these add to the value of the work. From Mr. Pickering they have received, in a variety of ways, the most important aid. They are also indebted for valuable contributions, or favors of other kinds, to numerous other gentlemen, among whom they may be permitted to mention Mr. Duponceau, of Philadelphia; Mr. Woodbridge, editor of the Annals of Education; James E. Heath, Esq., of Richmond, Virginia; Gov. Marcy, B. F. Butler, Esq., and Dr. Beck, of Albany; Rev. Professor Palfrey, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Mr. De Schweinitz, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Samuel A. Eliot, Esq., of Boston; Gov. Cass, and Mr. Brush, of Michigan; Gen. Dearborn, of Roxbury, Massachusetts; Mr. James K. Paulding, of New York; Hon. Nathan Appleton, and Professor Ticknor, of Boston; Mr. Roberts Vaux, and Mr. Thomas Evans, of Philadelphia; Rev. Frederic A. Farley, of Providence, Rhode Island; Dr. Walter Channing, of Boston; Dr. Dewees, of Philadelphia; and the late Hon. Charles Ewing, chief justice of New Jersey. The friendly aid received from these and other gentlemen is most gratefully acknowledged. Boston Fh. 1, 1833. 4-18.99 Harvey Stovall ENCYCLOPÆDIA AMERICANA. VISIGOTHS. The powerful confederacy of nations under the name of Goths (q. v.), was, at an early period, geographically divided into Ostrogoths, who had their seats on the Pontus, and Visigoths, who inhabited Dacia. About the middle of the fourth century, the two nations separated into distinct political bodies. The Ostrogoths, weakened by this separation, having submitted to the Huns, the Visigoths fled to the mountains, and soon after obtained from the Romans permission to settle in the desolated Thrace. The relation of the nations to each other was by this means essentially changed. Under the name of allies, the Goths formed a chief part of the Roman army; but they became hostile whenever the promises made them were violated; and scarcely was Theodosius dead, and the empire divided, when the Visigoths, under Alaric, broke forth upon Italy, and Rome fell, in 410, into the power of the Visigoths. Alaric, had he not been overtaken by death, when on the point of conquering Africa, would have founded a Germanic empire in Italy. His brother-in-law Athaulf (Ataulphus), who was placed at the head of the nation, abandoned Alaric's projects, and turned towards Gaul, to make new conquests on both sides of the Pyrenees. He reached Barcelona, where he was murdered, in 415; but his successors, in the midst of perpetual conflicts with the previous occupants and with the Romans, founded in the south of France and in Spain the kingdom of the Visigoths. The unnatural extension of this kingdom to the north of the Pyrenees, where even the capital, and the residence of the king, Toulouse, was situated, while the Suevi still maintained their independence on the Peninsula, was one of the causes of its internal weakness. Another cause was the difference in the religious doctrines of the conquerors and the conquered, the former professing the Arian doctrines (see Arians), which were detestable to the Catholic descendants of the Roman settlers. This circumstance gave rise to a strict separation between the Goths and Romans, and caused the Catholic clergy to become more firmly attached to each other and to Rome. Notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding the convulsions produced by frequent changes of government, and by factions, the kingdom of the Visigoths, in the first century of its existence, continued to extend itself even beyond the Pyrenees, and, by political regulations, obtained internal consistency. Euric, the fifth king, who, from 466 to 483, during the total decline of the Roman empire, made great conquests in Spain and Gaul, gave the Visigoths, who had previously been governed by customary laws, written statutes, which were extended by his successors, and reduced to a system (see Lindenbrog's Codex Legum Antiquarum, and Canciani's Barbarorum Leges Antiqua), which is the most complete of all the German codes, and exhibits jurisprudence in a state of great advancement. His successor, Alaric, gave also to his Roman subjects in Gaul a system of laws. which he caused to be compiled, by persons well versed in jurisprudence, from the Theodosian code, from the enactments of the later emperors, and other sources, in order that the provinces might retain their ancient laws, but that the obligatory force of the law might proceed from his own authority. This code 138600 was not abolished till about the middle of tres officii palatıni), who formed a kind of the seventh century, till which time the nobility, and as the constitutional counlaws of the Visigoths and Romans con- sellors of the king, usurped the rights tinued different. But the weakness of of popular representatives, remained no the Visigoths