Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/490

470 father was a poor farm-labourer, and could not afford to send him to school long enough even to learn to read and write. At the age of seven he lost his mother, a woman of superior mind and religious character ; and he was then sent to work with the tinners. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and at twenty he settled in the town of St Austell, first as manager for a shoemaker ; and about three years later he began business on his own account. He had already gained a reputation in his narrow circle as a keen debater and a jovial companion. He was first aroused to serious thought by the preaching of Adam Clarke ; and the impression thus produced was deepened by the death of his elder brother. He now joined the Methodists, was soon employed as a class leader and local preacher, and continued to preach till a few months before his death. His opportunities of gaining knowledge were very scanty, but he strenuously set himself to make the most of them. It is stated that an accidental introduction to Locke s great essay determined the ultimate direction of his studies. In 1798 the first part of Paine s Age of Reason was put into his hands ; and in the following year he made his first appearance as an author by publishing his Remarks on that work. The book was favourably received, and was re- published in 1820. Drew had begun to meditate a greater attempt before he wrote his Remarks on Paine ; and the fruits of his laborious investigation were given to the world in the Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul, in 180 2. This work made him widely known, and for some time it held a high place in the judgment of the religious world as a powerful and conclusive argument on its subject. A fifth edition appeared in 1831. Drew con tinued to work at his trade till 1805, when he entered into an engagement which enabled him to devote himself entirely to literature. In 1809 he published his Essay on the Identity and General Resurrection of tJie Human Body, perhaps the most original of his works, which reached a second edition in 1822. In 1819 Drew removed to Liverpool, on being appointed editor of the Imperial Magazine, then newly established, and in 1821 to London, the business being then transferred to the capital. Here he filled the post of editor till his death, and had also the supervision of all works issued from the Caxton press. He was an unsuccessful competitor for a prize offered in 1811 for an essay on the existence and attributes of God. The work which he then wrote, and which in his own judgment was his best, was published in 1820, under the title of An Attempt, to demonstrate from Reason and Revelation the Necessary Existence, Essential Perfections, and Superintend ing Providence of an Eternal Being, ivho is the Creator, the Supporter, and the Governor of all Things (2 vols. 8vo). This procured him the degree of M.A. from the university of Aberdeen. Among Drew s lesser writings are a Life of Dr Thomas Coke (1817), a History of Cornwall (1824), and a work on the divinity of Christ (1813). He died at Helston, in Cornwall, March 29, 1833. A memoir of his life by his eldest son appeared in 1834.  DREYSE, (1787-1867), in ventor of the needle-gun, was the son of a locksmith, and was born at Sommerda the 20th November 1787. He served his apprenticeship in the shop of his father, and from 1806 to 1809 followed his calling at Altenburg and Dresden. From 1809 to 1814 he was in Paris, where he succeeded in finding employment in the gun-factory of the Swiss officer Pauli, patronized by Napoleon I. After wards he returned to Sommerda, where, in partnership with Kronbiegel, he established a factory for the making of articles in iron by machine tools. In 1824 he patented a new percussion action for the gun, and continued there after to busy himself with experiments to improve in every way possible the process of shooting. In 1827 he invented the needle-gun, but without the advantage of breech-load ing ; and in 1836, having been encouraged in hia en deavours by the Prussian Government, he invented his first complete needle-gun. A gunnery was opened by him in 1841, which ultimately supplied weapons for the troops of all the German states, and before his death employed about 1500. persons. In 1864 he and his family had the rank of nobility conferred on them. He died 9th December 1867.  DRIFFIELD (or, to distinguish it from the neighbouring hamlet of Little Driffield), a market- town of England, in the east riding of Yorkshire, 28 miles to the east of York, and 196 miles from London by road. The town consisting of one principal street, from which some smaller ones diverge is agreeably situated at the foot of the Wolds, and is connected with the port of Hull by a navigable canal. It stands in the centre of a fertile agricultural district. An important corn and cattle market is held in the town every Thursday, and there are four large stock-fairs annually at Little Driffield. Besides the parish church, a fine old edifice in different styles, the principal public buildings in Great Driffield are the places of worship for Independents, Methodists, and Baptists, the corn exchange, the dispensary, the mechanics institute, and the station of the Hull and Scarborough railway. Carpets, cotton, and chemical manure are manufactured in the town ; and in the neighbourhood are numerous flour-mills and mills for bone-crushing. Population in 1871, 8364.  DROGHEDA, a seaport, market-town, and municipal and parliamentary borough of Ireland, in the province of Leinster, about 4 miles from the mouth of the Boyne, and 31 1 miles north of Dublin by rail. Though situated on the borders of Louth and Meath, it belongs to neither, as the town and surrounding district constitute a county of a city, with an area of 9 square miles, or 5780 acres. It occupies both banks of the river ; but the northern division is the larger of the two, and has received greater attention in modern times. The ancient fortifications, still extant in the beginning of the century, have almost completely dis appeared ; but of the four gateways, one named after St Lawrence remains comparatively perfect, and there are con siderable ruins of another. Great improvements have been effected in the town since 1840, under the encouragement bestowed by Benjamin Whitworth, M.P., who built a town- hall at his own expense in 1865, and furnished half the funds necessary for the construction of the water-works which now supply 800,000 gals, daily. Among the public buildings are a mansion-house or mayoralty, with a suite of assembly rooms attached ; the &quot; Tholsel,&quot; a square building with a cupola; a corn-market, the old linen-hall, an infirmary, a workhouse, and a prison ; five Protestant churches, five Roman Catholic chapels, three friaries, and four nunneries. St Peter s Chapel formerly served as the cathedral of the Roman Catholic archbishopric of Armagh ; and in the abbey of the Dominican nuns there is still preserved the head of Oliver Plunkett, the archbishop who was executed at Tyburn in 1681 on an unfounded charge of treason. There was at one time an archiepiscopal palace in the town, built by Arch bishop Hampton about 1620 ; and the Dominicans, the Fran ciscans, the Augustinians, the Carmelites, and the knights of St John had monastic establishments. Of the Dominican buildings there still exists the stately Magdalen tower ; the Franciscan friary is a striking ruin ; and there are traces more or less distinct of the Augustinian priory, the priory of St Lawrence, and the hospital of St Mary. At the head of the educational institutions is a classical school endowed by Erasmus Smith ; and among the public charities are an almshouse for twenty-four aged widows, and a foundation providing houses and annuities for thirty-six clergymen s widows. There is also a blue-coat school, founded about 