716 



DOVER DOWN. 



materials are boulder-stones, adventitious to many 

 strata. The depth of water on it, in very low spring 

 tides, is only fourteen feet. The fishermen from 

 Folkstone have often touched it with a fifteen feet 

 oar ; so that it is justly the dread of navigators. 

 Many a tall ship has struck on it, and sunk instantly 

 into twenty-one fathoms of water." In July, 178S, 

 the Belleisle, of sixty-four guns, struck and lay on it 

 during three hours; but, by starting her beer and 

 water, got clear off. These celebrated straits are only 

 twenty-one miles wide, in the narrowest part ; from 

 tlie pier at Dover to that of Calais, twenty-four miles. 

 It is said that their breadth is diminishing, and that 

 they are two miles narrower than they were in an- 

 cient times. An accurate observer for fifty years re- 

 marks that the increased height of water, from a de- 

 crease of breadth, has been apparent, even in that 

 space. The depth of the channel, at a medium, in 

 the highest spring tides, is about twenty-five fa- 

 thoms ; the bottom is either coarse sand or rugged 

 sears, which have, for ages unknown, resisted the at- 

 trition of the currents. 



DOVER ; a post town of the United States of 

 America, in New Hampshire, the capital of Straf- 

 ford county. It is situated on the west side of the 

 Fiscataqua, and the Cochecho flows through it. This 

 river has several falls, the largest of which, upwards 

 of forty feet perpendicular, are at the centre of the 

 town, and afford water-power equal to any in New 

 England. Large iron and cotton manufactories have 

 been erected on these falls, and others two miles 

 higher up the river. The greatest part of the tim- 

 ber exported from the state, is brought to this town. 

 Dover is the oldest town in New Hampshire, having 

 been settled in 1623, by Edward and William Hil- 

 ton. Population in 1826, 4160. 



DOVER ; a post-town of Delaware, the seat of 

 the government of the state. It carries on a consi- 

 derable trade with Philadelphia in flour. 



DOVE-TAILING, in carpentry, is the fastening 

 boards together, by letting one piece into another, in 

 the form of the tail of a dove. The dove-tail is the 

 strongest of jointings, because the tenon, or piece of 

 wood which is put into the other, goes widening to 

 the end, so that it cannot be drawn out again. 



DOW (also written Douw), Gerard; an eminent 

 painter of the Dutch school, was the son of a glazier, 

 and born at Leyden, in 1613. He studied under 

 Rembrandt, and was distinguished for the excellence 

 of his colouring and chiaro scuro. He surpassed his 

 master in diligence, and nothing can be more finished 

 than his small pieces. They are so delicate that a 

 magnifying glass is necessary to see distinctly the 

 work hi them. His softest figures are full of life, and 

 he never neglected, in his representations, the almost 

 invisible minutiae of nature. Still his paintings do 

 not appear artificial nor forced. He is regarded as 

 the inventor of the ingenious mode of painting large 

 pictures on a reduced scale, by covering the original 

 with a frame, including a space divided into small 

 quadrangular parts, by means of threads, and then 

 transferring the parts into an equal number of simi- 

 lar divisions, drawn on the canvass. He made use 

 of the convex mirror, to represent objects on a re- 

 duced scale. Dow died in 1680, leaving a large 

 property. His works brought high prices, and are 

 still among the dearest of the Dutch school. In 

 1809, a picture painted by him for the royal 

 museum of Holland, was sold for 17,000 gilders ; 

 and at the auction of Peter de Smith in Amsterdam, 

 in 1810, Dow's pictures brought from 5 to 10,000 

 gilders. His scholars, Metzu, Schalken, and Miens, 

 are worthy of their master. 



DOWER is the portion which a widow has in the 

 lauds of hex husband, after his decease, by the opera- 



tion of law, and without any special provision, by 

 will or marriage settlement. There are three spe- 

 cies of dower enumerated in the books of the 

 common law, which are now obsolete. A fourth 

 kind of dower includes several sorts. It is 

 dower by custom, as distinguished from dower at com- 

 mon law. In some particular manors and districts in 

 England, the widow is endowed, not according to com- 

 mon right, but according to that of practice or cus- 

 tom in that particular district or manor ; as of haL 

 her husband's lands, by the custom of gavel-kind, or 

 of the whole of them, for her life, where she is en 

 titled to her free bench. 



But the general kind of dower, or that by the 

 common law, is the third part, for life, of the 

 lands or tenements whereof the husband was seized, 

 in fee simple or fee tail, during the time of the mar- 

 riage. If the parties have been divorced from the 

 bonds of marriage, the woman is not entitled to 

 dower. But if the divorce be from bed and board 

 only, her dower is not barred. The common law of 

 England respects the laws of other countries, so 

 that a marriage, valid where it is contracted, is 

 considered as valid by the common law, and entitles 

 the wife to dower, in the countries just named. The 

 wife of an idiot is not entitled to dower, because the 

 marriage was not valid; from the want of the power 

 of consent in the husband. By the ancient English 

 law, the wife of a traitor was not entitled to dower. 

 Some say the reason was, that the wife was presum- 

 ed to be privy to the treason ; others say, that it was 

 intended to secure the loyalty of the subject, by an 

 appeal to his affection for his wife and children. 

 The statute of 1 Edward VI., c. 12, abated the 

 rigour of the law, and allowed the widow of a traitor 

 dower ; a subsequent statute, however, passed five or 

 six years afterwards, restored the old law in respect 

 to most kinds of treason. According to an opinion, 

 supported by very respectable authorities, the death 

 of the husband is not necessary, in all cases, to entitle 

 the wife to dower ; as, if he is outlawed, banished, 

 or transported for life, she is, according to this 

 opinion, entitled to dower. In one of Mr Hargrave's 

 notes to Coke's Littleton, it is said that an act of 

 parliament of 8 Henry V., provides, that where an 

 Englishman marries a foreigner, " by license of the 

 king," she shall be endowed. 



A seizin in law, no less than a seizin with actual 

 possession, entitles the widow to dower. But if the 

 husband is only seized for an instant, and the same 

 transaction which gives him the fee passes it to 

 another, the wife does not thereby gain the right of 

 dower. This right of the wife is an inseparable 

 incident to an estate in fee or in tail, so that, if such 

 an estate be conveyed upon condition that it shall 

 not be subject to this right, the condition will be 

 void. A woman is not, by the common law, entitled 

 to dower in lands held in trust for her husband ; 

 and, as a large part of the lands of England are so 

 held, jointures were introduced instead, and, as it 

 is usually expressed, in bar of dower. The wife is 

 barred of her dower by a jointure, although she may 

 be married under the age of twenty-one, and so with- 

 in the age requisite to make a valid contract to most 

 other purposes. But, after her marriage, her acts 

 are void, as she is then supposed to be under the 

 authority, and subject to the coercion of her husband, 

 and, accordingly, cannot release her right of dower, 

 except by a fine or common recovery, which are acts 

 done in court. See Fine. 



DOWN, a county of Ireland, in the province of 

 Ulster, bounded north by the county of Antrim and 

 an arm of the sea, east and south by the Irish sea, 

 and west by the county of Armagh. It is fifty-ona 

 miles in* extreme length by forty in breadth, and con- 



