DICLINOUS 



DICTATOR 



exaggeration which produces the happiest effect*. 

 In the hand* of his imitators it become** grotesque 

 and intolerable. 



io liis great and splendid gallery of portrait* 

 it is difficult to-p.-ak briefly. Tin- whole of London 

 lit.- tin- life of i he streets, of the city, of the 

 middle class -eem- at first sight depicted in this 

 gallery. Here are merchant, shopkeeper, and clerk, 

 lawyer and client, moneylender and victim, dress 

 Baker, actor one knows not what. Vet there are 

 great omissions. The scholar, the divine, the 

 statesman, the country gentleman arealtscnt, partly 

 because Dickens had no knowledge of them, and 

 partly because he forehore to hold them up to the 

 ridicule which he loved to pour over his character-,. 

 His methods imposed upon him certain limitation- ; 

 he aimed at commanding his readers' attention by 

 compelling laughter and tears, but especially 

 laughter. He who can command neither the one 

 nor the other is no true artist in fiction. Hut in hi- 

 laughter and in his tears one feels always the 

 kindly heart as well as the skilful hand. It is for 

 the former for the deeply human heart even more 

 than for the latter that the world will continue to 

 love the memory of Charles Dickens. 



See his Letters, edited by his daughter ( 1880-82 ) ; his 

 Life by Forster ( 1871-74 ) ; the little Life by Marziala 

 ( 1887 ), with bibliography by Anderson ; Charle Dickens 

 in Pen and Pencil, by F. G. Kitton ( 1889) ; The Child- 

 hood- of Dickens, by R. Langton < 1891 ) ; .his Letters to 

 Wilkie Colling ( 1892) My Father as I Recall Him, by 

 Hiss Mamie Dickens ( 1897 ) ; and the study by G. Gissing 

 (1898). See articles CRI'IKSHANK, BROWNK( HABurrK.). 



Diclinous, a Linmean term for flowers possess- 

 ing stamens or pistils only Moiuxcia Dicecia, and 

 Polygamia. 



Dicotyle'dons. The fact that the majority of 

 young seedlings exhibit two small seed-leaves or 

 cotyledons on germination must have been familiar 

 from time immemorial, while the classificatory im- 

 portance of this character in broadly separating the 

 obviously flowering plants into two great groups of 

 dicotyledons and monocotyledons was thus natu- 

 rally one of the earliest conceptions of systematic 

 botany, having been adopted by Linmcus from 

 Ray, and doubtless by him in turn from earlier 

 writers. We now distinguish phanerogams into 

 Gymnosperms ( cycads, conifers, and gnetums ), and 

 Angiosperms characterised by the pos^-ssion of a 

 closed ovary : of these the monocotyledon! and 

 dicotyledons are the main alliances, the latter leing 

 on the whole the more evolved. The embryo of 

 dicotyledons possesses, with rare exceptions ( usually 

 due to parasitic degeneration e.g. Dodder, q.v.), 

 two cotyledons facing each other, and more or less 

 embracing the plumule, while the albumen i> 

 generally proportionally less in quantity than in 

 monocotyledons, and. in fact, is frequently absorbed 

 altogether; these differences being explained 

 through a more precocious acceleration of develoji 

 inent (see Ovri.K, SEED). The cotyledons usually 

 develop equally, but one may lie more or less com 

 pletely arrested. 