became manifest as soon as longer the first class in the state: the old they came in contact with the Franks on mode of choosing the king, which had the Loire, when the Catholic Clovis (q. v.), thrown the election into their hands, was on pretence that it was unjust to let the altered in favor of the bishops; and under heretic Visigoths possess the fairest portion weak kings, who often attained the crown of Gaul, attacked the peaceful Alaric, and by artifices of the priests, or solicited abdefeated him at Rouglé, in 507. The solution and justification from the clergy, Franks obtained possession, without re- on account of the usurpation which they sistance, of most of the cities in southern had committed, or the oaths which they Gaul, and the kingdom of the Visigoths had violated, they found it easy to place would have been in great danger, had not themselves at the head of the state, and Theodoric (q. v.), king of the Ostrogoths, to procure_ exemption from all public undertaken its defence. While guardian burdens. This prevailing influence was of the Visigothic prince, his grandson, he especially visible in the ecclesiastical embraced the favorable opportunity to councils, which, in previous times, had make himself master of a part of the ter- discussed merely matters of doctrine or ritories still belonging to the Visigoths in church discipline, but, immediately after southern Gaul; and, after a long separation the conversion of the sovereign, began to of the two nations, there existed, for a mingle with spiritual affairs matters of a time, an intimate connexion of the Ostro- political character. When the clergy had goths and Visigoths. After his death, once established their political influence, dissensions soon arose among the Visi- they could, without reluctance, allow the goths, and the pernicious influence of the secular grandees, who came with the king difference of religion between the Arian to the councils, to take part in the delibVisigoths and the Catholic provincials, erations, the more particularly as they who were sometimes tolerated, and some- could always be sure of outvoting them; times persecuted, became more and more and, as early as 633, the regulation was evident. The kingdom of the Visigoths made, that those secular grandees alone arose again with new energy, under the should be admitted, who should be probold and intelligent Leovigild (568-586), nounced worthy of the honor, by the who totally subdued the Suevi, improved bishops. The internal disturbances, which the laws, limited the power of the nobles, the excessive power of the clergy promade Toledo the royal residence, and duced or favored, facilitated the conquest tried to render the regal power heredita- of the country by the Saracens, who were ry. His equally celebrated son, Reccared, settled on the north coast of Africa. As became a convert, in 589, to the Catholic early as the year 675, the Mohammedans faith; upon which the divisions of the began their attempts to settle in Spain, people ceased, and Goths and Spaniards encouraged by the factions which conbecame one nation. His conversion had vulsed the Visigoths, and which, during the most important influence on the char- the reign of the weak Roderic, enabled acter of the government. Scarcely had them to execute their project. The Goths the Catholic faith become the established were defeated, in 711, at Xeres de la Fronreligion, when the clergy, who had be- tera; the king was slain, and the Saracens come accustomed, during their former spread themselves over the greatest part state of oppression, to adhere firmly to- of the country. (See Spain.) gether, acquired a predominant influence, mainder of the Goths, who, after the such as they obtained in no other Germanic downfall of the empire, had fled to the nation, and constituted a hierarchy, totally mountains of Asturia and Galicia, foundindependent of the Roman papal authored there new kingdoms, in which the ity. The Arian bishops had lived quietly in their dioceses, and had no influence on the public administration; but the Catholic bishops strove after an active participation in public affairs, in order to render secure the authority which their church had obtained. The grandees of the kingdom, the secular public ministers und officers of the court (called viri illus The re constitutions of the Visigoths were in part retained, and which, when the descendants of the Goths broke forth from their fastnesses, and wrested from the Moorish settlers one tract after another, finally gave rise to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. The traces of the pub lic institutions of the Visigoths were preserved longest in the laws, as the Christians, on leaving the mountains, brought with them those by which they had been governed. The most ancient collection of Spanish laws, the Fuero juzgo, or Forum Judicum, is drawn from the ancient laws of the Visigoths; and many of them have been retained to the present day in the provincial law of Castile and Catalonia.