Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/896

Rh Archer Wilde, Esq. (brother of the late Lord Chancellor Truro), born in London, July 12, 1816, was educated at Winchester School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1838, and M.A. in 1842. In 1839 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, and for some years went the Northern circuit. He was appointed Junior Counsel to the Excise and Customs in 1840, Queen's Counsel in 1855, Counsel to the Duchy of Lancaster in 1859, and a Baron of the Exchequer in April, 1860, when he received the honour of knighthood. In 1863, on the death of Sir Cresswell Cresswell, Sir James Wilde was appointed Judge of the Court of Probate and Divorce, the duties of which post he discharged with eminent ability till 1872, when he resigned and was succeeded by Mr. Justice Hannen. He was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1864, and was created a peer by the title of Baron Penzance, of Penzance, co. Cornwall, April 6, 1869. In June, 1875, he was appointed Judge of the Public Worship Regulation Court (Dean of the Arches), and Judge of the Provincial Courts of Canterbury and York. Lord Penzance married, in 1860, the Lady Mary Pleydell-Bouverie, daughter of the third Earl of Radnor.

 PERCY,, M.D., F.R.S., son of the late Mr. Henry Percy, born at Nottingham in 1817, was educated in Paris and in Edinburgh, where he was a pupil of Sir C. Bell, and where he graduated M.D. For some years he was in medical practice at Birmingham. Dr. Percy was appointed in 1851 Professor of Metallurgy in the Government (now Royal) School of Mines, and he held that office till Dec, 1879. He is the author of an important work on "Metallurgy, or the Art of Extracting Metals from their Ores, and adapting them to the various Purposes of Manufacture," with illustrations, published in 1861; "The Metallurgy of Gold, Silver, and Lead," 1869; and "The Metallurgy of Lead, including Desilverisation and Cupellation," 1871. The Iron and Steel Institute, on 25 Jan., 1877, awarded their Bessemer medal to Dr. Percy for his works on metallurgy, especially those on iron and steel. The freedom of the Turners' Company was presented to Dr. Percy, Jan. 11, 1883.

 PEREZ GALDÓS,, a Spanish novelist, was born in 1845 at Las Palmas in the Canary Isles. As a writer of fiction he first distinguished himself by the publication of two historical romances relating to the state of Spain in 1820 and 1804, and entitled respectively "La Fontana de Oro" (Madrid, 1871), and "El Audace." Next, in imitation of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, he published two series of "Episodios Nacionales," the first dealing with subjects taken from the War of Independence against Napoleon, and the second describing the struggle of Spanish Liberalism against the tyranny of Ferdinand VII. These novels achieved a great success in Spain, and were also widely read in Spanish America. Among them we may mention "Bailén," 1873-5; "Napoleon en Chamartin," 1874; "Cadiz," 1874; "Juan Martin el Empecinado," 1874; "La Batalla de los Arapiles." 1875; and "El Terror de 1824," Madrid, 1877. Encouraged by the continually increasing success of these productions, he composed other romances, entitled "Doña Perfecta" (translated into English in 1880); "Gloria" (translated into English by Nathan Wetherell, 2 vols., Lond., 1879); "Marienela," and "La Familia de Leone Roch," which augmented his fame, and brought him into the foremost rank of Spanish novelists. For some years past Señor Perez Galdós has been living at Madrid, working hard at literature as a profession, and figuring for a time as the head of the principal Spanish