Chesapeake and its tributaries, and is also common southward to New Orleans, often collecting in very large flocks, particularly towards evening. It is very shy, but vast numbers are killed, it being in very high esteem for the excellence of its flesh.

PO'CO (Ital.), a little, a term much used in Music, as poco animato, rather animated; poco forte, abbreviated pf., rather loud; poco a poco, signifies by degrees, little by little; poco a poco crescendo, becoming loud by degrees; poco a poco rallentando, becoming slower by degrees.

POD. See LEGUME. PO'DAGRA. See GOUT.

FODA'RGUS, a genus of birds of the family Caprimulgida, nearly allied to the true Goat-suckers (q. v.), but having no connecting membrane at the base of the toes, and the middle toe not pectinated. Some interesting species are natives of Australia, strictly nocturnal in their habits, and remarkable for the difficulty with which they are roused from their sleep by day. P. humeralis may be pushed off a branch, and seems scarcely to waken so as to save itself from falling to the ground; and if two are sitting together, as is usually the case, one may be shot without its mate being much disturbed. But by night this bird is all activity. Another species, P. Cuvieri, disturbs the night by a hoarse cry, resembling the syllables More Pork, by which name

it is therefore known in New South Wales.

PODE'STÀ (Lat. potestas, power), an Italian municipal magistrate. The name was first applied to foreign magistrates with supreme authority, whom the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa placed over the Italian towns on subjugating them. In the 13th and 14th centuries, an officer bearing the same designation appears, at first occasionally, like the Roman dictator, afterwards in most Italian cities as a permanent magistrate, appointed either by the constituent parliament, or by the Great Council; he superseded all the ordinary magistrates, the military officers, and occasionally the judges. The cause of appointing such an officer was the jealousy that subsisted between the richer citizens and the nobles; the podestà was a stranger, generally belonging to the nobility, and prohibited, during his term of office, from forming any intimate connections in the city which he governed. His chief duty was the execution of summary justice on the lawless barons; and in the great Lombard towns, he generally obtained a predominance for the citizens. Occasionally, however, the podestà became too strong for both parties, securing his re-election during a succession of years, and becoming the despotic ruler of the city.

Podestà is the name now given in many Italian towns to an inferior municipal judge.

PODGORI’TZA, a town of European Turkey, in Albania, 35 miles north of Scutari, close to the frontier of Montenegro. It is fortified, and contains a population of 6000, almost all of whom are Moham

medans.

PO'DICEPS. See GREBE.

PODIEBRAD AND KUNSTAT, GEORGE BOCZKO OF, son of Herant of Kunstat and Podiebrad, a powerful and influential Bohemian noble, of the Hussite party, was born in 1420. Whlle still a youth, he threw himself, with all the ardour and resolute force of his nature, into the Hussite struggles. Like the rest of his family, however, he adhered to the moderate party of the Hussites during the government of King Sigismund; but when, on the death of that monarch, the Catholic barons

