WILDERNESS 



G-'Si 



WILKES-BARRE 



called an aesthetic movement, in which beauty 

 should be the aim of all effort. He scorned 

 sports, decorated his rooms with lilies, old 

 china, peacock feathers and so-called artistic 

 bric-a-brac, wore his hair long, carried a dainty 

 fan, affected a languishing appearance and 

 wept over the subject of art. His classmates 

 promptly ducked him in the river and wrecked 

 his apartments. 



The movement spread, however, and for 

 some years a drooping attitude and carelessly 

 worn clothes were in fashion among young 

 Knglish gentlemen. Du Maurier, the author of 

 Trilby, drew such ridiculous pictures of the 

 style in Punch, and Gilbert and Sullivan so 

 keenly satirized it in their opera, Patience, 

 that the followers of Wilde gave up many of 

 their affectations. In 1881 Wilde's first collec- 

 tion of poems was published, but his first suc- 

 cess came with the appearance of The Happy 

 Prince and Other Tales, in 1888. This was a 

 collection of fairy stories which won praise 

 throughout England and America. There fol- 

 lowed a novel, The Picture oj Dorian Gray, 

 the essays, entitled Intentions, and the plays, 

 Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Im- 

 portance and The Ideal Husband, brilliant in 

 both style and thought. In 1893 his drama, 

 Salome, was produced in Paris by Sarah Bern- 

 hardt. Two years later he was convicted in 

 the English courts of gross immorality, and 

 spent the next two years in prison, where he 

 wrote his most powerful poem, A Ballad of 

 Reading Gaol. His last days were passed un- 

 der an assumed name in Paris. 



WIL'DERNESS, BATTLE OF THE, the first 

 important battle directed by Grant after his 

 appointment to the supreme command of the 

 Federal armies in the War of Secession. The 

 Wilderness, a tangled forest region south of the 

 Rapidan River, in Virginia, was entered by 

 Grant's army of 120,000 on May 4, 1864. The 

 Federals were opposed by the Confederate 

 Army of Northern Virginia, numbering 62,000, 

 and commanded by Lee. This was the initial 

 battle of Grant's campaign of pounding his way 

 to Richmond. Though his army outnumbered 

 Lee's two to one, he was met with desperate 

 resistance. The dense woods made fighting in 

 the open impossible, and both sides suffered 

 greatly. The battle raged for two days May 

 5 and 6 and was without decisive results. 

 Shortly afterwards the armies met again at 

 Spottsylvania Court House (which see). See 

 WAR OF SECESSION, subhead The Year 1864, for 

 other details. 



WILHELMINA, vilhelme'nah (1880- ), 

 the only daughter of William III of the Nether- 

 lands, and of Emma, daughter of Prince George 

 Victor of Waldeck, succeeded her father as 

 sovereign of the Netherlands in 1890. As she 

 was only ten years old at the time, Queen 

 Emma acted as regent until August, 1898, when 

 Wilhelmina was formally crowned queen in Am- 

 sterdam. Three years later she was married 

 to Henry Frederick, Duke of Mecklenburg- 

 Schwerin, a German prince. Princess Juliana, 

 their daughter and heiress to the throne of 

 Holland, was born in 1909. Queen Wilhelmina 

 is a charming woman, and loved by all her 

 people. 



WILKES, wilks, CHARLES (1798-1877), the 

 American naval officer who seized the Confed- 

 erate envoys, Mason and Slidell, from the Brit- 

 ish mail steamer Trent in the War of Seces- 

 sion. Born in New York City, he entered the 

 United States navy at twenty, and became a 

 lieutenant eight years later. While in com- 

 mand of a government expedition, he visited 

 several lands lying in Southern waters. He 

 held that he discovered an Antarctic continent, 

 but his statement was not generally believed. 

 His reports, however, were of great scientific 

 value. Wilkes was promoted to a captaincy 

 and was later made commander, and at the be- 

 ginning of the War of Secession was placed in 

 command of the San Jacinto. On November 

 8, 1861, he gained wide publicity by his removal 

 of the Confederate commissioners from the 

 Trent (see TRENT AFFAIR, THE). Wilkes was 

 made commodore in 1862, put on the retired 

 list two years later, and made rear-admiral on 

 the list in 1866. 



*WILKES-BARRE, wilks'baire, PA, the 

 county seat of Luzerne County, is situated in 

 the beautiful Wyoming Valley of the Alle- 

 ghany Mountains, in the northeastern part of 

 the state, in a rich anthracite coal region. It 

 is known locally as the "Heart of the Anthra- 

 cite." The city is on the Susquehanna River 

 and on the Central of New Jersey, the Dela- 

 ware & Hudson, the Lehigh Valley, the Penn- 

 sylvania and the Lackawanna & Wyoming Val- 

 ley railroads, and on electric interurban lines. 

 Philadelphia is 145 miles southeast. The popu- 

 lation was 67,105 in 1910 and 76,776 (Federal 

 estimate) in 1916. Wilkes-Barre is the whole- 

 sale trading center of a number of towns whose 

 combined population is 1,500,000. 



Parks and Buildings. City parks and play- 

 grounds have a combined area of 150 acres. 

 On the city (east) side of the Susquehanna is 



