Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/691

 P E E P E R 661 PERSIGNY, JEAN GILBERT VICTOR FIALIN, Due DE (1808-1872), the most devoted servant of Napoleon III., who with the due de Morny and Marshal Saint-Arnaud formed the triumvirate which established the second em pire, was born at Saint-Germain Lespinasse (Loire) on llth January 1808. He came of a rood family, but not a noble one, and, as his father had been killed at the battle of Sala manca in 1812, he was brought up by an uncle, who sent him to be educated at the college of Limoges. He entered the 3d Hussars in 1825, the cavalry school at Saumur in 1826, and became marechal des logis in the 4th Hussars in 1828. He was at this time a Legitimist, but was soon made a Republican by his captain, and he helped to persuade his regiment to assist in the insurrection of 1830. For this service he expected great rewards, but got none, and was eventually dismissed from the army for insubordination in 1831. Finding himself without resources, he took to journalism, and assisted in editing the Temps, and in 1833, by which time he had become a profound Bonapartist, he issued a solitary number of a new journal, the Occident franqais, in which he proclaimed his political creed. This number was sent to Queen Hortense at Arenenberg, and when M. Fialin followed it in person, calling himself the vicomte de Persigny, he met with a warm reception, and soon became indispensable to Louis Napoleon. He had two qualities which gave him ascendency over the young prince, fidelity and audacity. He it was who planned the attempt on Strasburg in 1836, and that on Boulogne in 1840. For his share in the last escapade he was sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress for twenty years, which was commuted into detention at Versailles, where he wrote a curious book to prove that the Pyramids were built to keep the Xile from silting up. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out he laboured indefatigably for the Bona partist cause, securing the election of Louis Napoleon to the Constituent Assembly in June and in September 1848, and to the presidency in December 1848. His own prosperity was now secured ; he was made aide-de-camp to the prince president, and elected to the Legislative Assembly in May 1849 for the department of the Loire. He then became one of the secret plotters of the coup d etat, and was at first designed for the office of minister of the interior, but a man of more capacity, De Morny, was chosen for this post, and Persigny only accompanied Colonel Espinasse to take possession of the hall of the assembly. On securing the throne Napoleon III. hastened to reward his most faithful personal adherent. Persigny became minister of the interior in the place of De Morny in January 1852, and a senator in December 1852. He resigned office in 1854 and became ambassador in London, with but one short interval (1858-59), from May 1855 to November 1860, when he again became minister of the interior. His second tenure of office lasted till June 1863, when he resigned in disgust at the influence which M. Rouher was attaining over the mind of the emperor, and was made due de Persigny in September 1863. As a minister he showed very little capacity, and throughout the years of his political influence he never seemed to understand, like De Morny, the real bases of the existence of the second empire. He, however, from dislike of Rouher, supported Ollivier in 1869, and defended the plebiscite, and when the empire fell in 1870 escaped to England. He did not long survive the overthrow of the idea which he had so strenuously supported, and died at Nice on llth January 1872. Fialin de Persigny was certainly only an adventurer, but he had one merit, which the other founders of the second empire did not possess, fidelity to his master. For Persigny s life, see a most eulogistic biography by Delaroa (Le due de Persigny et les doctrines de I empire, 1865) ; a short biography in Mirecourt s Portraits contcmporains (1858) ; and Cas- tille s Portraits politiques ct historiqucs (1859). His own curious book, De la destination et de Vutilitt permanentc dcs Pyramides d &jyptc et de Nubie, was published in 1845, and he wrote various political pamphlets, of which the most interesting relates to the Strasburg attempt, Relation de I entreprise du prince Napoleon Louis (Lond. 1837). For his political career under the empire, see Taxile Delord s Histoire du second empire (1868-75). PERSIMMON, the name given to the fruits of Diospyros virginiana in the United States. The tree which bears them belongs to the order Ebenacese, and has oval entire leaves, and monoecious flowers on short stalks. In the male flowers, which are numerous, the stamens are sixteen in number, arranged in pairs, and with the anthers opening by slits. The female flowers are solitary, with traces of stamens, and have a glabrous ovary with one ovule in each of the eight cells, the ovary being surmounted by four styles, which are hairy at the base. The fruit-stalk is very short, bearing a subglobose fruit an inch or rather more in diameter, of an orange-yellow colour, and with a sweetish astringent pulp. It is surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx -lobes, which increase in size as the fruit ripens. The astringency renders the fruit somewhat unpalatable, but, after it has been subjected to the action of frost, or has become partially rotted or &quot;bletted&quot; like a medlar, its flavour is improved. In some of the south ern States the fruit is said to be kneaded with bran, made into cakes, and baked. From the cakes a fermented liquor is made with the aid of yeast. The tree is cultivated in England, but rarely if ever ripens its fruit, and in the States it is said not to ripen north of New Jersey. The Chinese and Japanese cultivate another species, the Diospyros Kaki, of which there exist numerous ill-defined varieties, which, according to Mr Hiern in his exhaustive monograph of the Ebenacese, all belong to one species. The fruits are larger than those of the American kind, variable in shape, but have similar properties. Some varieties have been introduced into Great Britain, and have produced their fruits in orchard-houses. The fruit is in appearance something like that of the apricot, but very astringent to the taste. After &quot;bletting,&quot; however, it becomes sweet and agreeable. Some specimens analysed by Dr Voelcker for the scientific committee of the Royal Horticultural Society contained, roughly, 84 per cent, of water, 2^ per cent, of tannic acid, and 9 S of sugar, pectin, &c., with small quantities of woody, albuminoid, and mineral matters. PERSIUS (A. PERSIUS FLACCUS) stands third in order of time of those recognized by the Romans as their four greatest satirists. These represent four distinct periods of the national development the revolutionary era of the Gracchi, the years immediately preceding the establishment of the monarchy, the first years of the reign of Nero, the age of Domitian and the dawning of the better era which followed on the accession of Nerva. Their relative value consists in the truth, freedom, and power with which they expressed the better spirit of their time, commented on its vices and follies, and described the actual personages, the prevailing types of character, and the fashions and pur suits the &quot; quicquid agunt homines &quot; by which it was marked. Of these four representatives of the most dis tinctly national branch of Roman literature Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal Persius is the least im portant. He is indeed inferior to none of them in the purity and sincerity with which he expresses the best spirit of his age; but he was inferior in literary originality and vigour to Lucilius, in literary art to Horace and Juvenal, less powerful in his denunciation of evil than Lucilius and Juvenal, less searching in his criticism than Horace, less true to life in his delineation of men and manners than the two earlier satirists, less powerful in his effects than the latest among them. This inferior ity is to be ascribed partly to the circumstances of his age. Its literature was more artificial, and also more opposed to the true principles of art, than that of any other stage in the development of Roman letters. The generation which succeeded the Augustan age the generation which lived