(1438) carried the election of Albrecht V. of Austria (II. of Germany), P. allied himself with the Utraquist Orders in Tabor, and offered the sovereignty of Bohemia to Casimir, king of Poland. Albrecht immediately declared war against him, and invested Tabor, but was forced by P. to raise the siege, and retire to Prague. From this time, P.'s influence was firmly established among the Útraquists; after Lipa, he was the first man of the party. When Albrecht died in 1439, Lipa was appointed regent during the minority of the new king Ladislas; but five years later, Lipa himself died, and P. obtained the government of the country. He, however, was not satisfied. His ambition was to acquire the royal dignity. In 1449, he one night seized the capital, drove away all the Catholic barons, and even imprisoned his colleague in the regency, Meinhardt von Neuhaus. This outrage led to a year or so's fighting—the final result of which was that P. was acknowledged governor or regent by the whole of Bohemia. On the death of Ladislas in 1457, P. managed to get himself chosen his successor, and was crowned 7th May 1458. From this period he began to display the full power and strength of his administrative genius. He reorganised the forms of education and religion, and strove to bring about a peaceful settlement of the religious dissensions that had desolated the land. the papal co-operation in his humane endeavours; He even went the length of respectfully soliciting but his Holiness would have no dealings with this Samaritan ruler, and in December 1463 publicly proclaimed him a heretic. All the neighbouring princes sent letters to Rome, exhorting or imploring the pope to moderation; but the only answer which Pius II. gave them was placing P. under the ban of the Vatican. Shortly after, Rudolf, the papal legate, excited the Catholics of Bohemia to insurrection. P. tried every means of conciliation, but in vain. In September 1466, a German Catholic army burst into Bohemia, but this host of pseudo-crusaders was annihilated at Riesenberg. Once more Pius excommunicated P.; and in addition, he induced Mathias (q. v.) of Hungary to invade Moravia. The Bohemian king appealed to a universal council, but he also prepared to meet force with force. Summoning back from abroad the banished Taborite warriors, he crushed the insurrection, and compelled his enemies to grant him an advantageous armistice. In 1467, his son Victorin, on the renewal of hostilities, invaded and devastated Austria, while the Hungarians who had invaded Bohemia were surrounded at Vilemov, and forced to cease from hostilities. In spite of the magnanimity shewn by P. on this occasion, Mathias acted falsely towards him, and in the following year had himself crowned king of Bohemia and Markgraf of Moravia. instantly summoned the Bohemian diet, and proposed to the assembled orders that they should take the king of Poland as his successor, while his own sons should merely retain the family possessions. By this means, he obtained the Poles for allies; the Emperor Friedrich also declared in his favour, while his Catholic subjects were reconciled to him, so that the Hungarians found it advisable to conclude a peace. P. died 22d March 1471. His sons, Victorin and Henry of Münsterberg, fell back into the ranks of the Bohemian aristocracy; but in the stormy days that followed, they rendered good service to their native land.

P.

PO'DIUM, a pedestal continued horizontally, so as to form a low wall on which columns may be set. Like the pedestal, it has a lease, die, and corona, all continued. When the podium breaks forward so as to form a pedestal for a column, it is called the Stylobate.

take part in the war of independence against the Turks. Greece he did not reach; but we find him unaccountably turning up in St Petersburg, drunk and disorderly as usual, and becoming the tenant of a police-cell. The minister of the United States interested himself to procure his release, and sent him back to America. By the good Mr Allan the returning prodigal was welcomed; and on his expressing a wish to follow the profession of arms, an appointment as cadet was procured for him in the Military Academy at West Point. Almost as a matter of course, he was 'cashiered' within the year; and once more he had recourse to Mr Allan, who once more received him kindly. Presently, however, the patience even of this excellent and much-enduring man was exhausted. He had then married a second wife, and this lady an ugly rumour exists that Poe attempted to seduce. One would not willingly believe this unless on most sufficient evidence; but it is certain Mr Allan now ejected him from his premises, and would never again hold communication with him. Cast upon his own resources, he now enlisted as a private soldier, but some injudicious friends, recognising him in this position, busied themselves to procure his discharge. Some little time before this, Poe had published a small volume of poetry [Al Aaraaff, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, Baltimore, 1829] and its success had been sufficient to encourage him in the attempt to live by his pen. Further to hearten himself in the business, he married a cousin of his own, Virginia Clemm, a beautiful and saintly creature, who in no very long time died, heart-broken, it is but too likely, by the erratic ways of her husband, who wrote a most musical lament for her, sold it, and drank the proceeds. Onward, from the date of his marriage, the life of Poe was that of the professed literary man, and may be chronicled in a single sentence. His brilliant and known ability readily procured him employment; and his frantic habits of dissipation, with the regularity of a natural law, insured his early and ignominious dismissal. He wrote in his drunken, desultory way, poems, tales, criticism, &c. In 1848 he delivered in New York a series of lectures on 'the Universe,' and published them in the form of a volume entitled Eureka, a Prose Poem. The work is of a speculative cast, and is considered by competent readers of it to display some distracted ability in that kind, and to leave its subject, the universe,' pretty much as Poe found it. A feeble attempt at teetotalism, which he shortly afterwards made, was indirectly the cause of his death. He joined a temperance society, and was for some months actually sober; but chancing to pass through Baltimore, he was waylaid by some ancient 'cronies,' and on the morning of Sunday, 7th October 1849, he was found dead drunk in the gutter, and carried to a hospital, where the same evening he died, at the early age of 38.

