his opponents ; and at the same time he himself was 

 brought into intercourse with some of the most learned and dis- 

 tinguished characters belonging to the reign of Frederick the Great. 

 He was BO far however from neglecting his professional duties or 

 relaxing his zeal, that he continued to apply to his theological studies 

 | with the same ardour as before, and was instrumental in promoting 

 many beneficial plans connected with church matters and education 

 in public schools. The vast number of sermons and various theolo- 

 gical writings published by him, attest not only his industry but his 

 j earnestness in the cause of religion, although his rejection of the 

 I dogmas ingrafted upon Scripture afforded his enemies and those who 

 lay greater stress upon speculative points than upon religious conduct 

 and feeling an opportunity to decry him as very dangerous, heterodox, 

 and unsound. "Equally remote from all mysticism on the one hand, 



