PERPETUITY 



PERRY 



61 



source of planetary force as well as life, whatever 

 be their modifications. See H. Dircks, Perpetnum 

 Mobile : Search for Self-motive Power ( 2d series, 

 1861-70). 



Perpetuity, in English law, means an arrange- 

 ment whereby property is tied up i.e. rendered 

 inalienalile for all time or for a very long period. 

 Testators and settlers have always been tempted 

 by family pride to restrain their successors from 

 parting with settled property, especially land ; but 

 the policy of the law requires that owners should 

 be free to dispose of their property, and perpetuities 

 are sternly discouraged. Land was formerly tied 

 up by means of Entails (q.v. ) and by the creation 

 of remainders, but these forms of disposition were 

 lirought within strict rule. Trusts were then used 

 to evade the rules of common law, but the equity 

 courts gradually evolved a rule that property should 

 not be tied up unless for the lives of persons in 

 being and twenty-one years beyond : any disposi- 

 tion which may possibly postpone the vesting of 

 property beyond that period is void. The rule 

 left a settler free, by selecting the lives of young 

 persons, to tie up his property for eighty or ninety 

 years. Thellusson, a London banker, attempted 

 to create an immense fortune by directing that 

 the income of his property should go on accumulat- 

 ing during the lives of Ins children, grandchildren, 

 and great grandchildren, living at the time of his 

 death, and for twenty-one years beyond. This led 

 to the passing of what is called the Thellusson Act 

 in 1800; the act restricts accumulation of income 

 < except for payment of debts, &c.) to a period of 

 twenty-one years from the death of the settler, or 

 some other of the limited periods described in the 

 act. It is to be observed that trusts for public and 

 charitable purposes are not, as a general rule, 

 within the scope of the law against perpetuities. 

 In the United States the rules developed by the 

 English courts have lieen generally adopted as the 

 IMISIS of the law ; several states have legislated on 

 the subject, and in some cases the local law against 

 jterpetnilies has been made a part of the state 

 constitution. 



Perpignan. a town of France, and a fortress 

 of the first rank (dept. Pyrenees-Orientales), stands 

 on the river Tet, 7 miles from the Mediterranean, 

 40 by rail S. of Narlxinne, and 17 from the Spanish 

 frontier. It commands the passes of the Eastern 

 Pyrenees, and is defended on the south by a citadel, 

 which iTicloses the old castle of the Counts of 

 Konssillon, and by a detached fort. The streets 

 HI" narrow and the houses of semi-Moorish con- 

 struction, and show evidences of Spanish influence. 

 The cathedral (begun in 1324), the Moorish-Gothic; 

 cloth-hall or bourse (1396), the town-house (1692), 

 the building of the former university ( 1349-French 

 Revolution), the palace of justice, and a college 

 are the principal public buildings and institutions. 

 Good red wine is made, sheep and silkworms are 

 bred, vegetables and fruit grown, brandy distilled, 

 cloth woven, and corks cut ; and there is a good 

 trade in wine, spirits, wool, cork-bark, oil, cloth, 

 and silk. As capital of the former county of 

 Konssillon Perpignan was in the hands of the kings 

 if Aragon from 1172 to it* capture by France in 

 1 475 ; it was restored to Spain in 1493 ; but 

 Kichelieu retook it in 1642, and France has 

 possessed it ever since. Pop. ( 1891 ) 31,432. 



Perranzabllloe ('Perran in the sands'), a 

 ComWl coast parish, 10 miles N. by W. of Truro. 

 Tlio rude little stone oratory (25 by 12J feet) of St 

 Piran, who was sent to Cornwall by St Patrick in 

 the 5th century, had Iwen buried in the sands for a 

 tlmusand years, when it was discovered in 1835; 

 it is probably the earliest ecclesiastical structure in 

 England. Perran Hound is a circular enclosure, 



with seven rows of seats that could seat 2000, in 

 which miracle plays were performed of old. See 

 works by Haslam (1844) and Trelawny (8th ed. 

 1884). 



