4oa 



PANTHER PANZER. 



columns, placed there by the emperor Adrian. The 

 height of the temple is equal to the width, i. e. 137 

 feet. The diameter of the opening in the cupola is 

 t\vciity->even feet. The floor is paved with porphyry. 

 It has suffered much from the emperors, the barbarians, 

 and the popes. A smaller pantheon, at Rome, is, ac- 

 i-ording to Montfaucon, considered to be the pantheon 

 of the Minerva Medica. Ruins of a magnificent pan- 

 theon, which Adrian caused to be built at Athens, 

 are still extant. It was supported by 120 columns. 

 The pantheon in Paris was begun in 1764 ; it is in 

 the form of a cross, 339 feet long and 253 feet broad, 

 uniting, in its style, the Greek and Gothic. It was 

 consecrated to StGenevieve, but, in the beginning of 

 the revolution, was called pantheon, and appropri- 

 ated to the reception of the ashes of great men. It 

 then received the inscription Aux Grands Hommes 

 La Patrie Reconnaissante. The Bourbons removed 

 tliis inscription, and placed the following : D. 0. M. 

 Sub Invoc. S. Genovefae. Lud. Xf. Dicavit, Liid. 

 Xmi. Restituit. After the revolution of July, 

 1830, the people, in an immense mass, restored the 

 noble and simple French inscription. The vaults 

 under the church are skilfully arranged for the recep- 

 tion of the remains ; they are neither damp, dark, 

 nor gloomy. The tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau 

 had been taken from their original situation, and 

 placed in an obscure vault. The relics of Benjamin 

 Constant were lately deposited there. The busts of 

 Foy and Manuel have been lately placed in the 

 pantheon. 



PANTHER (felis purdus). There is much dis- 

 crepancy of opinion among naturalists as to the dis- 

 tinctive characters of the panther and leopard, most 

 zoologists having assumed that the former had six or 

 seven rows of black spots in the form of roses, that 

 is, formed by the assemblage of five or six simple 

 spots, on each flank, whilst the latter had ten rows of 

 still smaller spots. Mr Bowdich, however, states 

 that some skins procured in Africa proved that this 

 distinction was erroneous. Mr Temminck considers 

 the leopard of Cuvier as a variety of the panther of 

 the same author, and classes them both as leopards ; 

 and Buffon confounds the jaguar with the panther. 

 The panther of Temminck is the F. chalybeata, found 

 in Eastern Asia. It is observed by Cuvier, that this 

 cannot be the panther of the ancients, as they pro- 

 cured the vast numbers exhibited at Rome from 

 Africa. Pliny states, that Scaurus exhibited atone 

 time one hundred and fifty ; Pompey the Great, four 

 hundred and ten ; Augustus, four hundred and 

 twenty. The panther is still found in Africa, from 

 Barbary to the most remote parts of Guinea. It is 

 to Africa, says Mr Pennant, what the tiger is to 

 Asia, with this difference, that it prefers the flesh of 

 brutes to that of human beings. It is almost un- 

 tamable, always retaining its fierce, malevolent as- 

 pect, and perpetual muttering growl. The female is 

 pregnant about nine weeks, and the young are born 

 blind, continuing so for about nine days. The animal 

 known under the name of panther, or more generally 

 painter, in the United States of America, is the cougar 

 or puma. See Puma. 



PANTOMIME ; the art of expressing action and 

 emotion by gestures, in the largest sense of the word. 

 Every lively conversation is accompanied by gestures, 

 though very different both in nature and amount in 

 different nations. The calm utterance of a speech in 

 the British parliament, accompanied only by a simple 

 motion in emphatic passages, would not suit an Ital- 

 ian, who delights in seeing a monk passing up and 

 down the street whilst he preaches, witli the crucifix 

 in one hand, and a handkerchief in the other, to wipe 

 oft' the moisture with which his excitement covers his 

 cheeks ; nor would even Talma's gesticulation suit 



all countries ; yet the art of expressive gesture ob- 

 serves to be ranked among the fine arts. The Greeks 

 cultivated it much ; but with them and the Romans, 

 it took, like all their other fine arts, a plastic charac- 

 ter, and the expression of individuality, was as much 

 as possible suppressed ; hence, also, their masks. 

