Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/584

Rh 548 W H I W H I A player who desires the cards to be placed, or who demands to see the last trick, should do it for his own information only, and not in order to invite the attention of his partner. No player should object to refer to a bystander who professes himself unin terested in the game, and able to decide any disputed question of facts, as to who played any particular card, whether honours were claimed though not scored, or vice versa, &c. It is unfair to revoke purposely: having made a revoke, a player is not justi fied in making a second in order to conceal the first. Until the players have made such bets as they wish, bets should not be made with bystanders. Bystanders should make no remark, neither should they by word or gesture give any intimation of the state of the game until concluded and scored, nor should they walk round the table to look at the different hands. No one should look over the hand of a player against whom he is betting. DUMMY. Dummy. Dummy is played by three players. One hand, called dummy s, lies exposed on the table. The law* are the same as those of whist, with the following exceptions : (i.) dummy deals at the commencement of each rubber; (ii.) dummy is not liable to the penalty for a revoke, as his adversaries see his cards ; should lie revoke and the error not be discovered until the trick is turned and quitted, it stands good ; (iii.) dummy being blind and deaf, his partner is not liable to any penalty for an error whence he can gain no advantage : thus, he may expose some or all of his cards, or may declare that he has the game or trick, &c., without incurring any penalty ; if, however, he lead from dummy s hand when he should lead from his own, or vice versa, a suit may be called from the hand which ought to have led. DouUe Dummy. [This] is played by two players, each having a dummy or ex posed hand for his partner. The laws of the game do not differ from dummy whist, except in the following special law : there is no misdeal, as the deal is a disadvantage. (H. J.) WHISTON, WILLIAM (1667-1752), English divine and mathematician, was born on 9th December 1667 at Norton in Leicestershire, of which village his father was rector. He was educated privately, partly on account of the delicacy of his health and partly that he might act as amanuensis to his father, who had lost his sight. He afterwards entered at Clare College, Cambridge, where he applied himself with extraordinary diligence to mathematical study, and obtained a fellowship in 1693. He next became chaplain to Moore, the learned bishop of Norwich, from whom he received the living of Lowestoft in 1698. He had already given several proofs of his noble but over scrupulous conscientiousness, and at the same time of the propensity to paradox and the pragmatical and wayward temper which almost destroyed the usefulness of the fine example of disinterestedness which he gave to a lax and lukewarm age. His Theory of the Earth (1696), although destitute of sound scientific foundation, obtained the praise of both Newton and Locke, the latter of whom justly classed the author among those who, if not adding much to our knowledge, &quot; at least bring some new things to our thoughts.&quot; In 1701 he resigned his living, where his conduct had been most exemplary, to become deputy at Cambridge to Sir Isaac Newton, whom he shortly after wards succeeded as Lucasian professor of mathematics. For several years Whiston continued to write and preach both on mathematical and theological subjects with con siderable success ; but his study of the Apostolical Con stitutions had convinced him that Arianism was the creed of the primitive church ; and with him to form an opinion and to publish it were things almost simultaneous. His heterodoxy soon became notorious, and in 1710 he was deprived of his professorship and expelled the university. The rest of his life was spent in incessant controversy, theological, mathematical, chronological, and miscellaneous. He vindicated his estimate of the Apostolical Constitutions and the Arian views he had derived from them in his Primitive Christianity, published in 1711. In 1713 he produced a reformed liturgy, and in 1730 one of the most valuable of his books, the Life of Samuel Clarke. While heretical on so many points, he was a firm believer in super natural Christianity, and frequently took the field in de fence of prophecy and miracle, including anointing the sick and touching for the king s evil. His dislike to rationalism in religion also made him one of the numerous opponents of Hoadly s Plain Account of the LorcTs Supper. He proved to his own satisfaction that Canticles was apocryphal and that Baruch was not. He was ever press ing his views of ecclesiastical government and discipline, derived from the Apostolical Constitutions, on the rulers of the church, and was lost in sincere astonishment that they could not see the matter in the same light as himself. He assailed the memory of Athanasius with a virulence at least equal to that with which orthodox divines had treated Arius. He attacked Sir Isaac Newton s chronological system with success ; but he himself lost not only time but money in an endeavour to discover the longitude. Of all his singular opinions the best known is his advocacy of clerical monogamy, immortalized in the Vicar of Wakefteld. Of all his labours the most useful is his translation of Josephus, with valuable notes and dissertations, which continues to be reprinted to this day. This appeared in 1736. His last &quot; famous discovery, or rather revival of Dr Giles Fletcher s,&quot; which he mentions in his autobiography with infinite complacency, was the identification of the Tartars with the lost tribes of Israel. About the same time (1747) he finally left the communion of the Church of England for the Baptist, leaving the church literally as well as figuratively by quitting it as the clergyman began to read the Athanasian creed. He died in London, at the house of his son-in-law, on 22d August 1752, leaving an auto biography, which deserves more attention than it has re ceived, both for its characteristic individuality and as a storehouse of curious anecdotes and illustrations of the religious and moral tendencies of the age. It does not, however, contain any account of the proceedings taken against him at Cambridge, these having been published separately at the time. Whiston is a striking example of a not unfrequent phenomenon, the association of an entirely paradoxical bent of mind with pro ficiency in the exact sciences. He is still more interesting as ex emplifying a less ordinary observation, the possibility of arriving at rationalistic conclusions in theology without the slightest tincture of the rationalistic temper. His conclusions were in many respects those of the latitudinarian divines of his day ; but anything more unlike the processes by which they attained these, or the spirit in which they supported them, would be difficult to imagine. He was not only paradoxical to the verge of craziness, but intolerant to the verge of bigotry. &quot;I had a mind,&quot; he says, &quot;to hear Dr Gill preach. But, being informed that he had written a folio book on the Canticles, I declined to go to hear him.&quot; This moral and in tellectual unreason effectually destroyed the weight otherwise clue to his erudition and acuteness, and left nothing recommendable for imitation in his conduct as a whole, except his passion for truth and his heroic disinterestedness, virtues in which few have rivalled him, though some may have exhibited them less ostentatiously. &quot;When not engaged in controversy lie was not devoid of good sense. He often saw men and things very clearly, and some of his bon-mots are admirable. WHITBY, a seaport and watering-place in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, is picturesquely situated on both banks of the Esk, at its entrance into the North Sea, and on the North-Eastern Railway, 247J miles north of London and 56 north-east of York. The river is crossed by a bridge which opens in the centre to permit the passage of vessels. The old parts of the town present a very antique and picturesque appearance, with narrow, steep, and irregular streets and plain old-fashioned houses, while the modern portion, included chiefly in West Cliff, possesses the usual characteristics of a fashionable Avatering-place. Of the old abbey all that now remains are the ruins of the church, occupying the site of the old Saxon building, but exhibiting no traces of remains earlier than the 12th century. The oldest portion is the choir, which is Early English ; the transept also is Early English but of later date ; and the nave is rich Decorated. The west side of the nave fell in 1763 and the tower in 1830. On the south side are foundations of cloisters and domestic build ings. Adjoining the abbey is Whitby Hall, built by Sir Francis Cholmley about 1580 from the materials of the monastic buildings, enlarged and fortified by Sir Hugh Cholmley about 1635, and restored within recent years. A little below the abbey is the parish church of St Mary, at first Norman, which still retains some portions of the