Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/833

Rh was appointed secretary of legation to John Adams, the ambassador to England; and for two years (1781-83) he was envoy to St Petersburg. He took an active part in politics till 1791, when, being appointed chief-justice of Massachusetts, he devoted himself to his judicial duties. He died at Cambridge, April 25, 1811. Francis Dana was the father of Richard Henry Dana, born in 1787, the author of The Buccaneer and other Poems, and a number of essays, many of which first appeared in the North American Review, of which Dana was one of the founders. His son, also named Richard Henry Dana, is an authority on maritime law, and the author of the popular novel Tiuo Years before the Mast, which is founded on personal experience, and of The Seaman s Friend, or The Seaman s Manual.  DANAE, in Greek legend, is known only in connection with her son Perseus (Iliad, xiv. 319), and in particular from the circumstances of his birth. Her father Acrisius, king of Argos, having been warned by an oracle that his daughter would bear a son who would put him to death and rule in his stead, sought to prevent this by confining Danae in an underground chamber lined with bronze like the underground treasuries still visible at Mycenoe. But Zeus descended to her in a shower of gold, and she gave birth to Perseus, upon which Acrisius placed her and her infant in a wooden box and consigned them to the sea. After long floating about they were picked up by Dictys, a fisherman who lived with his brother Polydectes on the small island of Seriphus. There she remained till her son had grown up and returned from his expedition of cutting off Medusa s head, when, finding his mother persecuted by Polydectes, Perseus first turned her tormentor and those with him into stone by exhibiting Medusa s head, and then set out with her for Argos. From this point she has no more part in the Greek legend. In Latin legend she goes to Italy and marries Pilumnus or Picumnus. It has been pointed out that Perseus was a solar hero, and his birth in the dark chamber has been compared with the birth of Apollo from Leto, a goddess of the darkness of night. The wooden box in which mother and son floated safely is also com pared with the boat of Helios, and the golden rain of Zeus may be the beams of sunlight.  DANAUS, in Greek legend, was the founder of Argos and of the race of Danai, by which name the Argives are designated in Homer. A local feature of Argos was the drought which in summer sealed its numerous small springs, and with this feature Danaus was identified as having made the first well, while his fifty daughters (Danaides), seem to represent the many spiings of the district. In the lower world they had to carry water in broken vases. It was in searching for water that his daughter Amymone was pursued by a satyr and rescued by Poseidon, the god of that element, who struck out a spring for her with his trident. But while the legend of Danaus thus seems to have been of native Argive origin, he was, in accordance with the tendency at one time of tracing genealogies to Egypt, described as a son of Belus, king of Egypt, and Anchirrhoe, a daughter of the Nile, having a brother ^Egyptus. This brother had fifty sons, while Danaus had fifty daughters, and because the latter would not marry their cousins, they were obliged to escape from Egypt with their father Danaus. The sons of JEgyptus pursued them to Argos and besieged them there, till it was agreed by Danaus that they should marry his daughters. But to each of his daughters he gave a knife with injunctions to slay her husband on the marriage night. Except Hypermnestra they all obeyed, and it was for this that they had to carry water in the lower world. Afterwards he gave them in marriage to the noblest youths of the district who could prove their claims by the greatest speed in the race course,  DANBURY, a town of the United States, in Fairfield county, Connecticut, situated on the Still river, a tributary of the Housatonic, about 53 miles N.N.E. of New York, with which it is connected by rail. Besidss the county buildings, it has two national banks, nine churches, a public library, and a high school capable of accommodating 600 pupils. There is a monument, erected in 1854 to the memory of General Wooster, who was mortally wounded in 1777, when the town was burned by the English under General Tryon, and another, of more recent date, to commemorate the other citizens who perished on the same occasion. The principal industry is the manufacture of hats, which was introduced in 1780, and is carried on by ten separate companies ; shirts are also largely produced, and sewing machines are constructed. The town, which was incorporated in 1G96, had in 1870 a population of 8753, Its Indian name was Pahquioque.  DANBY, (1793-1861), a painter of poetical landscape, who possesses some significance and importance in the English school, was born in the south of Ireland, November 16, 1793. His father farmed a small property he owned near Wexford, and Francis began life in the country, but the death of his father caused the family to remove to Dublin, while he was still a schoolboy, and there his bias to art very quickly developed itself, and superseded any other education. He began to practise drawing at the Royal Dublin Society s schools ; and under a Mr O Connor, an erratic youth of his own age with national peculiarities, he began painting landscape. The capital of Ireland has never shown very much interest in the arts, but there was a youth then rising who afterwards made his mark in archaeology, if not in his profession of landscape painting, George Petrie, with whom Danby formed an acquaintance ; and all three left for London together in 1813. This expedition, undertaken with very inadequate funds, and no aid, quickly came to an end and they had to get home again by walking all the way. At Bristol they made a pause, and Danby finding he could get trifling sums for water-colour drawings, remained there working diligently and sending to the London exhibitions pictures of importance. There his large pictures in oil quickly attracted attention. They were very powerful in effect and imaginative in invention ; and, had his Upas Tree and the Delivery of the Israelites from Egypt been produced before a greater man, John Martin, had shown the way to express multitude, vastness, and fabulous wonders in architecture, Danby would be properly con sidered one of the great men in modern painting. The Upas Tree (1820), his most independent and original picture, is, however, a very noble work, not only in invention but in execution ; the poison tree, surrounded by the remains of slaves who have been sent to gather its gum, grows alone in a valley of rocks lit by a ghastly moonlight, which is itself a triumph of art. The Delivery of the Israelites (1825) is much more strictly a derivation from Martin. The Royal Academy, however, elected him into their body on the strength of it, thinking by his means to checkmate that master, who did not aspire to Academic honours. He now left Bristol for London, and in 1828 exhibited his Opening of the Sixth Seal at the British Institution, receiving from that body an honorary premium of 200 guineas ; and this picture, which was admirably painted, was followed by two others from the Apocalypse, both productions of surprising power, though certainly indebted to the works of a similar species of inven tion appearing a few years earlier. These were the last of his important and large pictures. He suddenly left London, declaring that he would never live there again, and that the Academy, instead of aiding him, had, somehow or other, used him badly. Some insurmountable domestic 