Perrault, CHARLES, immortal as the author 

 of 'Puss-in-Boots,' 'Cinderella,' and 'Bluebeard,' 

 was born at Paris, January 12, 1628, the youngest 

 of an advocate's four sons. He was sent at nine to 

 the College de Beauvais, but quarrelled with his 

 masters, and had the rest of his education left to 

 chance. He studied law fitfully, and took his 

 license at Orleans in 1651, but soon tired of the 

 humdrum routine of the profession, and filled from 

 1654 till 1664 an easy post under his brother, the 

 Receiver-general of Paris. In 1663 he became a 

 kind of secretary or assistant to Colbert in matters 

 of architecture and art generally, and for twenty 

 years enjoyed a salary, if not his master's friend- 

 ship throughout, while by his influence he was 

 admitted to the Academy in 1671. His poem, ' Le 

 Siecle de Louis XIV., 'read to the Academy, and 

 Boileau's angry criticisms thereon, opened up the 

 famous and foolish dispute about the relative 

 merits of the ancients and moderns ; to the 

 modem cause Perrault contributed his ambitious 

 but poorly argued Parallele des Anciens et des 

 Modernes (4 vols. 1688-96). The same quarrel 

 inspired his Hloges des Homines Illustres du Siecle 

 de Louis XIV. (2 vols. folio, 102 portraits; 1696^ 

 1700), the labour of his latest years. He died 

 May 16, 1703. His Memoires appeared in 1769. 



All his writings would already have been for- 

 gotten but for the happy inspiration which 

 prompted him to publish in 1697 his eight iniinit 

 able prose fairy- tales, the II Moires ou Contes tin 

 Temps Passe, with the title on the frontispiece of 

 'Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye. ' These had already 

 appeared anonymously from 1696 to 1697 in Moet- 

 iens' Recueil, a little miscellany published at the 

 Hague since 1694. The same volume contained a 

 reprint of three tales in verse by Perrault (Pean 

 tlAne, Lea Souhaits Ridicules, and Griselidis), 

 which had already appeared both in Moetjens' 

 Recueil and in small volumes at Paris in 1694-95. 

 The prose contes, on the other hand, were expressly 

 stated to be by P. Darmancour, Perrault's little 

 boy, to whom the 'Privilege du Roy' is granted. 

 M. Paul Lacroix attributes the complete author- 

 ship to the son ; it is more reasonable to believe 

 with Andrew Lang that, if the naivete and popular 

 traditional manner point to the conservatism of 

 the child and the native inspiration of his nurse, 

 many a happy touch is due to the elderly academ- 

 ician and wit. But whatever the method of com- 

 position of these tales, the resultant is a group of 

 masterpieces in the most difficult of arts, the same 

 judgment of which is renewed generation after 

 generation. It were impertinence to praise these 

 stories ; it is enough to enumerate their names : 

 'La Belle au Bois Dormant' (The Sleeping 

 Beauty ) ; ' Le Petit Chaperon Rouge ' ( Little Red 

 Riding Hood ) ; ' La Uarbe Bleue ' ( Bluebeard ) ; 

 'Le Maistre Chat, on le Chat Botte' (Puss-in- 

 Boots); 'Les Fees '(The Fairy); ' Cendrillon, ou 

 la Petite Pantoufle de Verre ' (Cinderella) ; ' Riquet 

 a la Houppe ' ( Riquet of the Tuft) ; and ' Le Petit 

 Poucet ' ( Hop o' my Thumb, Tom Thumb). 



There are editions of the tales by Giraud (Lyons, 

 1865), Lefevre (Paris. 1875), Paul Lacroix (Jouast, 

 Paris, 1876), and Andrew Lang (Clar. Press, Oxford, 

 1888). The last has an exhaustive Introduction of 115 

 pages. See also Charles Deulin's Contes de Ma Mire 

 FOye avant Charles Perrault (Paris, 1879); and Des- 

 chanel's Soileau, Charlei Perrault, etc. (Paris, 1888). 



Perry an agreeable beverage made by ferment- 

 ing the juice of pears. It is extensively made 

 in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, 

 and Devonshire, and forms, with cider, the chief 