Scarce any such dark and disastrous career as that of Poe has a place in all the sad records of genius. From the sins and aberrations of a creature so obviously abnormal, we need not seek to point a moral.' Only, in charity, one may hope that the depravity, though terrible, might not be so utter as it seemed. There was about him a strange fascination; his friends loved him-those best who best knew him, and knew him in his wretchedest aberrations. By his wife and her mother he was regarded through all with an obstinacy of tender affection, not for an instant to be shaken.

Whatever may be thought of his morals, of his genius there will be little question. Slight in substance, small in quantity, and in range limited, its flow is remarkable for ease and gracefulness, now

trembling with passion, gay with shallow joy, or dark with a misery helpless and hopeless. Save for some traces of imitation in its earlier specimens, his verse is eminently a peculiar and individual product. In keen, clear, lyrical quality the music of Poe at his best is scarcely surpassed by that of any other poet. Not less remarkable in their way are the collection of short tales, of which he has left two volumes. Many of these are wildly and weirdly impressive, though too frequently indulging by morbid preference in ghastly and painful effects. Over very much that Poe has written, alike in prose and in verse, there broods a shadow of misery and hopeless portentous gloom, sadly significant in its relation to the dismal tragedy of his life.

POERIO, CARLO, a noble Italian patriot, was born on the 10th of December 1803. His father, Giuseppe P., Baron Belcastro, was also highly distinguished for his love of liberty and for his sufferings in her cause. Born at Belcastro, in Calabria, in 1775, he took part in the Neapolitan revolution of 1799, and suffered imprisonment on its suppression, but was released in 1802. He also took part in the revolution of 1820, for which Ferdinand handed him over to the Austrians, who assigned him as a place of abode, first Grätz, in Styria, and afterwards Florence. On the recall of the exiles by Ferdinand, in 1833, P. returned to Naples, where he spent the rest of his life, and died 15th August 1843. He left two sons, the elder, Alessandro [born in 1802, celebrated as a poet and patriot, and died (of amputation of a limb) after the battle of Mestre, 27th October 1848], and Carlo, the subject of our notice. Carlo was educated with great care under the parental roof, and trained even from infancy, by the example of his father and brother, to place the love of his country above every other affection. In 1828 he joined the liberals of Naples, and took part in the conspiracy of Avellino, for which he was imprisoned until March 1838. He was concerned in the attempt made in 1847 to extort liberty, but was discovered, and after the movement at Reggio was sent back to prison with D'Ayala, Bozzelli, De Augustinis, Assanti, and others. The revolution in Sicily, which broke out at Palermo on the 12th January 1848, set him at liberty, and he immediately gave himself to the organisation of the famous demonstration of the 27th January 1848, which was destined to produce the constitution of the 10th February. Carlo was successively nominated Director of Police, and Minister of Public Instruc tion; but he soon resigned, and also refused the rank of Privy Councillor, offered to him by Ferdinand. He was appointed deputy to the parliament.

On the 18th July 1849, an unknown hand left in P.'s house a note to the following effect: Flee without a moment's delay. You are betrayed. Your correspondence with the Marquis Dragonetti is in the hands of the government.' As there had been no such correspondence, and as it was P.'s wish to maintain the combat to the last on the ground of legality, he did not flee. On the following day he was arrested, and his house was ransacked. Six days after, a letter of Dragonetti's was given him to read, in which he spoke of an invasion by Garibaldi, instigated by Mazzini and Palmerston. letter was a forgery of the police! P. compared it with other authentic letters of Dragonetti, and proved it to have been forged. As the government could not bring him to trial on that pretext, it had recourse to a spy, Jervolino, who accused P. of being at the head of a sect-which never existedcalled the Italian Unity, which aimed at proclaiming a republic, and murdering the king and the ministers.

The