Page:LA2-NSRW-5-0021.jpg

VERONESE

Veronese (vd'rd-nd'zd), Paolo, the name given to Paolo Cagliari, one of the great Italian painters, who was born at Verona in 1528 or 1532. His father was a sculptor and wanted to train the boy for the same profession, but his taste for painting was so decided that he was put under the teaching of an uncle, who was a painter. His first pictures were executed in the Church of St. Sebastian at Venice, and were scenes from the history of Esther, Baptism of Christ, Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and others. He was only 28 at the time, but this work placed him at once in the same rank as Tintoretto, then 45, and Titian, then in his 80th year. He obtained the commission for painting the ceiling of the library of St. Mark, and the work was so fine that even his rivals joined in voting him a golden chain as an honor. At Verona, his native city, he painted the Banquet in the House of Simon the Pharisee. His best-known work is the Marriage at Cana, now in the Louvre. It has about 120 figures or heads, many of them portraits, as Queen Eleanor of France, Francis I, Queen Mary of England, Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese himself. Other pictures are Susanna and the Elders; the Supper at Emmaus; St. Helena's Vision of the Cross; the Annunciation; Esther Presenting Herself to Ahasuerus; and Venice, Queen of the Sea. He died at Venice, April 19, 1588.  Veron'ica, St. or Berenice, according to tradition, a woman of Jerusalem who, moved with pity at the sight of Jesus bending beneath the burden of His cross on His way to Golgotha, gave Him her kerchief that He might wipe the drops of agony from His brow. Jesus after using it handed it back to her, with the image of His face marked upon it. With this napkin, Veronica is said to have cured Tiberius, the Roman emperor, when very sick, and so convinced him of the divinity of Christ that he sent Pilate into exile. The napkin, it is claimed, is now at St. Peter's at Rome.  Versailles (ver-salz' }, a city in France, IT miles southwest of Paris, where Louis XIII had a country villa and Louis XIV built the finest palace in France, costing so enormous a sum that he destroyed the accounts. The marble court, the chapel, the halls and galleries filled with historical pictures (the collection made by Louis Philippe having 5,000 works of art and costing $5,000,000), the battle-gallery hung with pictures of French victories, the Hall of Mercury, Hall of Apollo and galleries of war and peace are among the many departments of this grand palace. The gardens surrounding it with their beautiful fountains and statuary attract crowds of visitors from Paris. The orangery has 1,200 orange-trees, one said to be 465 years old. The grand canal, 200 feet wide and a mile long, In the time of Louis XIV was covered with gondolas and lighted up with fireworks. The park connects with the two palaces, the Grand Trianon, a one-storied building with wings, and the Little Trianon, a pavilion with an English garden around it, the favorite residence of Marie Antoinette. There are churches, a museum, a military hospital and military school in Versailles, but no buildings of interest except the palaces. The treaty of peace, by which England recognized the independence of the United States, was signed at Versailles in 1783. The states-general of France met here in 1789 and bound themselves never to separate until they had given France a constitution. Louis XVI was driven from Versailles to Paris and to prison. Louis Philippe restored the palaces at a cost of $5,000,000. During the Franco-German War it was the headquarters of the German army, and King William I was proclaimed emperor of Germany there in 1871. It was the seat of government while the Commune held Paris, and the French Parliament met there until 1871. Population 54,982,  Vertebrates, the highest subkingdom of animals. The difference between the backboned animals and the lower animals without backbones was recognized by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. It was not until 1797, however, that Lamarck founded the group of vertebrata, and. defined it with distinctness. For a long time the line separating the vertebrates and the invertebrates was supposed to be a very sharp one. But a more thorough study of animal structure, showed that the vertebrates have many affinities with the invertebrates, and doubtless were derived from them. When the group was first founded, the distinguishing mark of vertebrated animals was supposed to be the possession of a backbone composed of bony vertebrae. But this idea has become so much modified that it is no longer used in defining the group. Kowalevsky, a Russian naturalist, snowed in 1866 that the tunicates develop in the same manner as the lowest vertebrates and, in their youth, closely approach the frog tadpole. This led to expanding the vertebrate group so as to include the tunicates, which were previously classed with the worms. Some other forms were later included for similar reasons. There are a number of forms, like the hagfish and lamprey, that have no bony spinal column, but nevertheless are true vertebrates. Therefore, the question arises: What are the marks of vertebrates, that distinguish them from all other animals and at the same time are possessed by all members of the group? There are three universally recognized features besides some others of smaller importance. The distinguishing features are (1) the possession of a nerve-cord located on the dorsal surface, that of invertebrates being on the ventral side of