Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/800

764 the Prussian diet. When that cause appeared hopeless, he retired from politics ; and the rest of his life was spent in study, and in fulfilling the duties of the chair which he still held at Bonn. He died on the 5th December 1860.

1em 1em  DAHLSTJERNA, (166.1-1709), whose original surname was, the Swedish poet, was born September 7, 1661, in the parish of 6hr, in Dalsland, where his father was rector. He entered the university of Upsala in 1677, and after gaining his degree, entered the Govern ment office of land-surveying. He was sent in 1681 on professional business to Livonia, then under Swedish rule, and after some time took thence a scientific journey into Germany, in the course of which, being at Leipsic, he published and publicly read, in 1687, a dissertation, De Electro, which caused such a sensation that he was offered a professorial chair at the university of that city. He refused this honour, however, and busied himself, on his return to Sweden, with carrying out the numerous commis sions in land-surveying directed by King Charles XL, and in 1699 he became head of the whole department. In 1702 he was ennobled under the name of Dahlstjerna. He speut his life in travelling, and wandered over the whole of the coast of the Baltic, Livonia, Riigen, and Pomerania, preparing maps which still exist in the office of Public Land-Surveying in Stockholm. He died in Pomerania on his forty-eighth birthday, September 7, 1709, just after the disastrous news of the lost battle of Pultowa had reached him. Dahlstjerna s life was, as it might seem, fully occupied with those practical mathematical studies in which he laboured so conscientiously for his country ; but it is indisputable that his passion for poetry was still more absorbing. His patriotism was touching in its pathos and intensity, and during his long periods of professional exile he comforted himself by the composition of songs to his beloved Sweden. His genius was most irregular ; at his best he surpasses all the Swedish poets of his time, and that with ease ; but no writer of that country has sunk to lower depths of bombastic puerility. He formed his style after two thoroughly bad models, the so-called Second Silesian School, of which Lohenstein was the leader, and the florid Italian pastoralists, Marini and Guarini. His best known original work is KungasTcald, an elegy on the death of Charles XL, published in 1697. It is written in alexandrines, arranged in ottava rima. The poem has faults enough ; it is pompous and allegorical, but there are passages full of melody and high thoughts. The whole bearing of the work, judged from a national point of view, is noble and even sublime, and could only have been conceived at such a time, when Sweden was a great power in Europe. Dahlstjerna was a reformer in language, and it has been well said by Atterbom, that in this poem &quot;he treats the Swedish speech just as dictatorially as Charles XI. and Charles XII. treated the Swedish nation.&quot; In 1 706 he printed a volume of poems celebrating the victories of Charles XII., which, to the serieus loss of Swedish lite rature, has unaccountably disappeared. In 1690 was printed at Stettin his translation or rather paraphrase of the Pastor Fido of Guarini, which was very much admired and often reprinted. But of all the works of Gunno Eurelius the one that has attained most living popularity is The Goth s Battle Song concerning the King and Master Peter, published in 1701. The king is Charles XII. and Master Peter is, of course, the e/ar of Russia. There is a proud maiden whom Peter will ravish from the king, and her name is Narva Castle. It is an exceedingly spirited and felicitous ballad, and lived almost until our own days on the lips of the people as a folk-song. In a more tasteful age, and with more leisure for poetic study, there can be no doubt that the vivid genius of Dahlstjerna would have produced works of a far higher order. As it is, there is no Swedish writer of his age who has approached him in his sublimer moments. The works of Dahlstjerna have been collected by Hansellius.  Chart of Dahomey.

DAHOMEY, a kingdom on the west coast of Africa, extending inland from the Slave Coast, in the Gulf of Guinea, and second only to Ashantee in power and impor tance. The territory of Dahomey has been described as extending from the Volta to the Niger, and from the Kong Mountains to the sea; but recent investigation has shown that the true limits of the state are much more closely circumscribed, Dahomey proper being probably not more than 120 miles from north to south, and the same, or perhaps less, from east to west, lying between 6 15 and T 30 N. lat. and 1 30 and 2 30 E. long, or thereby. On the &quot;W. and N.W. are the semi-independent races of Aja and Atakpamu ; on the N. the Mahees or Makhis, now completely subjugated; and on the N.E. and E. the Eyos and the Egbas, both the hereditary enemies of the Dahomans. On the S.E. is the kingdom of Porto Novo, a nation of kindred race, over which the king of Dahomey claims suzerainty. The southern portion of Dahomey is confined to the narrow tongue of dry land which lies between the Avon and the Denham lagoons and the swamps to the north of them, while the actual coast line included in the dominion extends only from Mount Pulloy (near Great Popo) on the west to Cotonau on the east. The frontier is said to be marked for some distance inland by the River Agomey on the west and the Denham water and its tributary, the Ouellon or Whemi river, on the east. The seaboard is about 35 miles long, and forms a portion of the 120 miles of coast which intervene between the British possessions of the Gold Coast proper and Lagos. Between the Gold Coast and the Dahoman frontier occur several independent townships or coast settlements of mixed race, each under a separate chief. The principal centre of trade with the interior in this debateable land is the town of Gridgi, where a market is held every few days. Physical Features. The physical geography of Dahomey possesses some peculiarities. The ancient limit of the con tinent now lies about 50 miles inland, and the low ground intervening between the former coast-line and the present shore is protected from the ocean by a natural bank of 