-The liturgy of the Visigoths, which was established by the assembly of Toledo, in 633, for the purpose of introducing into all the churches a uniform mode of worship, long survived the downfall of the kingdom. This off cium Gothicum, as it was termed, which contained many rites and forms that had been used in the Spanish church from the earliest period of Christianity, maintained itself in spite of all the efforts of the popes to introduce the Roman liturgy; and so violent were the disputes to which this gave rise, that an attempt was made to adjust the quarrel by duel and fireordeal. Even after the Roman liturgy had been introduced into Castile, as it had previously been into Arragon, several churches in Toledo nevertheless retained their old usages. The Spanish Christians living under the dominion of the Moors, and styled Mozarabians, adhered still longer to the Gothic liturgy, which was therefore called officium Mozarabicum. Cardinal Ximenes caused the missal and breviary of this liturgy to be printed. The Spanish language also still preserves, in some words, the remains of the Gothic, although the Visigoths, after the conquest of the peninsula of the Pyrenees, adopted the language of the Romans. There is a Geschichte der Westgothen, by John Aschbach (Frankfort, 1827). VISION. (See Optics.) VISIONS. Ghosts, phantoms, apparitions, spectres, spirits, for the vocabulary of superstition is rich in terms, or, in philosophical language, spectral illusions, have, in some ages, played an important part in the machinery of society; nor can it be said that they have yet been laid by the voice of that great exorciser, knowledge. The guilty conscience still evokes the avenging spirits, and the disordered action of the physical functions is sometimes mistaken for the operation of external objects upon the senses. All appear ances of this nature may be classed under the two heads of mental illusions, and optical illusions, the former comprising those cases in which the spectral appearances are produced by the disordered state of the mind, and the latter, those occasioned by the presence of some external ob ject, under such circumstances as to deceive the senses. Thus, in regard to the first, it may be remarked that, in consequence of an extraordinary impression upon the brain, through the medium of the circulation of the blood, sensations are greatly increased in intensity, and ideas in vividness, and that emotions are produced corresponding, in intensity, to the acuteness of the sensations, and the vividness of the ideas. Then, again, the effect of a disordered state of the physical functions is to disturb the order of the succession of ideas, or to influence the velocity of their succession (producing indistinctness of perception, confusion of thought, inaccuracy of judgment, and, of course, a disregard to incongruities), or to increase the vivacity of ideas. The same effects may be produced by a diseased state of the body itself, or by violent mental excitements, influencing the physical functions, which, in turn, react upon the mind. These principles will be found to account for many spectral illusions of which we have authentic accounts. In some instances, it is a transient madness; in others, a permanent mania, under the influence of which the patient labored. In general, it will be observed that the images which constitute the subject of spectral illusions assume the form of figures which have been rendered familiar to the mind, and which have made strong impressions upon it. The sights seen bear a strict relation to the character of the seer, and of the superstitions of the age and country in which he lived. Thus the intelligent and philosophical Nicolai (q. v.) saw nothing but men and women, horses, dogs and birds in their natural form. The illusions of the superstitious consist of demons or angels, and all sorts of fantastic shapes, benign or malignant, according to the peculiar disposition or state of mind of the seer. "Ghosts," says Grose, "commonly appear in the same dress they wore when living, though they are sometimes clothed all in white; but that is chiefly the church-yard ghosts, who have no particular business, but seem to appear pro bono publico, or to scare drunken rustics from tumbling over their graves. Dragging chains is not the fashion of English ghosts, chains and black vestments being chiefly the accou trements of foreign spectres seen in ardıtrary governments: dead or alive, Eng lish spirits are free." Doctor Abercrom bie (Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers, 2d ed., Edinburgh, 1831), in treat ing of spectral illusions, refers them to the following heads:-1. False perceptions, or impressions made upon the senses only, in which the mind does not participate. 