124 



CHARLESTON 



CHARON 



28th June 1776 a British squadron attacked the 

 garrison on Sullivan's Island, consisting of 400 

 men under Colonel Moultrie, who defended the 

 place with success. Charleston was afterwards 

 besieged by Sir Henry Clinton from April 1, 1780, 

 to May 12, when it was surrendered by General 

 Lincoln. On the 12th of April 1861, the Confed- 

 erates initiated the civil war by the bombardment 

 of Fort Sumter, which they took the next day. 

 In 1861 about half the city was destroyed by fire, 

 and a considerable part was not rebuilt until after 

 1865. In April 1863 a Federal fleet of nine ironclad 

 vessels, commanded by Admiral Dupont, attacked 

 the fortifications of Charleston without success. 

 After a long siege the place was evacuated by the 

 Confederates, February 17, 1865. On 31st August 

 1886 the city was visited by a severe earthquake ; 

 nearly 7000 buildings were either destroyed or 

 seriously injured, and several lives were lost. The 

 earthquake was followed by a very general recon- 

 struction of the business part of the city. Pop. 

 (1800) 18,711; (1820)24,780; (1840)29,261; (1860) 

 40,522 ; ( 1870) 48,956 ; ( 1880) 49,984 ; ( 1890) 54,955 

 ( more than half coloured ) ; ( 1900 ) 55,807. Charles- 

 ton was the state capital till 1790. 



Charleston, a city, the capital of West Vir- 

 ginia and of Kanawha county, is situated on the 

 Great Kanawha River, at the mouth of the Elk, 

 369 miles WNW. of Richmond by rail. Large 

 quantities of bituminous, coal and salt are procured 

 near by. Charleston was made state-capital in 

 1885, having been so previously from 1870 to 1875. 

 Pop. (1880) 4192; (1890) 6734. 



Charlestown (Massachusetts). See BOSTON 

 and BUNKER HILL. 



Charlet, NICOLAS TOUSSAINT, a French 

 painter and engraver, born at Paris in 1792, held 

 a clerkship under the Empire, but lost it at the 

 Restoration ( 1815), and in consequence betook him- 

 self to art. After studying awhile under Gros, he 

 gradually formed for himself a style in which he 

 had no rival. The Beranger of caricature, he was 

 especially successful in his sketches of children and 

 military incident. His drawings numbered about 

 2000. Charlet died October 29, 1845. See his Life 

 by Lacombe ( 1856) and the study by Dayot (1892). 



Charleville, a town in the French department 

 of Ardennes, on the Meuse, opposite Mezieres, 

 with which it communicates by a suspension 

 bridge. It has manufactures of hardware, leather, 

 and beer ; and the Meuse affords facilities for trade 

 in coal, iron, slate, wine, and nails. Pop. (1872) 

 12,059; (1886) 16,856; (1891) 16,440. 



Charlevoix, PIERKE FRANCOIS XAVIER DE, 

 a French Jesuit traveller, was born in St Quentin 

 in 1682, twice visited Canada, and voyaged down 

 the Mississippi to New Orleans. He published his 

 journal, histories of San Domingo, Japan, and 

 Paraguay, and a Histoire de la Nouvelle France 

 (1744; Eng. trans. New York, 6 vols. 1865-72). 

 He died at La Fleche in 1761. 



Charlock. See MUSTARD. 



Charlotte, capital of Mecklenburg county, 

 North Carolina, 265 miles ENE. of Atlanta, is 

 the terminus of several railways, has manufac- 

 tures of carriages, cotton goods, tobacco, &c. , and 

 is the seat of a Presbyterian university (1867). 

 Pop. (1880) 7094; (1890) 11,555. 



Charlotte, PRINCESS, born at Carlton House, 

 London, 7th January 1796, was the only child of 

 the future George IV. and Caroline of Brunswick, 

 who parted immediately after her birth. A bright, 

 lively, warm-tempered girl, she was brought up in 

 strict seclusion, under various governesses and 

 sub-governesses, seeing her father rarely, and her 

 mother only for two hours a week. Her six 



months' engagement to Prince William of Orange 

 she herself broke off in June 1814, greatly to 

 George's fury ; had the match come off it might 

 have been as momentous in its consequences as- 

 that of the Princess Mary to another Prince 

 William of Orange. On 2d May 1816 she married 

 Prince Leopold or Saxe-Coburg ; but the marriage, 

 a happy one, was cut short on 5th November 1817 

 by her death, after giving birth to a still-born boy. 

 See the Memoir by Lady Rose Weigall (1874\ 

 and the monograph by Mrs Herbert Jones ( 1885 ). 



Charlotte Amalie, the capital of the West 

 Indian island of St Thomas (q.v. ). 



Cliarlotteilhurg, a town of Prussia, on the 

 Spree, 3 miles W. of Berlin, with which it is con- 

 nected by a road leading through the Thiergarten. 

 It contains a royal palace, which was founded in 

 1696 for Sophie Charlotte, the second wife of 

 Frederick I., and which has a fine park, with a 

 large orange-grove, a theatre, and a mausoleum ; 

 here are the remains of Frederick William III. and 

 his queen, with their statues by Rauch, and here 

 their son, the Emperor William I., was interred in 

 1888. In the town are a royal institute of glass- 

 painting, an artillery and engineering school ; the 

 manufactures include iron-wares, machinery, por- 

 celain, glass, paper, leather, chemicals, and beer. 

 Pop. (1885) 42,371 ; (1890, as extended) 76,859. 



Charlottetown, the capital of Prince 

 Edward Island, on the south coast, stands on the 

 Hillsborough estuary, which forms a secure and 

 commodious harbour for the largest vessels. The 

 town has two colleges, an iron-foundry, a woollen- 

 factory, and shipbuilding yards. Pop. ( 1881 ) 

 11,485; (1891) 11,374. 



Charm (through Fr. from Lat. carmen, 'a 

 song'), properly a form of words, generally in 

 verse, supposed to possess some occult power of a 

 hurtful, a healing, or a protective kind ; hence 

 applied to anything which exercises an irresistible 

 power to please and attract. Charms exert their 

 influence either by being recited, or by being 

 written and worn on the person ; and, in this 

 latter case, they may be classed with Amulets 

 (q.v.). The nature of this superstition is consid- 

 ered under INCANTATION ; see also MAGIC. 



Charnel-house, a chamber situated in a 

 churchyard or other burying-place, in which the 

 bones of the dead which were thrown up by the 

 grave-diggers were reverently deposited. It was. 

 often a chapel with a vault beneath. 



Charnock, JOB, went to India about 1655, and 

 as head of the factory at Hiigli, transferred the 

 headquarters to Calcutta (thus founding the city) 

 in 1686-90. He died in 1693. 



Charnwood Forest. See LEICESTERSHIRE. 



Charolais is a district in the French depart- 

 ment of Sa6ne-et-Loire, noted for its fine cattle. 



Charon, in classical mythology, the son of 

 Erebus and Nox, is first mentioned by the later 

 writers of Greece. His duty was to ferry the 

 shades of the buried dead across the rivers of the 

 under- world. For this service he exacted , an 

 obolus from each, and consequently this coin 

 was placed in the mouth of the dead. If this 

 rite was neglected, Charon refused to convey 

 the unhappy shade across, and it was doomed to 

 wander restlessly along the shores of Acheron. He 

 is generally represented as a gloomy old man, with 

 a rough beard and wretched clothes. In the 

 Etruscan monuments he holds a hammer. In the 

 folklore of modern Greece Charon still survives 

 as a kind of shadowy representative of death 

 and a mysterious under- world. (The Greek is 

 char on ; the English pronunciation, kdron. ) 