The fibro-vascular bundles of dicotyledons are 

 open and collateral, with few exceptions arranged 

 in a reticulated cylinder, which thus presents a 

 single circle in transverse section. The pan-n 

 cliyma in which they lie is thus divided into two 

 main regions the cortical layer or cellular en- 

 velope, ami the pith: while the intermediate 

 spokes of parenchvmatous tissue OOHMetfattj the 

 pith and cortex through the meshes of the cylinder 

 are the medullary rays. While the film, vascular 

 bundles of dicotyledons arise like those of 

 cryptogams and monocotyledons, by the differen- 

 tiation into wood and bast of a special strand of 

 primitive embryonic tissue continuous with that 

 of the growing point, they differ in a marked 

 155 



tendene\ to i mbrxonic |>ersistenee of * central 



I tin- ax th<- < umliiiiiii . ( > i. and hence In 



so many group* of dicotyledon* there arfaes that 



association of JH'Icnililil h. ilot .in. I continuous 



growth of -i. -in to \\iu.-li MI- ., our familiar 

 shrubs and treed. See VEGETABLE I'HYRIOLOOY, 

 i>, KAKK, i:\-i -.;,.. the cambium lice 

 between the wood and ba-t. the n-w hivm of wood 

 are external to the older on.-., but thoae of ba*t 

 internal to their prcde'e*mir> : hence l.n,-ll. \ 

 name <"</> >- ;ipt to I*- misleading. The 

 ness and delicacy of the cambium layer leads, when 



.-applied, totheea-y -piuat loll of tin- \m*t 

 elements of the fiblo \a-ellla bundle-, alollg With 



the cortical parenchyma and epidermic layer, ait the 

 //**//. a structure, or rather juxtaposition of utrur- 

 tures, unknown in Monocotyledon* (q 



The reticulated character of the bundles of the 

 -tem iH similarly present in the leaf, which thus 

 presents a marked contrast to the usually (tarallel 

 venation of the monocotyledon-. The 'leaf also 

 presents far greater variety of fonn and adaptation 

 (see LEAK). 



The flower has most frequently it* part* arranged 

 in whorls of live, although four is also a not m 

 mon number ; hence another very ol-vioiis distine 

 tion from monocotyledons, in which a .'t merous 

 symmetry prevails. The outer |erianth whorl is 

 most frequently green, as a calyx. See FI.OWEB, 



PHANEROGAMIC, and VEGETABLE KlN<;l*OM; also 



ANGIOSPERMS, and MONOCOTYLEDONS. 



Di'cranum, a genus of mosses, of which some 

 are among the commoner British forms. See 



MOSSES. 



DirtaniniiK. See DITTANY. 



Dk'ta'tor, in the earliest times, was the name 



of the highest magistrate of the l^itin Confedera- 

 tion, and in some of the Latin towns the title was 

 continued long after these towns were subjected to 

 the dominion of Rome. In the Koinan Republic 

 the dictator was an extraordinary magistrate, irre- 

 sponsible and endowed with absolute authority, 

 whose original name was /////./ANT fwfiuli. The 

 frequency of crises, or critical periods, in the quick, 

 aggressive growth of the Unman state, necew>iUted 

 such an office. The first dictator (T. Larcius or 

 M. Valerius) was appointed 501 B.C., nine years 

 after the expul-ion of the Tarquins. According 

 t<> l.i\ \ , the immediate cause of this dictatorship 

 was a formidable war with the Latins. In general. 

 no one could l>e appointed dictator who had not 

 been previously consul, and this condition was very 

 rarely dispensed with. Niehuhr is of opinion that 

 the dictator was originally created or elected by 

 the curia, like the kings, but it is more probable 

 that the senate passed a decree ordering one of 

 the consuls to name or proclaim (dicerc) a dictator. 

 Originally, of course, the dictator wa a patrician ; 

 the first jilelM-ian who filled the office being C. 

 Man-in- Kutilu-. :C>C> It < . \ ho wu* nominated 

 hv the plebeian con-.nl M. l'oi>illiu LJPMM. The 

 dictatorship could not lawfully be held laager 

 than six months, nor was it ever so. except in 

 the cases tif Sulla and Cn*ar, which were altot;rih. t 

 pe.-uliar. It must not U> HUp|Nwed that durioj; 

 a dictatorship the functions of the other magis- 

 trate* were (Micitively Mis|ended. The consuU and 

 other regular authorities oomtflMd i; disrham 

 their proper duties, but in Mibnrdination to lite 

 dictator ; Wing for the time Minply hi* officer*. The 

 su|M-riority of his jM>wer. when com (tared with that 

 of the consuls. ap|>enn chiefly in the*e three points: 

 he wa- far more independent* of the senate : he had 

 a mon- extensive power of punishment, without any 

 appeal ; and he could not lie called to acmunt after 

 his altdicalion of the dictatorship for anything 

 h- had done during the period of nis office. TM 



