VOTIACKSVROON. 



851 



times rude, and his language by no means decent. 

 In his writings, he maintained extravagant para- 

 doxes, while he was generally considered as an in- 

 fidel in religion. Hence Charles II. said he was a 

 strange divine, for he believed every thing but the 

 Bible. 



VOTIACKS. See Finns. 



VOTIVE TABLES are those tablets which 

 give information of the circumstances connected 

 with offerings deposited in a temple in consequence 

 of vows. 



VOUET, SIMON, an eminent French painter, 

 was born at Paris, in 1582, and was bred up under 

 his father, who was also an artist. He accompanied 

 the French embassy at Constantinople, and drew 

 the grand seignior, from memory, after an audience 

 in the train of the ambassador. He then visited 

 Venice and Rome, at which latter capital he ac- 

 quired great distinction. He remained in Italy 

 fourteen years, when he was sent for by Louis XIII., 

 to work in his palaces, and furnished some of the 

 apartments of the Louvre, the palace of Luxem- 

 bourg, and the galleries of cardinal Richelieu, and 

 other public places, with his works. He was a 

 good colourist, but had little genius for grand com- 

 position, although France was certainly indebted 

 to him for introducing a better taste. Most of the 

 succeeding French painters who gained distinction, 

 were bred under him, including Le Brun, Perrier, 

 Mignard, Le Sueur, Dorigny, Du Fresnoy, and 

 others. He died in 1649. 



VOULGARIANS. See Bulgaria. 



VOUSSOIRS ; the wedge-shaped stones which 

 form an arch. 



VOW. " A vow," says the Catholic Diction- 

 naire de Theologie (Toulouse, 1817), "is a promise 

 made to God of a thing which we think to be agree- 

 able to him, and which we are not, on other grounds, 

 obliged to render to him. This is what the theo- 

 logians understand by it when they say a vow is 

 prmiissio de meliori bono. To promise God to do 

 what he commands, or to avoid what he forbids, is 

 not a vow, because we are already obliged so to 

 act." The Catholics adduce numerous passages in 

 the Old Testament to prove that vows are agree- 

 able to God ; and their idea of vows is intimately 

 connected with that of good works. To Protest- 

 ants the theory of vows appears untenable, because 

 nothing can be agreeable to God but what is good 

 in itself; and it is the duty of man, at all times, to 

 aim at the performance of all the good in his power. 

 They consider vows as belonging to ages when the 

 ideas entertained of the Deity, and of our obliga- 

 tions to him, were very crude ; and he was looked 

 upon much in the light of a human being. They 

 consider those vows as nothing less than impious, 

 which assume that the Deity can be made to devi- 

 ate from the path prescribed by infinite wisdom for 

 the consideration of a promise which can have no 

 meaning except between finite beings. The pope 

 has the power, not to absolve from vows, but to sub- 

 stitute some equivalent for the specific performance 

 of them. Catholic writers have therefore main- 

 tained that liberty, which is given up in the monas- 

 tic vows, being the highest good of man, no equiva- 

 lent can be found for it, and therefore the pope 

 cannot dispense from or commute these vows. For 

 the monastic vows, see Monastic Vows, Monasteries, 

 and Religious Orders. 



VOWEL (from the French voyelle ; Latin, voca- 

 7>s) : a simple articulated sound, which is produced 

 merely by breathing and a peculiar opening of the 



mouth, or, at least, with very little assistance from 

 any other organ of speech. We say very little, 

 because the difference of the sounds e and i (pro- 

 nounced as in Italian or German) seems to us to 

 depend, in some slight measure, on a curvature of 

 the tongue. Tubes, with various openings, have 

 been invented, which produce the sounds of the five 

 vowels, a, e, i, o, u, as pronounced in most languages 

 on the European continent. The circumstance 

 that all vowels, mainly, and most of them entirely, 

 depend upon the form given to the opening of the 

 mouth, is the reason also, 1. that they can be pro- 

 nounced without the assistance of another sound ; 

 hence they are called, in German, Selbstlauter (i. e. 

 self-sounds), whilst consonants are called Hulfslau- 

 ter (sounds which need the assistance of another) : 

 2. that the sound of the vowels can be continued 

 as long as the breath lasts : for this reason, they are 

 the natural expressions of emotions, either with no 

 assistance, or with but slight assistance from con- 

 sonants. From the circumstance that the vowel 

 sounds require only breathing and the opening of 

 the mouth, they are by far the predominating sounds 

 in the cries or music of animals, the pronunciation 

 of the consonants being more difficult, as requiring 

 the application of the other organs of speech. In 

 the particular that the vowel sounds may be con- 

 tinued as long as the breath lasts, some consonants 

 resemble them, and are therefore called semi-vowels, 

 or half-vowels ; these are the liquids /, m, n, r, and 

 the sibilant s. (SeC S.) The number of vowels 

 in the different languages is not uniform ; thus there 

 are in Greek seven, in Latin but five, and in Ger- 

 man, if we consider a, 5, u, simple vowels, as they 

 really are, eight. (For further observations upon 

 this point, and upon others touched on in this arti- 

 cle, see Voice.) This difference in number, how- 

 ever, is sometimes founded more on the scarcity or 

 abundance of characters, than on a difference of 

 sounds, since, in some languages, there are many 

 more vowel sounds than signs. In some languages, 

 the sounds of the vowels are uniform, as in Italian 

 and Spanish. Thus a, e, i, o, u, never change their 

 sound except in as far as they are pronounced long 

 or short. The same is the case in the German lan- 

 guage, with the single exception of e, which, in 

 many cases, is mute, as in haben. In French, e is 

 pronounced in three ways the e ovvert, e ferine, 

 and e muet. (See J?.) But in no language are the 

 same vowel-characters used to designate so great a 

 variety of sounds, and in no European language are 

 there so many sounds falling between the funda- 

 mental sounds, as in English : such are u in but ; i 

 in sir ; u in spur ; ough in through ; ea in heard, 

 &c. These intermediate sounds are by far the 

 most difficult for foreigners to acquire, and are very 

 rarely learned so perfectly that the foreign accent 

 is not perceptible. Vowels, as has been remarked 

 in the article Consonant, very frequently alternate 

 with each other in the fluctuations of language, and 

 are, therefore, of less importance to the etymologist 

 than consonants. In the German language, the 

 change of vowels has become a grammatical form, 

 to indicate, generally speaking, the relation of de- 

 rivation. The harmoniousness of a language de- 

 pends much upon the proportion of the vowels to 

 the consonants. See the article Consonant. 



VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY. See Travels 

 and North Polar Expeditions. 



VOYER. See Argenson. 



VROON, HENRY CORNELIUS ; a Dutch painter, 

 born at Haerlem, in 1566. Being shipwrecked op 

 3 H2 



