u 



THORDO. 



THORILD, THOMAS. 



10 



Bitters, and the size and beauty of his paintings, bis miniatures have 

 been among the most attractive of those annually exhibited in the 

 rooms of the Royal Academy. The Queen, the Prince Consort, and 

 several of the royal children, many members of the royal families of 

 France, Belgium, and Germany, with an almost endless array of the 

 female aristocracy of Englaud, have been painted by him, and seldom 

 indeed have female loveliness and dignity been more happily por- 

 trayed. Mr. Thorburn was elected an associate of the Royal Academy 

 in 1848, immediately after he exhibited his Large miniature of ' the 

 Queen and the Princess Helena and Prince Alfred.' 



THORDO is the Latinised name of a celebrated Danish lawyer, 

 whose real name was THORD, or, more completely, THOHD DEOHN. 

 He lived in the reign of Waldemar III., king of Denmark, and was 

 descended from an ancient family of that country. Concerning his 

 life, little is known beyond the fact that he was chief judge of the 

 province of Jutland. His name has come down to us through a 

 collection of Danish laws which he formed into a kind of code. It 

 contains the earliest Danish laws, to which no historical origin can be 

 assigned, as well as the subsequent laws which were passed between 

 the years 1200 and 1377 by the Danish parliament, and sanctioned by 

 the kings. They are not arranged in chronological order, but sys- 

 tematically, and comprise civil as well as constitutional laws. They 

 are of very great value to the student of the social and political 

 hiatory of Denmark. Danish editions of this small code appeared at 

 Ripen, 4to, 1504, and at Copenhagen, 4to, 1508. Ludewig, in his 

 ' Reliquiao Manuscriptorum omnis zevi diplomatum ac momentorum 

 ineditorum,' vol. xiL, pp. 166-216, has published a Latin transla- 

 tion of this code of laws. In the title to them Thordo calls himself 

 "Thordo legifer Daciae," where Daciao must mean Danuo, that is, 

 Denmark. 



THORDSON", STURLA, belonged to the celebrated Icelandic family 

 of the Sturla ; his name Thordson indicates that he was a son of 

 Thordo. He was a nephew of Snorri Sturluson, and born about A.D. 

 1218. Being a man of high rank and great knowledge, he was appointed 

 to the most important offices by the Danish kings Hacon and Magnus, 

 and it was at their command that he wrote the history of Iceland, 

 Denmark, and Norway, from the time when the work of Snorri Stur- 

 luson broke off. This history bears the title of ' Historia Sturlungo- 

 rum,' but the work which is now extant under that name is only an 

 abridgment of the original history, and the latter part is altogether 

 lost. The substance of the work is given in Torfaeus, ' Historia 

 Rerum Norvegicarum,' who, in his Prolegomena, also Rives an account 

 of the ' Historia Sturlungorum.' Thordson died in 1288, at the age of 

 seventy. 



THORER, ALBAN. [ToEmus, ALBANCS.] 



THORESBY, RALPH, a virtuoso and antiquary, and an early 

 Fellow of the Royal Society, was the son of a merchant of Leeds, and 

 born in that town in 1658. He had his early education in the Leeds 

 grammar-school, but, being intended by his father for commercial life, 

 he did not pass to any of the higher seats of learning. He had how- 

 ever what may be called a liberal commercial education, being sent by 

 his father to Holland for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the 

 mode of conducting business in that country, and of acquiring the 

 modern languages ; and afterwards to London for a similar purpose. 

 He settled in his native town, where his family was connected with 

 some of the principal persons who then formed the society of Leeds, 

 and where he had a business prepared for him, which had been 

 successfully conducted by his father, who died when the son was just 

 twenty-one. 



Thoresby possessed from a very early period of life an eager curiosity 

 respecting the things and persons around him which presented any 

 features of historical interest, and a desire of collecting objects of 

 curiosity, natural or artificial. His father had something of the 

 same taste, having purchased the collection of coins and medals 

 which had been formed by the family of Lord Fairfax, the parlia- 

 mentary general, and this collection was the basis of the museum 

 formed in a few years by the sou. This museum was a means of 

 bringing him acquainted with all the celebrated antiquaries and 

 naturalists of the time, and was a perpetual attraction to persons of 

 curiosity, who often visited Leeds for no other purpose than to see it. 

 It is not too much to say of it that it was the best museum that had 

 been formed in England by a gentleman of private and rather small 

 fortune; containing, it is true, eome things which would now be 

 esteemed of not the smallest value, but also many objects of very 

 high value, especially in the two grand departments of manuscripts 

 and coins. As he advanced in life, the curiosity which had at first 

 been directed upon the objects more immediately around him became 

 expanded so as to comprehend objects of more general interest, and 

 in fact the whole range of what is generally understood to be com- 

 prehended in the term antiquarian literature. In the department of 

 natural history he was also not merely a collector, but an observer, and 

 he made many communications, esteemed of value, to his private 

 friends or to the Royal Society. 



With this turn of mind, it will hardly be supposed that he was 

 very successful in his mercantile affairs. He had however the good 

 sense to withdraw from business before his fortune was entirely lost 

 to him, and about the forty-sixth year of his age he seems to have 

 wholly retired from it, and to have formed the determination of living 



on the little income which the portion of his property that remained 

 would afford him. 



