424 



PARMA PARNELL. 



comme il est desire (Be it BS it is desired). If the 

 king refuses his assent, it is in the gentle language 

 of Le roy s'avisera (The king will advise upon it.) 

 When money bill is passed, it is carried up and 

 ]>n-sented to the king by the speaker of the house of 

 commons, and the royal assent is thus expressed, Le 

 royremercie ses loyuttx si/jets, accepts leur bentvo- 

 lence, et aussi le veut (The king thanks his loyal sub- 

 jects, accepts their benevolence, and wills it so to be.) 

 In case of an act of grace, which originally proceeds 

 from the crown, and has the royal assent in the first 

 stage of it, the clerk of the parliament thus pro- 

 nounces the gratitude of the subject ; Les prilats, 

 teigneurs, et communs, en ce present parlement as- 

 semblies, au nom de tons vos autres svjets, remercient 

 tres humblement votre majesti, et prient d Dieu vous 

 donner en santf bonne vie et tongue (The prelates, 

 lords, and commons, in this present parliament as- 

 sembled, in the name of all your other subjects, most 

 humbly thank your majesty, and pray to God to 

 grant you in health a long and happy life). 2. The 

 king may give his assent by letters patent under his 

 great seal signed with his hand, and notified in his 

 absence, to both houses assembled together in the 

 upper house, by commissioners consisting of certain 

 peers, named in the letters. And, when the bill has 

 received the royal assent in either of these ways, it is 

 then, and not before, a statute or act of parliament. 

 This statute or act is placed among the records of 

 the kingdom ; there needing no formal promulgation 

 to give it the force of a law, as was necessary by 

 the civil law with regard to the emperor's edicts ; 

 because every man in England is, in judgment of 

 law, party to the making of an act of parliament, 

 being present thereat by his representatives. How- 

 ever, copies thereof are usually printed at the king's 

 press, for the information of the whole land. An act of 

 parliament cannot he altered, amended, dispensed with, 

 suspended, or repealed, but in the same forms, and by 

 the same authority of parliament ; for it is a maxim in 

 law, that it requires the same strength to dissolve as 

 to create an obligation. The forms of doing business 

 in the congress of the United States of America are 

 substantially the same as in the British parliament. 



PARMA; a duchy in Upper Italy, bounded by the 

 Milanese on the north and west, by the Modenese on 

 the east, and the Apennines on the south, and com- 

 posed of the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guas- 

 talla; 2200 square miles'; 419,201 inhabitants. It is 

 hilly, but fertile, and highly cultivated, yielding corn, 

 wine (vino santo), silk, oil, hemp. The breeding of 

 sheep is also much attended to. The principal manu- 

 facture is that of silk. The capital, Parma, on a 

 river of the same name, is a fortified place, with 

 35,000 inhabitants. The streets are for the most part 

 handsome, and the houses well built. The churches 

 contain the masterpieces of Correggio, Lanfranco, 

 and Mazzuoli (surnamed // Parmegiano,) who were 

 born here. The cathedral contains the celebrated 

 fresco of Correggio, the Assumption of the Virgin 

 Mary, which is much injured, and the church of the 

 Holy Sepulchre, the Madonna della Scudella of the 

 same master. The church of the Madonna della 

 Steccata is worth visiting for the monuments of the 

 Farnese, and the capuchin monastery for its paintings. 

 Among the other buildings and institutions of the 

 city, are the ducal palace, with a gallery of paintings 

 and works of art, the finest pieces of which, however, 

 were carried to Naples in 1734 ; an excellent library ; 

 an academy of belles-lettres and the fine arts, founded 

 in 17G5 ; the university, with 400 students ; the opera 

 house, built in 1618, which is the largest in Europe,; 

 the theatre, &c. The Bodoni press, to which belong 

 MSS. in 200 languages, is one of the first in Europe. 

