TITIANTITMOUSE. 



631 



among so many people of different manners and re- 

 ligions, to give a tenth to their kings, their gods, 

 or their ministers of religion. Grotius takes it to 

 arise hence, that the number ten is the most known, 

 and the most common, among all nations, by reason 

 of the number of fingers, which is ten. On this 

 account, he thinks the commandments of God were 

 reduced to ten, for people to retain them with 

 greater ease ; and the philosophers established ten 

 categories, &c. 



TITIAN, OR TIZIANO VERCELLI, one of 

 the most distinguished of the great Italian painters, 

 was born at Capo del Cadore, in the Alps of Friuli, 

 in 1480. His early indication of talent for the arts 

 of design induced his parents to place him under 

 Sebastiano Zuccati of Trevigi, and subsequently 

 under Giovanni Bellini of Venice. He soon made 

 an extraordinary proficiency, and attained so exact 

 an imitation of his master's style, that their works 

 could scarcely be distinguished. This style, how- 

 ever, was stiff and dry, so that when the young 

 artist had seen the performances of Giorgione, 

 which were of a more free and elegant character, 

 he quitted his former master, and soon, by his 

 facility, excited envy in his new one. At the same 

 time, he by no means neglected other branches of 

 study, but made so great a progress under proper 

 instructors, that at the age of twenty-three he was 

 celebrated as one of the most promising poets of 

 the day. With great judgment, however, he de- 

 voted himself to the pursuit for which he felt the 

 most decided predilection, and attained to great 

 perfection in landscape, portrait, and history. He 

 was particularly remarkable for his accurate obser- 

 vation and faithful imitation of nature, as regards 

 the tones and shades of colouring : his taste in de- 

 sign was less conspicuous ; and it is in portraits 

 and landscapes that he is deemed unrivalled. In- 

 deed, in the opinion of Mr Fuseli, he is to be re- 

 garded as the father of portrait painting, as relates 

 to resemblance, character, grace, and tasteful cos- 

 tume. His principal residence was at Venice, 

 though he occasionally accepted invitations from 

 princes to their courts. At Ferrara, he executed 

 the portraits of the duke and duchess, also that of 

 Ariosto, then a resident there. He was sent for to 

 Rome by cardinal Farnese, and attended Charles 

 V. at Bologna, who was so pleased with the por- 

 trait which he made of him, that he conferred on 

 him the order of knighthood, and granted him a 

 pension, which was afterwards augmented by Philip 

 II. Most of the princes and leading men of the 

 day were ambitious of being painted by him, so 

 that his pictures are doubly valuable as portraits of 

 eminent individuals and for beauty of execution. 

 He resided some time both in Spain and Germany; 

 but his home was Venice, where he lived in great 

 splendour, and maintained the rank due to his 

 genius. He retained the spirit and vigour of youth 

 to the advanced age of ninety-six, and then he died 

 of the plague, in 1576. This great painter had his 

 weaknesses, the chief of which was an extreme 

 jealousy of rival excellence, which rendered him 

 ungenerous to Tintoretto, and even to a brother of 

 his own. He is the first of all colourists, but less 

 eminent in other respects. In general, his male 

 forms are less elastic than muscular, while his fe- 

 males partake too much of the fair, dimpled, soft, 

 Venetian figures, which are too full for elegance. 

 He left two sons, one of whom obtained preferment 

 in the church; the other became a distinguished 

 painter, but being addicted to alchemy, wasted his 



patrimony and neglected his art. Of the historical 



pictures of Titian, two are peculiarly excellent, a 



Last Supper in the Escurial, and Christ crowned 



I with Thorns in a church at Milan. The engrav- 



; ings from his pictures, including landscapes and 



' pieces, cut in wood, amount to more than six 



hundred. 



TITICACA; a lake in Bolivia, 240 miles in 



circuit, and 400 feet in depth. The water, though 



neither salt nor brackish, is muddy, and nauseous 



to the taste. It contains several islands ; one was 



j anciently a mountain, levelled by order of the in- 



| cas. It gave to the lake its own name of Titicaca, 



which, in the Indian language, signifies a mountair 



of lead. Lori. 69 56' W.; lat. 16 10' S. 



TITLE ; one of the various significations of this 

 word is a term by which the rank or office of an 

 individual is denoted. In the articles Counsellor, 

 Majesty, and Ceremonial, the extreme to which the 

 Germans have gone in attaching titles to every 

 office, and even extending the same to the wife of 

 the officer, is treated, and several curious examples 

 are given. The Germans, having so enormous a 

 mass of titles, have divided them into titles of rank 

 (Standestitel), e. g. those of princes, nobles, &c., 

 by which they are distinguished from commoners ; 

 titles of honour, as excellency, grace, highness ; and 

 titles of office, as professor, counsellor, superinten~ 

 dent. The holders of this latter class of titles are 

 ! subdivided into real (as teal counsellor, &c.), when 

 actually possessed of the office denoted, and titular, 

 when they have merely the title of an office, as, for 

 example, so many counsellors of legation, court- 

 counsellors, &c. Almost all monarchs assume 

 titles taken from countries over which they have 

 i no sway. In some cases, this originates from a 

 ' real or supposed claim of the crown upon the 

 ! country in question ; in some, the sovereignty as- 

 1 serted may be actually exercised, under certain 

 circumstances, e. g. the king of Prussia calls him- 

 self duke of Mecklenburg, because, under certain 

 j circumstances, the government of that country 

 would devolve upon him. In some cases, it is a 

 1 mere pompous form ; for instance, the emperor of 

 Austria calls himself king of Jerusalem, and the 

 king of Portugal king of the navigation, conquest 

 ; and commerce of ./Ethiopia, Arabia and India. 

 Generally, monarchs have a less and a great or full 

 | title, just as they have two coats of arms. That 

 epithet which is added to the word majesty, in the 

 case of the different sovereigns of Europe, is gen- 

 erally called the predicate. These epithets are, 

 Most Christian, for France ; Catholic for Spain ; 

 \ Most Faithful, for Portugal ; Apostolic, for Hun- 

 gary. 



2. Title signifies the right of a person to some 

 particular thing. 



3. The heads of the 'various chapters in the cor- 

 pus juris (q. v.), and other law books, &c., are 

 called titles. 



TITMOUSE (parus~). The birds of this genus 

 are of small size, but robust and muscular. The 

 beak is thick at the base, short and stout; the feet 

 strong, especially the hinder toe. The head is re- 

 markable for the solidity and thickness of the bones 

 of the skull. They eat all kinds of food, but more 

 particularly insects and worms, in search of which 

 they fly perpetually from branch to branch, examin- 

 ing every crevice, and clinging to every variety of 

 posture, often with the head downwards. They 

 do not spare young or weaker birds, when sick, or 

 entangled in snares, but pierce the cranium by blows 



