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Rh  to the species of Carduus. These are Composite herbs with very spiny leaves, and similar bracts surrounding a head of purplish-white, tubular, 5-parted flowers seated on a pitted and hairy receptacle. The anthers have appendages both at the apex and at the base. The style has a ring of hairs at the point of bifurcation of the two stigmata. The fruit is surmounted by a tuft of silky white hairs. The species are numerous, and some are of great beauty, though not unnaturally looked on with disfavour by the farmer. The Cotton Thistle, remarkable for its covering of white down, is Onopordon Acanthium; the Blessed Thistle is Carduus benedictus; the Holy Thistle, the leaves of which are spotted with white, is C. Marianus. The common C. lanceolatus seems to be the most suitable prototype for the Scotch Thistle, though that honour is also conferred on Onopordon Acanthium, the cotton thistle, a doubtful native, and on other species. The great objection to thistles from an agricultural point of view resides in the freedom with which they produce seed, and in the vigour of their underground growth, which makes their uprooting a matter of difficulty. Partial uprooting may indeed, in the case of the perennial species, increase the mischief, for each fragment left behind may grow into a distinct plant. Annual species might be kept in check were they cut down before the flowers appear, but unless all the cultivators in a particular district co-operate the efforts of individuals are of little avail. The Globe Artichoke and Cardoon are very near allies of the thistles. The Safflower, Carthamus, another thistle, yields a serviceable dye; the Burdock, Arctium lappa, has an edible root; and numerous allied species have medicinal properties.

 THISTLE,. See,.  THISTLEWOOD CONSPIRACY, or, a plot formed in 1820 to murder Lord Castlereagh and other ministers of the British crown, and to seize the Bank and Mansion-House and proclaim a provisional government. Its chief instigator was Arthur Thistlewood, or properly Thistlewaite, born in 1770, the son of a civil engineer in Lincolnshire, who had held a commission in the militia and afterwards in the line in the West Indies. In America and in France he had imbibed revolutionary views, and, having lost his wife's fortune in speculation and on the turf, had planned the desperate scheme probably for his own benefit as well as the good of the nation. The intention was to murder the ministers in the house of the earl of Harrowby in Mansfield Street on the evening of the 23d February. For this purpose between twenty and thirty men assembled in a stable in Cato Street, Edgeware Road, but while they were arming themselves they were pounced upon by the police, and a large number captured, though the majority, including Thistlewood, escaped. A reward of £1000 having been offered for Thistlewood, he was arrested next day at 10 White Street. After a trial Thistlewood and four others were executed on the 1st May, while five were transported. On being asked on the scaffold if he repented, Thistlewood replied, "No, not at all; I shall soon know the last grand secret."

See the Trials of Arthur Thistlewood, James Ings, John Thomas Brunt, Richard Tidd, William Davidson, and others at the Session of the Old Bailey 17–28 April 1820, 2 vols., 1820; and the Gentleman's Magazine for the same year.

 THOLUCK, (1799–1877), German theologian and preacher, was born at Breslau, March 30, 1799, in humble circumstances. He received his education at the grammar school and university of his native town, and early distinguished himself by wonderful versatility of mind, a phenomenal power of acquiring languages, and an omnivorous appetite for books. A romantic love of the East and its literature led him to exchange the university of Breslau for that of Berlin, that he might study Oriental languages to greater advantage, and there he was received into the house of the Orientalist Von Dietz. He was introduced to Pietistic circles in Berlin, and came specially under the influence of Baron Von Kottwitz, who became his "spiritual father," and of the historian Neander. Before deciding on the career of theological professor, he had in view that of a missionary in the East. Meanwhile he was feeling the influence to a certain degree of the romantic school, and of Schleiermacher and Hegel too, though he never sounded the depths of their systems. At length, in his twenty-first year, he finally decided to adopt the academical calling. From December 1820 to April 1826 he was "privat-docent" and "prof. extraordinarius" of theology in Berlin, though he was at the same time most active in the work of home and foreign missions. He lectured on the Old and New Testaments, theology, apologetics, and the history of the church in the 18th century. The first fruit of his Oriental studies and his introduction to his profession was his work Ssufismus, sive Theosophia Persarum Pantheistica (1821); following the same line of study he published Blütensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik (1825) and Speculative Trinitätslehre des späteren Orients (1826). His well-known essay on the nature and moral influence of heathenism (1822) was published by Neander, with high commendation, in his Denkwürdigkeiten; and his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1824) secured him a foremost place amongst the most suggestive, if not the most accurate, Biblical interpreters of that time. Another work, which was soon translated into all the principal European languages, Die Lehre von der Sünde und vom Versöhner (1823), the outcome of his own religious history, procured for him the position which he ever after held of the modern Pietistic apologist of evangelical Christianity. In 1825, with the aid of the Prussian Government, he visited the libraries of England and Holland, and on his return was appointed professor of theology at Halle, the centre of German rationalism. Here he made it his aim to combine in a higher unity the learning and to some extent the rationalism of Semler with the devout and active pietism of Francke; and, in spite of the opposition of the theological faculty of the university, he succeeded in changing the character of its theology. This he effected partly by his lectures, particularly his exegetical courses, but, above all, by his personal influence upon the students, and, after 1833, by his preaching. His theological position was that of a mild and large-hearted orthodoxy, which laid more stress upon Christian experience than upon rigid dogmatic belief. On the two great questions of miracles and inspiration he made great concessions to modern criticism and philosophy. The battle of his life was on behalf of personal religious experience, in opposition to the externality of rationalism, orthodoxy, or sacramentarianism. He fought this battle with weapons taken in the first instance from his own personal history, but also from the wide world of human culture, ancient and modern. Carl Schwarz happily remarks that, as the English apologists of the 18th century were themselves infected with the poison of the deists whom they endeavoured to refute, so Tholuck absorbed some of the heresies of the rationalists whom he tried to overthrow. As a preacher Tholuck ranked amongst the foremost of his time. He was also one of the prominent members of the Evangelical Alliance, and few men were more widely known or more beloved throughout the Protestant churches of Europe and America than he. He died at Halle, June 10, 1877.

After his commentaries (on Romans, the Gospel of John, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Epistle to the Hebrews) and several volumes of sermons, his best-known books are Stunden christlicher Andacht (1839, 8th ed. 1870), intended to take the place of Zschokke's standard rationalistic work with the same title, and his reply to Strauss's Life of Jesus (Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen 