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 Wells went to reside at Marseilles, where he held a professorial chair. He died on the 17th of February 1879.

From R. H. Home, the author of Orion, the present writer received the following account of the personal appearance of Wells in youth. He was short and sturdy, with dark red hair, a sanguine complexion, and bright blue eyes; he used to call himself "the cub," in reference to the habitual roughness of his manners, which he was able to resolve at will into the most taking sweetness and good-humour. Wells's wife who had been a Miss Emily Jane Hill, died in 1874. Their son, after his father's death, achieved a notoriety which was unpoetical, although recorded in popular song, for he was the once-famous "man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo."

The famous Joseph and his Brethren, concerning which criticism has recovered its self-possession, is an overgrown specimen of the pseudo-Jacobean drama in verse which was popular in ultra-poetical circles between 1820 and 1830. Its merits are those of rich versification, a rather florid and voluble eloquence and a subtle trick of reserve, akin to that displayed by Webster and Cyril Tourneur in moments of impassioned dialogue. Swinburne has said that there are lines in Wells "which might more naturally be mistaken, even by an expert, for the work of the young Shakespeare, than any to be gathered elsewhere in the fields of English poetry." This may be the case, but even the youngest Shakespeare would have avoided the dulness of subject-matter and the slowness of evolution which impede the reader's progress through this wholly undramatic play. Joseph and his Brethren, in fact, although it has been covered with eulogy by the most illustrious enthusiasts, is less a poem than an odd poetical curiosity.

WELLS, DAVID AMES (1828–1898), American economist, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 17th of June 1828. He graduated at Williams College in 1847, was on the editorial staff of the Springfield Republican in 1848, and at that time invented a machine for folding newspapers and book-sheets. He then removed to Cambridge, graduated at the Lawrence Scientific School in 18sr, and published in 1850–1865 with George Bliss (1793–1873) an Annual of Scientific Discovery. In 1866 he patented a process for preparing textile fabrics. His essay on the national debt, Our Burden and Our Strength (1864), secured him the appointment in 1865 as chairman of the national revenue commission, which laid the basis of scientific taxation in the United States. In 1866–1870 he was special commissioner of revenue and published important annual reports; during these years he became an advocate of free trade, and he argued that the natural resources of the United States must lead to industrial supremacy without the artificial assistance of a protective tariff which must produce an uneven development industrially. The creation of a Federal Bureau of Statistics in the Department of the Treasury was largely due to Wells's influence. In 1871 he was chairman of the New York State Commission on local taxation which urged the abolition of personal taxes, except of moneyed corporations, and the levy of a tax on the rental value of dwellings to be paid by the occupant; and in 1878 he reported on New York canal tolls. In 1877 he was president of the American Social Science Association. He died in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 5th of November 1898.

WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE (1866–), English novelist was born at Bromley, Kent, on the 21st of September, 1866, the son of Joseph Wells, a professional cricketer. He was educated at Midhurst grammar school and at the Royal College of Science, where he was trained in physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology and biology. He graduated B.Sc. of London University in 1888 with first-class honours, taught science in a private school, and subsequently did private coaching. In 1893 he began to write for the Pall Mall Gazette, of which he was dramatic critic in 1895. He also wrote for Nature and the Saturday Review. After the success of his fantastic story The Time Machine (1895) he gave his time chiefly to the writing of romances, in which the newest scientific and technological discoveries were used to advance his views on politics and sociology. But he did not confine himself to fiction. His Anticipations (1902) showed his real gift for sociological speculation. Beginning with a chapter on the means of locomotion in the 20th century, it went on to discuss war, the conflict of languages, faith, morals, and the elimination of the unfit, and other general topics, with remarkable acuteness and constructive ability. In The Discovery of the Future (1902), Mankind in the Making (1903), A Modern Utopia (1905) and New Worlds for Old (1908) his socialistic theories were further developed. As a novelist, meanwhile, he had taken a very high place. Some earlier stories, such as the Wheels of Chance (1896) and Love and Mr Lewisham (1900), had proved his talent for drawing character, and pure phantasies like The War of the Worlds (1898) his abundant invention; but Kipps (1905) and Tono-Bungay (1909) showed a great advance in artistic power. The list of his works of fiction includes The Stolen Bacillus and other Stories (1895), The Wonderful Visit (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Plattner Story and Others (1897), When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), The First Men in the Moon (1901), The Food of the Gods (1904), In the Days of the Comet (1906), The War in the Air (1908), Anne Veronica (1909), The History of Mr Polly (1910).

WELLS, SIR THOMAS SPENCER, 1st Bart. (1818–1897), English surgeon, was born at St Albans on the 3rd of February 1818, and received his medical education in Leeds, Dublin and St Thomas's Hospital, London (M.R.C.S. 1841). From 1841 to 1848 he served as a surgeon in the navy, and in 1848 he went to Paris to study pathology. In 1833 he settled in London, and took up ophthalmic surgery, interrupting his work to go out to the East in the Crimean War. In 1854 he became surgeon to the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women and Children, London. His reputation in surgery had obtained for him in 1844 the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, and he subsequently became a member of council, Hunterian professor of surgery and pathology (1878), President (1882) and Hunterian Orator (1883). In 1883 he was made a baronet. His name is best known in connexion with his successful revival of the operation of ovariotomy, which had fallen into disrepute owing to the excessive mortality attending it; and in his skilful hands, assisted by modern surgical methods, the operation lost almost all its danger. His book on Diseases of the Ovaries was published in 1865. Sir Spencer Wells married in 1833 Miss Elizabeth Wright, and had a son and daughters. He died on the 31st of January 1897. His estate at Golder's Hill, Hampstead, was sold after his death to the London County Council and converted into a public park.

WELLS, a city, municipal borough and market town in the Wells parliamentary division of Somerset, England, 20 m. S. of Bristol, on the Great Western and Somerset & Dorset railways. Pop. (1901) 4849. It is a quiet, old-fashioned place, lying in a hollow under the Mendip Hills, whose spurs rise on all sides like islands. The city is said to have derived its name from some springs called St Andrew's Wells, which during the middle ages were thought to have valuable curative properties. During Saxon times Wells was one of the most Important towns of Wessex, and in 905 it was made the seat of a bishopric by King Edward the Elder. About the year 1091–1092 Bishop John de Villula removed the see to Bath; and for some years Wells ceased to be an episcopal city. After many struggles between the secular clergy of Wells and the regulars of Bath, it was finally arranged in 1139 that the bishop should take the title of "bishop of Bath and Wills," and should for the future be elected by delegates appointed partly by the monks of Bath and partly by the canons of Wells. The foundation attached to the cathedral church of Wells consisted of a college of secular canons of St Augustine, governed by a dean, sub-dean, chancellor and other officials. The diocese covers the greater part of Somerset. The importance of the city is almost wholly ecclesiastical; and the theological college is one of the most important in England.