704 



DAY-FLY 



DEACON 



Edgeworth (q.v.). In 1765 he entered the Middle 

 Temple, in 1775 was called to the bar, but he 

 never practised. A good, clever eccentric, a 

 disciple of Rousseau, he brought up two children, 

 an orphan blonde and a foundling brunette, one of 

 whom should presently become his wife. That 

 scheme miscarried ; and, admitted to the Lichfield 

 coterie, he proposed first to Honora Sneyd, next to 

 her younger sister Elizabeth. She sent him to 

 France to acquire the French graces ; as acquired 

 by him, they but moved her to laughter. Finally 

 in 1778 he married an appreciative heiress, Esther 

 Milnes, and spent with her eleven happy years, 

 farming on philanthropic and costly principles in 

 Essex and Surrey, till on 28th September 1789 he 

 was killed by a fall from a colt he was breaking in. 

 His wife died broken-hearted two years afterwards, 

 and both lie in Wargrave churchyard near Henley. 

 Two only of Day's eleven works call for mention 

 The Dying Negro (1773), and the History of Sand- 

 ford 'and Merton (3 vols. 1783-89). The poem 

 struck the keynote of the anti-slavery movement ; 

 the child's book, like its author, is sometimes ridi- 

 culous, but always excellent. See Day's Life by 

 Keir (1791) and Blackman (1862); also Miss 

 Thackeray's Boole of Sibyls (1883). 



Day-fly. See EPHEMERA. 



Day-lily (Hemerocallis), a perennial herbaceous 

 genus of Liliace.e, so named from the ephemeral 

 duration of its individual flowers, which, liowever, 

 succeed each other freely upon the peculiar in- 

 florescence (a helicoid cyme). Several species are 

 cultivated in our flower-gardens, especially the 

 fragrant Yellow Day-lily (H. flava], a native of 



Yellow Day-lily (Hemerocallis flava). 



warmer Europe, Southern Siberia, and Northern 

 China, and H. fulva, from the Levant. Both 

 species, but particularly the latter, have been re- 

 commended as sources of green fodder for cattle. 



Dayton, capital of Montgomery county, Ohio, 

 the fifth city of the state in point of population and 

 of wealth, is situated on the Great Miami, at the 

 mouth of the Mad River, 60 miles NNE. of Cincin- 

 nati by rail. The streets are broad, the private 

 residences generally handsome ; the public build- 

 ings include a court-house of white marble, a large 

 aol, a number of schools, and about fifty churches, 

 tanding on the line of the Miami Canal (opened 

 1829), the city is the terminus of eight railroads, 

 and the water of the Mad River is brought through 

 its streets by an hydraulic canal, supplying abund- 



ant water-power. It has numerous and import- 

 ant manufactures, including railroad-cars, cotton, 

 woollen, and iron goods, oil, flour, paper, and 

 machinery. Dayton is the headquarters of the Gyp- 

 sies in the United States. Pop. (1870) 30,473; (1880) 

 38,678 ; ( 1890) 61,220 ; ( 1900) 85,333. 



D'Azara, FELIX, naturalist, was born in Aragon 

 in 1746, entered the army, and in 1781 was 

 appointed a commissioner for defining 1/iie Spanish 

 and Portuguese possessions in South America. He 

 wrote an important Natural History of the Quad- 

 rupeds of Paraguay (1801 ; Eng. trans. 1838), and 

 Voyages dans I'Amerique Meridionale(\o\&. 1809). 

 He died in Spain in 1811. 



D'Azeglio. See AZEGLIO. 



Deacon, lit. a 'servant' or 'follower' (and, in 

 that sense, found in classic and also in Hellenistic 

 Greek), became in ecclesiastical usage the name 

 for an office-bearer in the Christian church. In 

 Acts vi. we read of the appointment of seven men 

 chosen by the laity and ordained by the apostles 

 to attend to the finances of the infant church, and 

 to see that its alms are fairly distributed. The 

 name deacon is not applied to them. They are to 

 be spiritually-minded men; they are solemnly set 

 apart from the rest of the congregation ; and almost 

 immediately they are found preaching and baptising 

 ( Acts, vi. vii. and viii. 38 ) ; and the most distin- 

 guished of them, St Stephen, dies as the first Chris- 

 tian martyr. In the epistle to the Philippians they 

 are named along with the bishops, and in the pas- 

 toral epistles they are recognised as part of the 

 Christian ministry (1 Tim. iii. 8-13) without any 

 special reference to financial duties. Chrysostom 

 suggested that the appointment in the Acts was of 

 a temporary nature, and distinct from the sacred 

 ministry of the diaconate subsequently instituted ; 

 and this view obtained some sanction from the 

 sixth General Council. But a great Anglican anti- 

 quary, Bingham (supported in this matter by the 

 Roman Catholics Thomassinus and Petavius), takes 

 the opposite side, and is able to appeal to Justin 

 Martyr, Irenseus, Hilary, Cyprian, ana other doctors, 

 to the effect that the seven were truly deacons in 

 the later sense, and were authorised by the apostles 

 to undertake these higher functions. The number 

 seven continued to be adhered to in many churches 

 e.g. at Rome, until the llth century, when the 

 number was doubled. 



During the 2d and 3d centuries, the duties falling 

 to the deacons had considerably increased ; and since 

 as confidential attendants and helpers of the bishops, 

 they had risen into consequence, it became neces- 

 sary to divide the various functions among an arch- 

 deacon, deacons, and sub-deacons. Deacons might 

 now dispense the bread and wine at the communion, 

 but not consecrate them. They had to receive the 

 offerings and presents for the bishop, to keep the 

 sacred vessels, to chant the introductory formulas 

 of public worship, arid to take the oversight of the 

 morals of the congregation; and they were allowed, 

 in many cases, with the leave of the bishop, to 

 preach and baptise, and receive penitents into the 

 communion of the church. At an early period, the 

 offices of archdeacon and deacon were considered to 

 belong to the higher orders of consecration (ordines 

 majores) : this was not the case with that of sub- 

 deacon till after the 12th century. At the conse- 

 cration of a deacon, according to the Roman rite, 

 certain sacred vessels may be handed to him as 

 symbols of his office ; but this does not seem to be 

 regarded as essential. In the Greek rite the 

 flabellum. ( a fan for driving away flies from the 

 sacred elements) is given to the deacon. The 

 peculiar robes are the dalmatica and the stole, but 

 the stole (both in East and West) is only placed 

 over the left shoulder. 