 The mimic art with the ancients was connected with 

 declamation and music on the one hand,and with ll.c 

 dance on the other. Of the mimic dances Xcnoplion 

 gives us a lively picture, in his Banquet and his 

 Anabasis, vi. 1., 3, 8. They were mostly repre- 

 sentations of my thological subjects, or were of a war- 

 like character. The Romans had actors very distin- 

 guished for impressive gesticulation, of whom Roscius 

 is the most celebrated. His instructions were eagerly 

 sought for by orators. In modern times, the art is 

 sadly neglected. We do not suppose, indeed, that 

 the delivery of the ancient actors could be advantage- 

 ously imitated by our parliamentary debaters or pul- 

 pit orators, yet we can hardly doubt that they would 

 awaken vastly more interest by a more careful study 

 of the art of gesticulation. Among many works on 

 this subject, Gilb. Austin's Chironomia is distin- 

 guished. In pantomime, the performer relies solely 

 upon gestures. If an action is represented by a 

 mimic dance, we have the ballet (q. v.) : the ballet, 

 therefore, is always pantomimic, but the pantomime 

 does not necessarily require the dance. The Greeks 

 had arrived at the separation of gesture from decla- 

 mation, on which the pantomime is founded ; thus we 

 find that one perscn represented a character by ges- 

 tures and Artificial motions, guided by music (which, 

 together, the Greeks called o^wn, the Romans, 

 saltatio), whilst another performed the declamation. 

 Moreover, single situations, particularly comic scenes, 

 were sometimes pantomimically performed among 

 them (e. g. at banquets), but the true pantomime 

 they had not. The word pantomime was invented in 

 Italy ; it meant, originally, an artist who imitates 

 only by gestures. At a later period, entire theatrical 

 representations, consisting of gestures only, were 

 called saltatio pantomimorum. This species of per- 

 formance was particularly developed under the first 

 Roman emperors. Bathyllus (q. v.) and Pylades 

 (the two great rivals in this art), Hylas and others, 

 were celebrated in the times of Augustus, and not 

 unfrequently gave occasion to riots, as '.he people 

 took the greatest interest in these performances. 

 But the pantomimes became so wanton, that many 

 ancient authors consider this exhibition, in which the 

 Romans took a passionate interest, among the causes 

 of the decline of Roman greatness. The ancient 

 pantomimes probably ceased with the decay of the 

 Roman theatre. In the Italian mask a vestige of it 

 remained. The pantomime, in the strictest sense 

 that is, unaccompanied with dancing, is an invention 

 of modern times. More frequently, however, it has 

 been united with the dance, and chiefly cultivated by 

 the Italians and French. Noverre (q. v.), who must be 

 considered as the father of the modern French dance, 

 made a pantomime of Voltaire's Semiramis. With 

 some Oriental nations, particularly with the Persians 

 and Chinese, pantomimes accompanied by music form 

 one of the chief amusements. 



PANZER, GEORGE WOLFGANG, a distinguished 

 German bibliographer, born in 1729, at Sulzbach, was 

 for some time a country clergyman, at Etzelwang, 

 and afterwards at Nuremberg. His chief works are 

 a History of the German Translation of the Bible by 

 Luther (1783) ; Annals of the Early German Litera- 

 ture (Nuremberg, 1783) ; an addition to it (Leipsic, 

 1802, Nuremberg, 1805,4to); and Ills Annals Typo- 

 graphici (Nuremberg, 1792, to 1803, 11 vols., 4to), 

 in which he enumerates all works known to have been 

 printed from the invention of the art of printing to the 