Besides amassing such manuscript matter as he could by any means 

 become possessed of, he was himself a laborious transcriber, and was 

 also accustomed to commit to writing notes of things which he 

 observed, or information collected from his friends or the old people 

 of his time. When released from the cares of business, he had leisure 

 to make use of these notes, and he entered upon the preparation for 

 the press of two works, which it was intended by him should contain 

 all that he had gathered in what had been from the first his favourite 

 subject, the illustration of the history, and whatever belonged to it, 

 of his native town. One of them was to be in the form of a topo- 

 graphical survey of the whole of the large parish of Leeds, and of a 

 few of the smaller parishes which are supposed to have been com- 

 prehended under the very ancient local term ' Elmete : ' the other, a 

 history of the various transactions of which that district had been tho 

 scene, of its more eminent inhabitants, of the public benefactors, and 

 of the changes which had taken place in the state or fortunes of its 

 inhabitants. The first of these designs only was accomplished. The 

 work appeared in a folio volume in 1715, under the title of ' Ducatus 

 Leodiensis, or the Topography of the Town and Parish of Leeds.' 

 This work leaves little for the inhabitants of the town to desire in 

 this kind, except that he had prepared the ' historical part ' also, to 

 which the author is perpetually referring the reader. The work is more 

 than its title promises, since it contains a large body of genealogical 

 information, comprehending the descents of nearly all the families of 

 consequence who inhabited the central parts of the West Riding. There 

 is also a very large descriptive catalogue of the treasures deposited in 

 his museum. 



The ' Ducatus ' is the principal literary work for which we are 

 indebted to him. As a kind of supplement to it, he published, in 

 1724, a history of the Church of Leeds, under the title ' Vicaria Leo- 

 diensis,' which, like his former work, has many things not strictly 

 belonging to his subject, but in themselves valuable. A new edition 

 of the ' Ducatus,' containing also all the matter of the ' Vicaria ' which 

 properly belonged to Leeds, was published by Thomas Dunham 

 Whitaker, LL.D., in 1816. The writings of Bishop Kicolson, Bishop 

 Gibson, Obadiah Walker, Calamy, Strype, Hearne, and many other 

 persons, show how willing Thoresby was to give assistance to any of 

 his literary friends in their various publications. He died in 1725. 



Thoresby kept during the greater part of his life an exact diary of 

 each day's occurrences. Large extracts from the portions which 

 remain of it were published in two octavo volumes in 1830, and two 

 more volumes were published at the same time of selections from the 

 letters of his various friends ; these were published under the care of 

 Mr. Hunter. They exhibit the peculiar features of a somewhat remark- 

 able character, and the particular incidents of his life. An ample 

 account of Thoresby may be found in the 'Biographia Britaunica,' and 

 another prefixed to Dr. Whitaker's edition of his topographical work. 



THORILD, THOMAS, an eccentric Swedish poet and political 

 speculator, the author of several works not only in Swedish but in 

 English and German, to some of which his countrymen ascribe a high 

 value, was born on the 18th of April 1759, in the parish of Svarteborg 

 in Bohusliin. His father's name was Thoren, which the son, after 

 bearing for some time, changed to that of Thorild, for what reason is 

 not apparent. After studying at Lund he took up his residence in 

 Stockholm, and his first work ' Passionerna,' an Ode on the Passions, 

 was criticised with some severity by Kellgren (KELLGREN), and in con- 

 sequence a lengthy paper war took place between the two which 

 brought Thorild's name into notice. In 1786 he addressed a pair 

 of memorials, one to the king, the other to the people, in favour of 

 liberty of the press, and was so disgusted at the little effect they 

 produced, that for that and other reasons he determined to transfer 

 himself to England. " England,'' he declared, " was the fatherland of 

 his soul, he was born for it, if not in it." Before going however, he 

 wished to obtain the degree of doctor at the University of Upsal, with 

 the view of inspiring more respect. His public disputation for a 

 degree on the 22nd of March 1788 was the most remarkable ever 

 known at that university. The king, Gustavus III., and all his court 

 were present, and among the opponents of Thorild on his theme, 

 which was ' A Criticism on Montesquieu/ were fifteen of the courtiers, 

 one of whom was the minister Schroderheim, another the poet 

 Leopold, at that time the leading poet of Sweden. The king was, it is 

 said, struck with admiration at the talents of Thorild, and testified a 

 desire to take him under his patronage; but much of this rests on 

 Thorild's own testimony, and he was throughout life remarkable for 

 inordinate self-conceit. If an offer was really made it did not prevent 

 him from coming to England. His object in doing so, as appears 

 from some private letters to his patron Tham, a dry antiquary, 

 who supplied him with money, was to effect a ' World Revo- 

 lution.' "To understand and to act were," Thorild said, "the two 

 great attributes of humanity. He who excels in one is called a 

 Genius, in the other a Hero. The legislative power ought to be in the 

 possession of Genius, and as mankind requires an armed executive 

 also, that power ought to be in the possession of Heroes. Scoundrels 

 that is, kings, ministers, and priests should receive a warning, and 

 if any did not attend to it, the sentence should then be passed on 

 them 'Feriendus' (To be Struck)." " This is a hero-worship," says 



