740 



DELHI 



DELIRIUM 



covering in all an area of 1600 feet by 3200, ex- 

 clusive of gateways. The beautiful inlaid work 

 and carving of these buildings are the admiration 

 of the world, and the diwan-i-khas is worthy of 

 its famous inscription : ' If there is a heaven on 

 earth, it is this it is this ! ' In the heart of the 

 city stands the Jama Masjid ('great moaque'), 

 one of the largest and finest structures of the kind 

 in India, which also owes its origin to Shah Jehan. 

 Among the notable monuments in the neighbour- 

 hood are the imperial tombs, including that of 

 Hamayun, second of the Mogul dynasty ; the old 

 Kala Masjid, or black mosque ; and the famous 

 Kutab Minar, 10 miles to the south. The Minar, 

 erected by Kutab-ud-din, founder of a dynasty, 

 early in the 13th century, is 238 feet high, and 

 tapers gracefully from a diameter of 47 feet at 

 the base to 9 feet at the summit. It incloses a 

 winding staircase, and is garlanded with inscrip- 

 tions from the Koran. Modern Delhi is noted for 

 its broad main streets, the chief being the Chandni 

 Chauk, or Silver Street, with its high clock-tower, 

 and the institute and museum. The Delhi College, 

 once a famous oriental school, has been abolished, 

 government having withdrawn the collegiate staff 

 of teachers to concentrate the grant upon the cen- 

 tral institution at Lahore. Delhi has a large trade 

 in wheat and other produce, and its bazaars are 

 noted for gold and silver work, precious stones, 

 shawls, and costly fabrics. It is a great native 

 banking centre. Across the river is the ruined fort 

 of Salirngarh, and traces of an ancient city. Pop. 

 (1891) 193,580. more than half Hindus. 



The name Dilli or Dillipur first appears in 1st 

 century B.C., and is connected with the famous 

 iron pillar of Raja Dhava, a solid shaft of metal, 

 set up in the 3d or 4th century, which is 16 inches 

 in diameter, and 50 feet long, and which is so 

 firmly planted that only half or it is above ground. 

 This indisputable relic bears a Sanskrit inscription, 

 in which the name of the city is mentioned. Delhi 

 was the capital of the Afghan or Pathan, and 

 afterwards of the Mogul, empire. It was taken 

 by a British army under Lord Lake, September 8, 

 1803, and has ever since if we except the brief 

 period when it was held by the mutineers in 1857 

 continued under British rule. In our own time, 

 Delhi has been rendered memorable by the events 

 of 1857. The march on the city of the mutineers 

 from Meerut; the terrible llth of May; the ex- 

 plosion of the powder-magazine by Willoughby and 

 nis heroic band ; the assault, when the city was 

 won ( September 20 ) gate by gate and quarter by 

 quarter a success saddened by the death of the 

 gallant Nicholson ; the subsequent daring capture 

 of the king of Delhi by Hodson of Hodson's Horse ; 

 and the capture and shooting of his miscreant 

 sons by the same officer, are memorable events in 

 Indian history. A memorial to Willoughby was 

 erected by government in 1888. In 1877 Delhi was 

 the scene of the famous Durbar at which the Queen 

 was proclaimed Empress of India. Delhi is now 

 the most European ised of all the cities in the 

 interior of India, and the removal of some of the 

 old gates was among the improvements con- 

 templated in 1888. The district has an area of 

 1277 sq. m., and a pop. of 638,689. The trade and 

 manufactures of the district centre in the town 

 of Delhi. There is a branch of the East Indian 

 Railway, and the Rajputana State Railway tra- 

 verses the district for about 13 miles. Of about 

 820 sq. m. under cultivation, over a sixth are irri- 



fated from government canals, and a smaller part 

 y private enterprise. To the south, the district 

 is rocky and barren. The soil along the alluvial 

 margin of the Jumna is fertile, but better crops 

 are produced in the tract artificially irrigated by 

 the Western Jumna Canal. The division of Delhi 



comprises the three districts of Delhi, Gurgaon, and 

 Karnal, with an area of 5610 sq. m., and a pop. 

 of over two millions, nearly 75 per cent, of whom 

 are Hindus. 



Delibes, LEON, a French composer, born in 

 1836 at St Germain du Val, in the Sarthe, entered 

 the Paris Conservatoire in 1848, and in 1855 pro- 

 duced an operetta, Deux Sacs de Charbon. At the 

 Grand Opera, where he became second director in 

 1865, his music for the ballet La Source (1866) 

 met with great success, and his ballet-music for 

 Coppelia (1870), his finest work, secured his posi- 

 tion as a composer. He wrote music for a third 

 ballet and for three comic operas, one of which, Le 

 Roi I'd dit (1873), became very popular. In 1880 

 Delibes was appointed professor in the Conserva- 

 toire. He died January 16, 1891. 



Delilah (signifying, according to Bertheau, 

 ' the delicate ; ' according to Ewald, ' the traitress ' ), 

 the Philistine woman who betrayed Samson (q.v.). 



Delille, JACQUES, a writer extravagantly over- 

 rated in his lifetime, was born near Aigues-Perse 

 in Auvergne, on June 22, 1738. He was an ille- 

 gitimate child, and was brought up by charity. 

 Educated at the College de Lisieux in Paris, he 

 distinguished himself as a scholar, and obtained a 

 professorship in Amiens. His verse translation of 

 the Georgics, published in 1769, had an extra- 

 ordinary vogue, and was extolled far beyond its 

 merits by Voltaire and other critics. Its author 

 was made an academician in 1774, and, after hold- 

 ing a canonry at Moissac, was presented by the 

 Comte d'Artois with the abbacy of Saint-Severin, 

 the income of which amounted to 30,000 livres a 

 year. Les Jardins, a didactic poem which D r :lille 

 published in 1782, found a vast body of readers, 

 and was generally accepted as a masterpiece. The 

 outbreak of the Revolution compelling Delille to 

 leave France, he . travelled in Switzerland and 

 Germany, and then removed to London, where he 

 occupied himself for eighteen months in translat- 

 ing the Paradise Lost. After his return to France 

 in 1802, he produced a translation of the JEneid 

 (1804) and several didactic and descriptive works 

 in verse U Imagination (1806), Les Irois Eegnes 

 (1809), and La Conversation (1812). He became 

 blind in his old age, and died on May 1, 1813. 

 During his life he was not only regarded by his 

 countrymen as the greatest French poet of the 

 day, but was even declared to be .the equal of 

 Virgil and Homer. His fame, however, suffered 

 a rapid eclipse, and his lack of poetic genius is 

 now generally admitted. He was merely a fluent 

 versifier, whose knack of turning out ingenious 

 paraphrases exactly suited the taste of his con- 

 temporaries. See Sainte-Beuve's Portraits Litte- 

 raires, vol. ii. 



Deliquescence is the term applied to the 

 property which certain substances have of absorb- 

 ing moisture from the air, and becoming damp, 

 and even running into liquid. Caustic potash, 

 and the chlorides of calcium and magnesium, 

 are examples of substances which undergo this 

 change. 



Delirium is a condition in which there is 

 perversion of the mental processes. In its essential 

 nature this symptom is analogous to insanity ; in- 

 sanity is, in short, a similar state, unaccompanied 

 by the obvious conditions which are the causes of 

 delirium. 



In health the mental processes correspond to 

 present sensory impressions or to the memory of 

 those which are past, but in delirium this corre- 

 spondence ceases, and the results of cerebral 

 activity bear no true relation to reality. De- 

 lirium has three well-known mental phenomena, 

 any or all of which may be present in any indi- 