 Parma, with Piacenza, anciently belonged to C isal- , 



pine Gaul, and, at a later period, to the confederacy 

 of Lombard cities. The houses ofEsteand Visconti 

 were in possession of Parma for some time. Louis 

 XII. conquered both cities; and, after the dissolution 

 of the league of Cambray (1508), pope Julius II. re- 

 duced them. Pope Paul III., of the house of Farnese 

 (q. v.), raised Parma, with Piacenza, to a duchy, and 

 conferred it on his natural son. On the extinction of 

 the male Farnese line, don Carlos, son of Philip V. of 

 Spain and Elizabeth Farnese, received the duchies of 

 Parma and Piacenza, which, on his accession to the 

 throne of the Two Sicilies, were ceded to the emperor 

 by way of indemnification. By the peace of Aix-la- 

 Chapelle (1748), Austria ceded Parma, Piacenza, and 

 Guastalla to the Spanish Infant don Philip, whose 

 son Ferdinand preserved his estates ; but, on his 

 death in 1802, France took possession of them, his 

 son being created king of Etruria. In 1805. Parma, 

 Piacenza, and Guastalla were incorporated with the 

 French empire, and, by the peace of Paris (1814) and 

 the decree of the congress of Vienna (1815), were 

 transferred to Maria Louisa, empress of France and 

 archduchess of Austria. Spain protested against 

 this arrangement, and claimed them for Maria Louisa, 

 widow of the king of Etruria (duchess of Lucca), 

 whose husband had relinquished them only on condi- 

 tion of receiving Etruria. In 1817, a new convention 

 was therefore concluded, by which it was stipulated, 

 that, on the death of the ex-empress, they should 

 pass (with the exception of some districts on the left 

 bank of the Po, and the right of maintaining a garri- 

 son in Piacenza, reserved to Austria) to the duchess 

 of Lucca and her male posterity. Lucca was then to 

 pass to the grand duke of Tuscany, who, in return, 

 was to cede his estates in Bohemia to the duke of 

 Reichstadt, son of Napoleon. 



PARMEGIANO, or PARMEGIANINO. See 

 Mazzola. 



PARMENIDES ; a Greek philosopher of Elea, 

 who developed more fully the speculative views of 

 Xenophanes, his friend and instructer, and is there- 

 fore the most celebrated of the Eleatic school. He 

 flourished about the 79th Olympiad, and seems to 

 have gone to Athens in the 80th, or B. C. 470. Here 

 Socrates, then a young man, probably saw him. He 

 was highly esteemed by the ancients, not merely as a 

 speculative philosopher, but as the wise lawgiver of 

 Elea. He accurately distinguished between the know- 

 ledge gained from reason and that obtained from the 

 senses. The pure existence from the notion of which 

 he proceeded, is known only by reason ; it is one, 

 unchangeable and eternal, limited only by itself, and 

 consequently filling space. Change and motion, on 

 tlie contrary, are only appearances. He also pro- 

 posed a theory on sensual phenomena. In this theory, 

 he adopted heat and light, or fire, and cold and 

 darkness, or the earth, as opposite principles. Frag- 

 ments of his philosophical poem on nature are found 

 in Stephens, also collected with a translation by 

 Fulleborn (Zullichau, 1795), and in Brandis's Com- 

 mentationes Eleatica:, p. I. (Altona, 1813). 



PARMESAN CHEESE. See Lodi. 



PARNASSUS (now Liakurd) ; a mountain in the 

 ancient Phocis (now Roumili), at the foot of which 

 lay Delphi (q. v.), with the fountain of Castalia, in 

 whose crystal waters the priestess and those who 

 consulted her were required to purify themselves. 

 Parnassus was sacred to Apollo and the Muses. It 

 has two peaks, of which the southern was called 

 Hyampea, the north-western Tithorea. The highest 

 summit was called Lyconeus ; on it the Bacchantes 

 celebrated their orgies. 



PARNELL, THOMAS, an English poet, was born 

 in Dublin, in 1679. He was educated at Trinity 

 college, and, taking orders in 1705, was presented to 



