Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/490

 468 P E G P E I Peers of France. The It is curious to compare the peerage of England, and the Twelve peerages of Scotland and Ireland formed after its model, -^ j ie f amous body of the twelve peers of France, from which we cannot doubt that the name pares was transferred to the English assembly of witan, magnates, or proceres. The twelve were the archbishop and duke of Rheims, the bishops and dukes of Langres and Laon, the bishops and counts of Beauvais, Noyon, and Chalons, the dukes of Bur gundy, Normandy, and Aquitaine, the counts of Flanders, Toulouse, and Champagne. The list of the spiritual peers, a little startling at first, is easily understood when we take in the circumstances of the French kingdom in the 12th century. The six prelates are those who held of the king of the French as king ; the other great churchmen of the Western Kingdom held either of one of the vassal princes (as the archbishop of Rouen did of the duke of the Nor mans) or of the king as duke, as did among others the bishop of Paris, whom at first sight we might have looked for on the list. The institution of this body is commonly attributed to the age of Philip Augustus, and indeed to that king personally ; and it can hardly be doubted that it had its origin in the romances of Charlemagne. The twelve peers are said to have appeared at Philip s corona tion, and also to have formed the court by which John, duke of the Normans and king of the English, was deprived of the lands that he held in fief of the French crown. But it is certainly hard to see them all in the character of twelve peers on either occasion, though it is certain that some of them were present at Philip s corona tion in 1179, and among them the then duke of the Nor mans and husband of the duchess of Aquitaine, Henry king of the English. 1 Nor does the exact name of pares seem to be given by any contemporary writer to the body by which John is said to have been condemned, though it is so used in the next century (see Prxclara Francorum Facinora, ap. Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Script., v. 764). But that there was an acknowledged body of peers of France in the 13th century is shown, if by nothing else, by the speech of Peter bishop of Winchester quoted above. Gradually all the temporal peerages became united with the crown, save only Flanders, which was released from vassalage when the emperor Charles V. was its count. It therefore became need ful on ceremonial occasions that, while the spiritual peers appeared in person, the temporal peers should be repre sented by persons who were created peers for the occasion. The later peerage of France, those dukes, counts, and barons The la who were distinguished as peers, dates from the 14th cen- Frencl tury. The duchies so distinguished were at first confined P eera g to the royal family, and in some sort represented the ancient peerage ; but the title of duke and peer was after wards extended to others, among them in 1674 to at least one prelate, that of Paris, then become an archbishopric. The counties and baronies distinguished as peerages were but few, and most of them were reunited to the crown ; they are therefore much less known than the duchies. In the more modern use of the word, the Chamber of Peers The dates from the charter of Louis XVIII. in 1814. It was a Cham body of hereditary members created by the crown after the of ^ ee model of the temporal peerage of England. After the revolu tion of 1830 this was changed into a Chamber of Peers for life, which &quot;ceased to exist&quot; at the revolution of 1848. The fullest account of the origin and growth of the English peer age will be found in the five volumes of the Reports of the Lords Committees touching the Dignity of a Peer of the Realm (1820-1829). The mass of information brought together is wonderful, and, though the prejudices of the order sometimes peep through, the general treatment of the subject is on the whole fair and highly creditable, especially when we remember that the inquiry was begun before any light had been thrown on the subject by modern research. Besides this, the works of Selden, Hallam, Nicolas, and Stubbs have been, as will have been remarked, constantly referred to throughout the article. But it is sometimes curious to compare the point of view of a professional antiquary like Sir Harris Nicolas with that of the two great constitutional historians. (E. A. F.) PEGASUS, a famous horse of Greek fable, was said to have sprung from the trunk of the Gorgon Medusa when her head was cut off by Perseus. Bellerophon caught him as he drank of the spring Peirene on the Acrocorinthus at Corinth, or (according to another version) received him tamed and bridled at the hands of Athene. Mounted on Pegasus, Bellerophon slew the Chimaara and overcame the Solymi and the Amazons, but when he tried to fly to heaven on his back the horse threw him and continued his heavenward course. Arrived in heaven, Pegasus served Zeus, fetching for him his thunder and lightning. Hence some have thought that Pegasus is a symbol of the thunder cloud. In later legend he is the horse of Eos, the Morning. Pindar and later poets represent him as winged. The name is from 7n?yos, &quot;compact,&quot; &quot;stout.&quot; The erroneous derivation from Trr/y-^, &quot; a spring of water,&quot; may have given birth to the legends which connect Pegasus with water, as that his father was Poseidon, that he was born at the springs of Ocean (like the fabulous Indian horse Uccaihs- ravas, prototype of horses, produced at the churning of Ocean), and that he had the power of making springs gush from the ground by a blow of his hoof. This was said to have been the origin of Hippocrene (Horse-spring), the fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon, as well as of another spring of the same name at Troezen. But there are facts that speak for an independent mythological con nexion between horses and water, e.g., the sacredness of the horse to Poseidon, the epithets Hippios and Equester 1 See Rigordus, De Oestis Philippi Augusti, ap. Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Script., v. ; Will. Arm., ib. 101 ; Ben. Petrib. 242, ed. Stubbs ; Matthew Paris, ii. 658, ed. Luard ; cf. Sismondi, Ilistoire des Fran- cais, i., 363, 489-492. applied to Poseidon and Neptune, the Greek fable of the origin of the first horse (produced by Poseidon striking the ground with his trident), and the custom in Argolis of sacrificing horses to Poseidon by drowning them in a well. (The Illyrians similarly sacrificed horses by drowning.) From his connexion with Hippocrene Pegasus has come to be regarded as the horse of the Muses and hence as a symbol of poetry. But this is a modern attribute of Pegasus, not known to the ancients, and dating only from the Orlando Innamorato of the Italian poet Boiardo. PEGU, a division of British Burmah, comprising the districts of Rangoon, Hanthawaddy, Tharawadi, and Prome, has an area of 9159 square miles, with a population (in 1881) of 1,162,393. The province of Pegu was annexed by the British after the second Burmese war in 1852-53. PEGU, an ancient town in the Rangoon district of British Burmah, is situated on the Pegu river, 20 miles west of the Tsit-toung, in 17 20 N. lat. and 96 30 E. long. It was founded in 573 A.D., and was for a long time the capital of the Taking kingdom, overthrown by Aloung-bhura in the middle of the 18th century. Early European travellers describe the city as of great size, strength, and magnificence. Modern Pegu lies close to the river-side, and had a population in 1881 of 5891. PEHLEVI. See PAHLAVI. PEIRCE, BENJAMIN (1809-1880), mathematician and astronomer, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, 4th April 1809. Graduating at Harvard College in 1829, he be came mathematical tutor there in 1831 and professor in 1833. He had already assisted Bowditch in his transla tion of the Mecanique Celeste, and now produced a series of mathematical text-books characterized by the brevity
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