Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/938

Rh do not determine where his Thule was, but Müllenhoff is probably right in thinking it was the Shetlands. The Faeroes, Iceland and Norway have also been suggested, but are for various reasons much less likely. After Pytheas, the name is used loosely for the farthest north. Thus Agricola's fleet in 84 sailing up the east coast of Scotland is said to have espied but not to have reached Thule (“dispecta est Thule”) but the phrase is merely literary. The actual point meant may be the Orkneys or the Shetlands, or even some fragment of Scotland seen across the water. In some later writers (Procopius, &c.) Thule seems sometimes used to denote Scandinavia. The phrase “ultimate Thule” is commonly used to denote the farthest limit possible.

THÜMMEL, MORITZ AUGUST VON (1738–1817), German humorist and satirical author, was born on the 27th of May 1738 at Schönefeld near Leipzig. Educated at Rossleben and the university of Leipzig, where he studied law, he held from 1761 till 1783 various offices in the ducal court of Saxe-Coburg, where he became privy councillor and minister of state. He retired in 1783 and died at Coburg on the 26th of October 1817. He wrote a comic prose epic, Wilhdmine, oder der vermählte Pedant (1764); and Die Inoculation der Liebe (1771), a tale in verse. His most famous work is his Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen von Frankreich im Jahre 1785–1786 (1701–1805), a “sentimental journey” in ten volumes, in which the influence of Wieland is unmistakable. Schiller, who found this work wanting in aesthetic dignity, yet allowed that the keen knowledge of men and things it displays makes it a valuable contribution to literature. Thummel's other writings are unimportant.

THUN (Fr. Thoune), a picturesque little town in the Swiss canton of Bern, built on the banks of the Aar, just as it issues from the Lake of Thun, and by rail 19 m. S.E. of Bern, or 171 m. N.W. of Interlaken. It is the capital of the Bernese Oberland, the snowy peaks of which are well seen from it. It has 6030 inhabitants, mostly German-speaking and Protestants. The 18th-century parish church and the 15th-century castle rise in a striking fashion above the town, in the chief street of which are arcades (locally called Lauben) as in Bern. There is a museum in the tower of the castle, while in and near the town (in the Heimberg . valley) are several potteries of local ware. From its local lords it passed by n 27 to the house of Zahringen, and on its extinction (1218) to the counts of Kyburg. The heiress of that family brought Thun (and Burgdorf) in 1273 to the cadet or Laufenburg line of the Habsburg family, her mother having (1264) granted the town a charter of liberties that confirmed an earlier grant of 1256. In 1375 the town was mortgaged to Bern, to which it was sold outright in 1384. From 1798 to 1802 Thun was the capital of the canton Oberland of the Helvetic Republic.

THUN, LAKE OF, in the Swiss canton of Bern, the second lake (the first being that of Brienz) into which the river (q.v.) expands. It lies in a deep hollow between (N.W.) the town of (q.v.) and (E.) the plain on which  (q.v.) is built between this lake and that of Brienz. It is 11 m. in length, 2 m. in width, and its maximum depth is 712 ft., while its area is 18 sq. m., and its surface is 1837 ft. above sea-level. Most splendid views of the great snowy peaks of the Bernese Oberland range are obtained from the lake, while the beauty of its shores renders it a formidable rival in point of picturesqueness to the Lake of Lucerne. Its chief feeder is the Kander (swollen shortly before by the Simme), which in 17 14 was diverted by a canal into the lake (south-western end). On or above the south-western shore (along which runs the railway from Thun to Interlaken, 175 m.) are Spiez (a picturesque village with an ancient castle, and the starting-point of railways towards the Gemmi and Montreux) and Aeschi (admirably situated on a high ridge). On the other shore of the lake are Oberhofen and Gunten (above which is Sigriswil), and Merligen, while above the lake, near its east end, are the wooded heights of St Beatenberg, well known to summer visitors. The first steamer was placed on the lake in 1835.

THUNBERG, KARL PETER (1743–1828), Swedish naturalist, was born at Jönköping on the 11th of November 1743, and became a pupil of Linnaeus at the university of Upsala. After graduating in medicine there in 1770 he obtained an appointment as surgeon in the Dutch East India Company, and sailed to the Cape of Good Hope in 1772. He spent three years there, and then went to Japan, where he remained till 1778, engaged in making collections of plants. On his return in 1779 he visited England, and made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks. In 1781 he was appointed demonstrator of botany at Upsala, and he succeeded the younger Linnaeus as professor of botany in 1784. He published his Flora japonica in 1784, and in 1788 he began to publish his travels. He completed his Prodomus plantarum in 1800, his Icones plantarum japonicarum in 1805, and his Flora capensis in 1813. He published numerous memoirs in the transactions of many Swedish and other scientific societies, of sixty-six of which he was an honorary member. He died near Upsala on the 8th of August 1828. A genus of tropical plants (Thunbergia), of the natural order Acanthaceae, which are cultivated as evergreen climbers, is named after him.

THUNDER, the noise which accompanies or follows a flash of lightning, due to the disturbance of air by a discharge of electricity (see ; and ). The Old English word is þunor, also the name of the Scandinavian god (q.v.), which is cognate with Dutch dander, German Donner. The root is than,- Indo-European tan-, cf. Latin tonare, tonitru. This root is apparently another form of stan-, as in Skr. stan, to sound, thunder, Gr. στένειν, to groan, Eng. “stun.”

THUN-HOHENSTEIN. The family of Thun-Hohenstein, one of the wealthiest of the Austrian nobility, which has for more than 200 years settled at Tetschen, in Bohemia, has given several distinguished members to the Austrian public service. Of the three sons of Count Franz, the eldest, Friedrich (1810–1881), entered the diplomatic service; after holding other posts he was in 1850 appointed president of the restored German Diet at Frankfort, where he represented the anti-Prussian policy of Schwarzenberg, and often came into conflict with Bismarck, who was Prussian envoy. He was afterwards ambassador at Berlin and St Petersburg. After his retirement from the public service in 1863 he supported in the Bohemian Landtag and the Austrian Reichsrat the federal policy of his brother Leo. In 1879 he was made hereditary member of the Upper House. In this position he was on his death, on the 24th of September 1881, succeeded by his eldest son Franz Anton (b. 1847). Like the rest of his family, he belonged to the Federalist party, and his appointment in 1889 as governor of Bohemia was the cause of grave dissatisfaction to the German Austrians. He. took a leading part in the negotiation of 1890 for the Bohemian settlement, but the elections of 1891, in which the young Czechs who were opposed to the feudal party gained a decisive victory, made his position a very difficult one. Contrary to expectation, he showed great energy in suppressing disorder; but after the proclamation of a state of siege his position became untenable, and in 1895 he had to resign. On the resignation of Badeni in 1898 he was made minister president, an office which he held for little more than a year, for, though he succeeded in bringing to a conclusion the negotiations with Hungary, the support he gave to the Czechs and Slovenians increased the opposition of the Germans to such a degree that parliamentary government became impossible, and at the end of 1899 he was dismissed.

The third son of Count Franz, Leopold or Leo (1811–1888), was one of the leading Austrian statesmen. After studying at the university of Prague he travelled through Europe, and among other countries he visited England, where he became acquainted with James Hope (afterwards Hope-Scott) and other leaders of the Tractarian party. He was much affected by the romantic