2. Real dreams, though the person was not, at the time, sensible of having slept, nor, consequently, of having dreained. A person under the influence of some strong mental impression, drops asleep for a few seconds, perhaps without being sensible of it; some scene or person connected with the impression appears in a dream, and he starts up under the conviction that it was a spectral appear ance. 3. Intense mental conceptions, so strongly impressed upon the mind as, for the moment, to be believed to have a real existence. This takes place when, along with the mental emotion, the individual is placed in circumstances in which external impressions are very slight, as solitude, faint light, and quiescence of body. It is a state bordering closely upon dreaming, though the vision occurs while the person is in the waking state. 4. Erroneous impressions, connected with bodily disease, generally disease in the brain. The illusions, in these cases, arise in a manner strictly analogous to dreaming, and consist of some former circumstances recalled to the mind, and believed, for a time, to have a real and present existence. The diseases, in connexion with which they arise, are generally of an apoplectic or inflammatory character, sometimes epileptic; and they are very frequent in the affection called delirium tremens, produced by a continued use of intoxicating liquors. Under each of these heads, the author states a number of interesting facts, illustrative of the general theory. The second species of illusions, or optical illusions, are occasioned by the state of the atmosphere, producing a reflection or unequal refraction of light, such as the famous_gigantic figure called the spectre of the Brocken, aerial troops of horsemen, spectre ships, &c. (see Optics), of which phenomena the reader will find descriptions and explanations in Brewster's Natural Magic (London, 1832). Illusions are often also produced by the appearance of objects imperfectly seen in a dim light, and by electric phenomena, when the credulous and terrified observer "sees, or thinks he sees," monstrous shapes flitting around and glaring upon hin. For further information on this interesting chapter in the history of human weakness, see Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft; Thacher's Essay on Demonology (Boston, 1831); and particularly Hibbert's Philosophy of Ap paritions (Edinburgh, 1824). VISTULA (Polish, Visla; German Weichsel), a river about 500 miles long, navigable from Cracow, which rises in the principality of Teschen, in Austrian Silesia, on the northern declivity of the Carpathian mountains, flows round the territory of Cracow and Gallicia, through the kingdom of Poland, towards the northwest, passes through West Prussia, and divides into two branches, of which the eastern, the Nogat, empties, about two and a half miles from Elbing, into the Frische Haff; the western divides again, about nine miles above Dantzic, into two branches, of which the western flows into the Baltic at Weichselmunde, near Dantzic; the eastern, by many small channels, into the Frische Haff. The Vistula contains numerous and excellent fish: its navigation is very important, as the products of Poland-wood, grain, &c.-are transported on it to Dantzic, on the Baltic. The canal of Bromberg connects the Vistula with the Oder. (q. v.) Several navigable rivers empty into the Vistula. VITALIANS. (See Apollinarians.) VITELLIUS, Aulus, à Roman, raised by his vices to the throne, was descended from one of the most illustrious families of Rome. The greatest part of his youth was spent at Capreæ, where he labored to gratify the vicious propensities of Tiberius. He passed through all the offices of the state, and gained the soldiery by donations and liberal promises. He was at the head of the Roman legions in Germany when Otho was proclaimed emperor, and was likewise invested with the purple by his soldiers. He accepted the office, and instantly marched against Otho. After losing three battles, he was successful in the plains between Mantua and Cremona. He now gave himself up to luxury and debauchery. He feasted four or five times a day, and was often seen to make himself vomit, to begin his repast afresh. Above thirty million dollars were spent in maintaining his table in the space of four months. This extravagance soon raised the indignation of the people. Vespasian was proclaimed emperor by the army, and his minister Primus was sent to destroy the imperial glutton. Vitellius concealed himself under the bed of the porter of his palace; but he was discovered, and dragged naked through the streets, with his hands tied behind his back. After suffering the greatest insults from the populace, his head was cut off and fixed to a pole, and |