Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/320

Rh 296 V L V R possession of the services, the issue to the levee en masse (or augmentation of the volunteer force) alone will be a matter of extreme difficulty for one arsenal to manage. This difficulty will be best understood by the following statement. The volunteer force in Great Britain at the beginning of the century numbered 359,165. Since then, however, the population has nearly doubled. Therefore, supposing all other conditions to be equal, the number that would now come forward to defend the country would be about 700,000, or 481,800 more than the present peace footing of the volunteer force. One arsenal is not sufficient to sustain the strain that would then be put upon it. Strategically considered also, the situation of that at Woolwich is not such as to justify the accumulation there of all the warlike material the nation would have to depend on. A central arsenal, if not a northern one as well, appears to be a national necessity. The existence of the volunteer force averts conscription for the country s defence, and it forms, as the first Lord Brougham characterized it, a &quot; national insurance.&quot; The cost to the country is trifling compared with the magni tude of the issues, being in 1885 767,400 for 218,000 &quot;efficient&quot; volunteers entitled to the public grant, that is 3, 8s. 6d. per volunteer, or barely 6d. per head of the population to be defended. The value of the volunteer force is not, however, to be estimated by the numbers actually enrolled. It is in fact, in its present form, a great training school of citizen soldiers, through which thousands pass annually into a reserve ready to join in case of need. And every year of its valuable service con firms the wisdom of Sir Charles Napier s last words of advice to his countrymen, viz., &quot; Militia and volunteers are the proper forces to prepare for danger in time of peace.&quot; (M. M M.) VOLUSENUS, FLORENTITJS (that is, FLORENCE WILSON or WOLSEY, though in an English letter lie writes himself VOLUZEXE), a Scottish humanist of the first half of the 16th century, whose elegant Latinity, but still more the thoughtful beauty of his Christian philosophy, claims for him a high place among the scholars of his age. That he was born near Elgin, and studied philosophy at Aberdeen, as is stated in the notice of his life published in 1619 by Thomas Wilson in Adamsoni Poemata Sacra, may be only an inference (though probably a just one) from a passage in the dialogue De Tranquillitate Animi, more than half of which consists of a description of the abode of tran quillity, based on a dream that, as we are told, came to the author, when he had been a student of philosophy for four years, after a conversation on the pleasant banks of the Lossie with John Ogilvy, afterwards rector of Cruden. Proceeding to Paris, he became tutor to a nephew (or really a bastard son) of Cardinal Wolsey, and this connexion led to repeated visits to England, where he was well seen by the king, and formed, with men like John Fisher, Stephen Gardiner, and Thomas Cromwell, connexions that were not dissolved by Wolsey s fall, for he was in England as late as 1534. In Paris he knew George Buchanan, who afterwards wrote a graceful epitaph on his friend s death, and found patrons in the cardinals Jean de Lorraine (to whom he dedicated in 1531 a Latin exposition of Psalm xv.) and Jean du Bellay. With the latter he started in 1534 for Italy, but, being detained by sore sickness at Avignon, found a new patron in the bishop of the diocese, the learned and pious Sadolet, who procured for him the mastership of the school at Carpentras, with a salary of seventy crowns. Volusenus felt himself a little out of place in a grammar school, all his tastes leaning to philo sophy, and it would seem that from Carpentras he made repeated visits to Lyons (where Gesner saw him, still a young man, in 1540), probably also to Italy, where he made many friends, perhaps even to Spain, for Alciat tells us that he had acquired French, Italian, and Spanish &quot;par frequentation des nations.&quot; A letter of Sadolet from Rome in 1546 shows that he had then resolved to return to Scotland, and was concerned to know what course he should hold in the religions dissensions of the time. He died on the journey, however, at Vienne in Dauphine. The authorities for the life of AVilson are well brought together by Irving in the Lives of Scottish Writers (1839) ; with the excep tion of two letters in the liannatyne Miscellany, vol. i., the most important of them had already been collected in Wishart s edition of the De Tranquillitate (8vo, Edin., 1751). Irving, however, overlooked Wilson s earliest works, Fl. Vol. ad illustr. Dom. Card. LotliaringorumPs. xv. Encrratio (ito, Paris, 1531) and Fl. Vol. Brit- anni in Psalmum nobis 50 Hebreeis vero 51 ad. . . Stephanum Winto- niensem Episcopum Enar. (4to, Paris, 1532). These show that his linguistic studies embraced Hebrew as well Greek and Latin. Wilson s reputation, however, rests on the beautiful dialogue already cited, and first printed by Gryphius at Lyons in 1543. From in ternal evidence it appears to have been composed about that time, but the subject had exercised the writer for many years. The dialogue shows us Christian humanism at its best, not yet breaking with the church and somewhat afraid of authority, but open to new light, tolerant and yet believing. Volusenus is a great admirer of Erasmus, but censures in him a lack of purity in his Latin and a certain want of philosophy. Latinity and philosophical training are his own distinguishing points, but his philosophy is Christian and Biblical rather than classical or scholastic. To analyse his argument would here be out of place ; the title of the dialogue itself shows that he takes a fresh and independent view of the chief good of Christian ethics, and it is sufficient to observe that from this point of view he ultimately reaches a doctrine as to the witness of the Spirit and the assurance of grace which breaks with the traditional Christianity of his time and contains ethical motives akin to, though not identical with, those of the German Reformation. The verses which occur in several parts of the dialogue, and the poem which concludes it, give Wilson a place among Scottish poets, but not nearly so high as that which he occupies among philosophical writers on Christianity. VONDEL, JOOST VAN DER (1587-1679),&quot;Dutch poet. See HOLLAND, vol. xii. p. 94. VORAGINE, JACOBUS DE (c. 1230-1298), archbishop of Genoa, is said to have been born at the little village of Varaggio, near Savona, about the year 1230. He entered the order of St Dominic in 1244, and is said to have preached with great success in many parts of Italy, as well as to have taught in the schools of his own fraternity. From the office of prior in 1267 he was raised to be provincial of all Lombardy. This post he held till 1286, when he was removed at the meeting of the order in Paris. He also represented his own province at the councils of Lucca (1288) and Ferrara (1290). On the last occasion he was one of the four delegates charged with signifying Nicholas IV. s desire for the deposition of Munio de Zamora, who had been master of the order from 1285, and was deprived of his office by a papal bull dated April 12, 1291. i In 1288 Nicholas empowered him to absolve the people ! of Genoa for their offence in aiding the Sicilians against Charles II. Early in 1292 the same pope, himself a Franciscan, summoned James to Rome, intending to con secrate him archbishop of Genoa with his own hands. James reached Rome on Palm Sunday (March 30), but only to find his patron ill of a deadly sickness, from which he died on Good Friday (April 4). The cardinals, how ever, &quot;propter bonorem Communis Januse,&quot; determined to carry out this consecration on the Sunday after Easter, and thus, to quote his own words, &quot;he returned with joy to his own city, and was reverently received by the people.&quot; If we may trust Echard, he was a model bishop, and especially distinguished himself by his efforts to appease the civil discords of Genoa. His death seems to have taken place in June 1298. He was buried in the Dominican church at Genoa. A story, mentioned by Echard as unworthy of credit, makes Boniface VIII., on the first day of Lent, cast the ashes in the archbishop s eyes instead of on his head, with the words, &quot; Remember