OHATTAHOOCHEE 



CM ATTMIiToN 



135 



I 



domain was purchased by Sir William Cavendish, 

 \\lio in 1553 oegan the old mansion, which, after 

 his death in I.V>7, was completed ly hi> idow, 

 Hi Hardwick,' afterwards Countess of Shrews- 

 bury. Mere Mary, ,>ueen of Scots \v;is live tiim^ 

 imprisoned during l.~>7.'< si. The present edifice in 

 eludes the (.1.1 1'alladiati pile built in 1087-17<Mi by 

 tin- first Duke of Devonshire, and tin- north wing 

 .add.-d in 1820. The facade is 720 feet long, or \\ith 

 tin- terraces, 1200 feet. The building is nearly a 

 square, with an inner quadrangle. Chatsworth is 

 lamed for its library, and for its pictures and sculp- 

 tures by Holbein, Titian, Teniers, Murillo, Rey- 

 nolds, Landseer, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Chantrey, 

 fcc. Tin- gardens and park, 10 miles in circuit, offer 

 an exquisite variety of hill and dale. They were 

 laid out by London and Paxton, and are celebrated 

 for their trees, ahrubs, rockwork, deer, and water- 

 works only surpassed by those at Versailles. The 

 conservatory, unrivalled in Europe, covers nearly 

 an acre, measures 300 by 145 feet, is 65 feet high, 

 and has 70,000 square feet of glass, with a carriage- 

 road through it. Hobbes, the philosopher, lived 

 much at Chatsworth. See CAVENDISH. 



ChattallOO'chee, a headstrearn of the Appa- 

 lachicola (q.v. ). 



Chattanooga, capital of Hamilton county, 

 Tennessee, a snipping centre on the Tennessee 

 Iliver, 151 miles SE. of Nashville, with good rail- 

 way connections. The town has cotton and other 

 manufactories, ironworks, tanneries, and sawmills. 

 There was much fighting near here during the civil 

 war. Pop. (1870) 6093 ; (1880) 12,892 ; (1890) 29,100. 



Chattel ( Old Fr. chatel, from Low Lat. capitale, 

 meaning the capital or principal sum in a loan ; 

 hence goods in general, especially cattle, as dis- 

 tinguished from land), in the law of England, is a 

 term used to designate any kind of property which, 

 with reference either to the nature or the subject 

 or the character of the interest possessed in it, is 

 not freehold. Ownership in personal or movable 

 property is generally absolute. Any estate or 

 interest in lands and tenements not amounting to 

 freehold is a chattel. But as, between property 

 thus ' savouring of realty ' and mere personal 

 movables money, plate, cattle, and the like 

 there was a manifest distinction, chattels were, 

 consequently, distinguished into chattels-real and 

 chattels-personal. These classes of property differ 

 considerably as to the method of holding and trans- 

 ferring them and their devolution on death. For 

 treatment of real and personal property, see KEAL. 



Chatterer, a significant popular name, often 

 applied to the birds of a small family (Ampelidte) 

 of finch -like Perching birds ( Insessores ). The short 

 broad beak with only a hint of a hook, the soft 

 plumage, and tolerably long wings are character- 

 istics of the family. Only about nine species, of 

 small size, are known, and confined to the warmer 

 parts of the nearctic and palaearctic regions. The 

 Bohemian Waxwing (Ampelis garrulus), living in 

 the north of Europe, Asia, and America, but com- 

 ing south in winter, sometimes in vast numbers, 

 and the Cedar Bird of America are the best-known 

 examples. See WAXWINO. 



