T H O 



385 



T H O 



Penny Cress, have a strong alliaceous odour. They grow 

 on rocks and barren places, and are frequently found 

 amongst collections of rubbish from mines, &c., and are 

 inhabitants of most parts of the world in cold and tempe- 

 rate regions. 



Hnichinsia was named by Sir J. E. Smith after Miss 

 Hutchins of Belfast, who contributed many observations on 

 marine plants to the ' English Botany.' It has an ellip- 

 tical silicle with wingless valves, equal petals, entire 

 leaves, bractless pedicels, and variously-coloured flowers, 

 bnt never yellow. All the species are mountainous plants. 

 They possess no active properties, but are pretty little 

 plants, and will grow on rock-work or in small pots. They 

 are best grown in a soil composed of sand, loam, and peat. 

 The annual kinds may be propagated by seeds; the peren- 

 nial, by dividing the roots or by cuttings. 



The Candy-tuft is known by two of its petals being 

 larger than the other two : they are of a white or purplish 

 colour, but never yellow. They are mostly mountainous 

 plants, but grow well in gardens ; and, if the seeds are sown 

 at different periods, will blossom all the summer, and even 

 through a mild winter. The shrubbery species are also 

 well adapted for rock-work, and may be propagated by 

 cuttings. [IBKRIS.] 



Biseatella has a flat silicle with one-seeded cells, a 



long permanent style, a compressed seed, and yellow 



flowers, fhey are also alpine plants. In the 



garden they form a pretty variety with the other plants, on 



int of their yellow flowers. A dry sunny situation in 



a light sandy soil suits them best. They are best propa- 



eated l.y seeds and may be kept in blossom during the 



summer by sowing at different periods of the year. 



THOA, a genus of Polypiaria ; included by Linnaeus in 

 Sertularia. 



THOMAS, e>/uc. XQN.TI (in Greek, 



John, 



xi. 16; xx. 24), one of the twelve apostles of Christ. 

 (Matt., x. 3.) The Hebrew and Greek names both sig- 

 nify a twin. St. Thomas is presumed to have been a 

 Galilean : but no particulars of his birth-place or call to 

 the apostleship are given, and the first notice of him indi- 

 vidually is in John, xi. 40. Christ having expressed an 

 intention of returning to Judaea, in order to raise his friend 

 Lazarus from the dead, Thomas encouraged the other 

 les to attend him, although he regarded death as 

 the certain consequence of this step. The impulsiveness 

 of character thus indicated was not long after very differ- 

 ently displayed. Thomas happened to be absent when 

 Christ, after his resurrection, first appeared to the apostles ; 

 and when made acquainted with the fact, he expressed 

 an incredulity which could only be satisfied by the manual 

 evidence of inserting his finger in the holes which the 

 spear and the nails had made in the body of his crucified 

 master. Eight days after, when Christ again appeared, 

 Thomas was present ; and the reaction in his mind was 

 very strongly expressed by him, when he was pointedly 

 rolled upon by Jesus to stretch forth his hand and take 

 the desired proof. (John, xxi. 24-29.) Thomas is not 

 again mentioned in the New Testament. Doubtless he 

 laboured, like the other apostles, in the propagation of the 

 Christian doctrines : and ecclesiastical traditions make him 

 one of the apostles of the Gentiles. It is alleged that he 

 travelled eastward, and laboured among the various nations 

 which then composed the Parthian empire. (Euseb., iii. 

 1 ; Rufin., x. 9; Recognit., ix. 29.) There is a singular 

 concurrence of Oriental and Western testimony (which 

 may be seen in Assemanni and Baronius), to the effect 

 that St. Thomas extended his labours farther eastward, 

 and then southward, until he reached the coast of India 

 and Malabar, where, having exercised his apostolic labours 

 with success, he passed on to the coast of Coroman- 

 del ; and having made great conversions to the faith in 

 those parts, he proceeded over to some coast on the east, 

 called China (which may possibly have been the country 

 now called Cochin-China), and afterwards returned to Co- 

 romandel, where, having suffered martyrdom, he was 

 buried in the mount since called St. Thomas's Mount. 