Chatterton, THOMAS, was born at Bristol, 

 20th November 1752. His father, a sub-chanter in 

 the cathedral, and master of a charity school, was 

 a roysterinjj fellow, yet a lover of boons and coins, 

 a dabbler in magic ; he had died in the August 

 before the poet was born. The mother, a poor 

 schoolmistress and needlewoman, brought up her 

 boy and his sister beneath the shadow of St Mary 

 Redcliffe, that glorious church where their fore- 

 fathers had been sextons since the days of Eliza- 

 beth. He seemed a dull, dreamy child till his 

 -seventh year ; then he ' fell in love ' with an old 



illuminated music folio, and, quickly learning to 

 read from a black-letter Bible, began to devour 

 every book that fell in his way. He wan a scholar 

 of Colston's bluecoat hospital from 1700 till 17'i7, 

 and then he was bound apprentice to Lambert, an 

 attorney. In December 1762 he wrote his first 

 poem, On the Last Epiphany : in the summer of 

 1764, the first of his pseudo-antiques, Elinmtr and 

 .1 'Kin, which imposed on the junior usher of his 

 school, and which he professed to have got from 

 Canynge's Coffer in the muniment room of St 

 Mary's. Next, early in 1767, for one Burgum, a 

 pewterer, he concocted a pedigree of the De Berg- 

 ham family (this brought him five shillings); and 

 in 1768 he hoaxed the whole city with a descrip- 

 tion, 'from an old manuscript,' of the opening of 

 Bristol Bridge in 1248. 



His life at Lambert's was a sordid one ; he slept 

 with the footboy, and took his meals in the kitchen. 

 Yet, his duties over and lie discharged them 

 well he had ample leisure for his darling studies, 

 poetry, history, Heraldry, music, antiquities. An 

 attempt to draw Dodsley had failed, when, in 

 March 1769, he sent Horace Walpole a ' transcript' 

 of The Ryse of Peyncteynge, tvritten by T. Rowtie, 

 1469, for Mastre L'anynge. Walpole, quite taken 

 in, wrote at once to his unknown correspondent, 

 expressing a thousand thanks for the manuscript, 

 deploring his ignorance of the ' Saxon language,' 

 and half offering to "usher the Rowley poems to the 

 world. Back came a fresh batch of manuscript, 

 and with it a sketch of Chatterton's own history. 

 The poems, however, being shown to Mason and 

 Gray, were pronounced by them to be forgeries ; 

 and Walpole s next letter was a letter of advice, 

 to stick to his calling, that so, ' when he should 

 have made a fortune, he might unbend himself 

 with the studies consonant to liis inclinations. ' A 

 curt request for the return of the MSS. lay six weeks 

 unanswered during W'alpole's absence in Paris. A 

 second, still curter ; and, ' snapping up poems and 

 letters,' Walpole ' returned both to nim, and 

 thought no more of him or them ' until, two years 

 after, Goldsmith told him of Chatterton's death. 



Was it jest or grim earnest, a boyish freak or a 

 suicide's farewell, that ' Last Will and Testament 

 of Thomas Chatterton . . . executed in the pres- 

 ence of Omniscience this 14th of April 1770?' 

 Anyhow, falling into his master's hands, it pro- 

 cured the hasty cancelling of his indentures ; and 

 ten days later the boy quitted Bristol for London. 

 There he arrived with his poems, and perhaps five 

 guineas in his pocket, and lodged first at one 

 Walmslev's, a plasterer, in Shoreditch ; next, from 

 the middle .of June, at Brooke Street, Holborn. 

 Abstemious, sleepless, he fell to work as with a 

 hundred hands, pouring forth satires, squibs, 

 stories, political essays, burlettas, epistles in 

 Junius' style ( for ' Wilkes and liberty ' ), and the 

 matchless Balade of Charitie. For a while his 

 prospects seemed golden. The publishers spoke 

 him fair ; he obtained an interview with the Lord 

 Mayor Beckford ; in the first two months he earned 

 eleven guineas (at the rate of from a farthing to 

 twopence a line) ; and he sent home glowing let t-r>. 

 with a box of presents for his mother and sister. 

 Then Beckford died ; the ' patriotic ' publishers 

 took fright ; the dead season set in ; he had over- 

 stocked the market with unpaid wares ; a last 

 desperate application failed for the post of surgeon 

 to a Bristol slaver. He was penniless, starving, yet 

 too proud to accent the meal his landlady offered 

 him, when, on 24th August 1770, he locked himself 

 into his garret, tore up his papers, and was found 

 the next morning dead poisoned with arsenic. 

 They buried him in the paupers' pit of the Shoe 

 Lane W T orkhouse, a site usurped fifty-six years 

 later by Farringdon Market. 