In the quarters indicated there are Christian churches 

 which bear the name of St. Thomas, and claim him for their 

 founder. If they derive their existence as a church un- 

 interrupted from the apostolic age, this fact may be taken 

 as a corroboration of the above traditions. But if the 

 P. C., No. 1536. 



effects which resulted among them from the labours of 

 Mar Thoma and other Nestorian missionaries, at the com- 

 mencement of the sixteenth century, were really an original 

 conversion, or at least a re-conversion, and not, as is often 

 supposed, the revival of a fallen but not extinct church 

 then this claim is to be regarded only as an echo of the tra- 

 dition which has always prevailed in the Syrian churches, 

 and which must be estimated by its intrinsic probability 

 and value. 



(Besides Assemanni and Baronius, see Tillemont, i. 397, 

 sq. ; Cave's Antiq. Apostolical ; Winer's Biblisch.es Real- 

 icorlerbuch, art. Thomas; Buchanan's Christian Re- 

 searches ; Yeate's Indian Church History ; and Principal 

 Mill's Letter to the Society for the Propagation of the 

 Gospel (July 29, 1822), 'inserted in Christian Remem- 

 brancer for Nov., 1823.) 



THOMAS A^ KEMPIS. [KEMPIS.] 



THOMAS AQUI'NAS. [AQUINAS.] 



THOMAS, ANTOINE LE'ONARD, was born at Cler- 

 mont in Auvergne, on the 1st of October, 1732. His 

 father, it has been generally believed, died while Thomas 

 was an infant, leaving a widow with three sons and a 

 daughter. The eldest son, Joseph Thomas, who embraced 

 the clerical profession, died in 1741 : he composed a dra- 

 matic piece, entitled ' Le Plaisir,' which was acted with 

 success in 1740. The second, Jean Thomas, died in 1755, 

 professor in the college of Beauvais : he published some 

 Latin verses, and introduced into his college an improved 

 method of teaching Latin. It appears therefore that the 

 taste for literature was common to the whole family. 



Antoine Leonard was educated at home till he had com- 

 pleted his ninth year, and was then sent to prosecute his 

 studies at Paris, where his brothers preceded him. In a 

 letter which he addressed, in 1767, to Madlle. Moreau, he 

 mentions that his second brother had taken great pains 

 with his education. They were an attached family : An- 

 toine retained all his early devotion for his mother till her 

 death, in 1782 ; and his sister, the only member of the 

 family who survived him, lived with him till his death. 



Antoine Leonard Thomas distinguished himself at the 

 university. In 1747 he carried off two of the prizes dis- 

 tributed in his class in the college of Duplessis : in 1748 

 and 1749 he studied rhetoric in the college of Lisieux, and 

 obtained four prizes : from October, 1749, to August, 1751, 

 he studied philosophy with equal distinction, at first in the 

 college of Lisieux, subsequently in that of Beauvais. 

 When he finished his university career, his friends wished 

 him to study for the bar, and he did so far comply with 

 their desire as to attend law classes and the office of a 

 solicitor. This continued till the death of his second 

 brother, in 1755, at which time he had retired, apparently 

 on account of his health, which was always infirm, to his 

 native district. A short time after he accepted the offer 

 of a professorship in the college of Beauvais. He con- 

 tinued to discharge the duties of his appointment till 

 1761, when, finding them injurious to his health, he re- 

 signed, and was appointed private secretary to the Due de 

 Praslin. 



Thomas commenced his career as author in 1756 by pub- 

 lishing ' Reflections Philosophiques et Litteraires sur le 

 PoSme de la Religion Naturelle.' This was throwing clown 

 the gauntlet to the whole school of Voltaire : the patriarch 

 himself took no notice of the publication, and Grimm spoke 

 of it as the work of ' a silly lad -just escaped from the 

 school of the Jesuits.' In the same year Thomas addressed 

 an ode, full of hyperbolical compliments, to Sechelles, 

 controller-general of finance : the flattery was successful ; 

 it obtained from the minister an addition to the revenues 

 of the college. In 1757 Thomas composed, on the occa- 

 sion of the great earthquake at Lisbon, a ' Memoire sur les 

 Causes des Tremblemens de Terre,' which was crowned by 

 the Academy of Rouen. In 1759 he published ' Jumar- 

 ville,' a poem in four cantos, on the death of a French 

 officer, killed, as the French alleged, under circumstance* 

 of peculiar atrocity, in the war between the French and 

 English, in the backwoods of America. Freron praised 

 this poem in the ' Annee Litteraire,' a tribute of thanks to 

 the young author who had ventured to attack Voltaire. 

 These early works of Thomas are remarkable only for their 

 turgid style, commonplace ideas, and for the eagerness 

 of the author to avail himself of the, popular topic of tho 

 day. 



VOL. XXIV.-3 D 



