WISE It Wise, HENRY AUGUSTUS, naval officer: born in Brooklyn, N. Y., May 12, 1819; entered the navy as midshipman in 1834; served on the coast of Florida during the Seminole War, and on the Pacific coast as colonel during the Mexican War; was appointed assistant chief of the bureau of ordnance and hydrography with the rank of commander in 1862; and was promoted captain and chief of ordnance in 1866, resigning in 1868. He died in Naples, Italy, April 2, 1869. He was author of Los Gringos, or an Interior View of Mexico and California, with Wanderings in Peru, Chile, and Polynesia, etc. versity and collision of opinion. They Catholics and naturalized citizens. found objects to employ their faculties, must proscribe natives and Protestants, and a motive in the magnitude of the both, who will not consent to unite in consequences attached to them, to exert proscribing Catholics and naturalized citithe utmost eagerness in the pursuit of zens. Nor is that all; it must not only truth, and the most daring intrepidity in apply to birth and religion, it must necesmaintaining it. Religious controversy sarily extend itself to the business of life sharpens the understanding by the subtle- as well as to political preferments. ty and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and braces the will by their infinite importance. We perceive in the history of this period a nervous, masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no indifference; or, if there were, it is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general character. But there is a gravity approaching to piety, a seriousness of impression, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervor of enthusiasm in their method of handling almost every subject. The debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough; but they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few. They did not affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions, "to own and read," with its wonderful table of contents, from Genesis to the Revelation. Every village in England would present the scene so well described in Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. How unlike this agitation, this shock, this angry sea, this fermentation, this shout and its echoes, this impulse and activity, this concussion, this general effect, this blow, this earthquake, this roar and dashing, this longer and louder strain, this public opinion, this liberty to all to think and speak the truth, this stirring of spirits, this opening of eyes, this zeal to know-not nothing but the truth, that the truth might make them free. How unlike to this is Know nothingism, sitting and brooding in secret to proscribe Catholics and naturalized citizens! Protestantism Wise, JOHN SERGEANT, lawyer; born in protested against secrecy, it protested Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where his father against shutting out the light of truth, was United States minister, Dec. 27, 1846; it protested against proscription, bigotry, graduated at the University of Virginia in and intolerance. It loosened all tongues, 1867; became United States district attorand fought the owls and bats of night ney for the eastern district of Virginia with the light of meridian day. The ar- in 1881; Republican Congressman - atgument of Know nothings is the argu- large from Virginia in 1883-85; and setment of silence. The order ignores all tled in New York City in 1889. He is the knowledge. And its proscription can't ar- author of Diomed, and The End of an rest itself within the limit of excluding Era. Wise, JOHN, balloonist; born in Lancaster, Pa., Feb. 24, 1808; made his first ascension at Philadelphia, Pa., May 2, 1835, and ascended to an altitude of 13,000 feet, Aug. 11. 1838. On Aug. 15, 1851, he made an ascent from Zanesville, O., to experiment on the action of falling bodies, and discovered that they always fall spirally, turning on an axis as they descend. In 1859 he made a celebrated trip from St. Louis to Jefferson county, N. Y. On Sept. 28, 1879, with a number of companions. he ascended from St. Louis, Mo., in a balloon named the Pathfinder, which drifted in a northeasterly direction. The last that was ever seen of it was as it passed over Carlinville, Ill. Later the body of one of his companions was washed ashore on Lake Michigan. In all, Mr. Wise made over 230 ascensions. He was the author of System of Aëronautics. Wishoskan Indians, a family of Ind- this purpose Gen. B. F. Butler, in comians that occupied the shores of Hum- mand of the Department of Virginia and boldt Bay and the Eel, Elk, and Lower North Carolina, planned and attempted Mad rivers, in California, and comprised a movement for the capture of Richmond the Patawat, the Wiyot or Vicard, and the by a sudden descent upon it. ArrangeWishosk tribes. In 1853 they numbered ments were made for a diversion in favor less than 1,500, and now the few rem- of the movement. On Feb. 5, 1864, Butnants are practically lost by merging with ler sent a column of cavalry and infantry other tribes. under General Wistar, 1,500 in number, Wisner, HENRY, patriot; born in who pushed rapidly northward from New Goshen, N. Y., about 1725; was an as- Kent Court-house to the Chickahominy at sistant justice of the court of common Bottom's Bridge. General Kilpatrick was pleas in 1768; representative from Orange sent from the Army of the Potomac to cocounty in the New York General Assembly operate with Wistar. With his cavalry in 1759-69; member of the Continental and two divisions of Hancock's infantry, Congress in 1774, and of the Congress he crossed the Rapidan, and skirmished which adopted the Declaration of Indepen- sharply with the Confederates to divert dence. He studied powder-making and their attention from Richmond, and when erected three powder - mills in Orange county, from which a great part of the powder used in the Revolutionary War was supplied. He also aided the patriot cause at the time of the war by having spears and gun-flints made, by repairing the roads in Orange county; and by erecting works and mounting cannon on the Hudson River. He was one of the committee that framed the first constitution of New York in 1777; was State Senator in 1777-82; and a member of the State convention of 1788, which ratified the national Constitution. He died in Goshen, N. Y., in 1790. the time for the execution of the raid had expired these troops recrossed the Rapidan, having sustained a loss of about 200 men. This raid was fruitless. The Confederates had been apprized by a traitor of the movement that Wistar intended to make. Wistar found the line of the Chickahominy too strongly guarded to pass it, and he returned. General Wistar was president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1892-96; founded the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia: and has written and spoken much on penology. Wister, OWEN, author; born in Philadelphia, Pa., July 14, 1860; graduated at Harvard in 1882; admitted to the bar in 1889. Among his works are Red Men and White; Lin McLean; Life of General Grant, etc. Witamo, squaw-sachem of the Pokanoket Indians, at Pocasset, near Mount Hope, was King Philip's mother-in-law; and she and her people supported him to the last and shared his disasters. Most of her people were killed or sold into slavery. She herself was drowned while crossing a river in her flight. Wissler, JACQUES, engraver; born in Strasburg, Germany, in 1803; was educated in Paris, France; came to the United States in 1849; and was employed by a lithographic firm. He was sent to Richmond. Va., by the firm before the Civil War broke out, and after the firing on Fort Sumter he was detained by the Confederates and employed to engrave the paper currency and bonds of the Confederacy. After the war he removed to Macon, Miss., and then to Camden, N. J., where he also engaged in engraving. He was also a portrait artist in crayon and oil. He died in Camden, N. J., Nov. 25, 1887. Wistar, ISAAC JONES, military officer; born in Philadelphia, Pa., Nov. 14, 1827; entered the National army in 1861, and was commissioned brigadier-general of vol- Witchcraft, NEW YORK. In 1665 Ralph unteers, Nov. 29, 1862, for services at An- Hill and his wife Mary were arrested tietam. The sufferings of the Union pris- for witchcraft and sorcery; they were oners at Richmond caused efforts to be tried by a jury, which included Jacob made early in 1864 to release them. For Leisler, afterwards governor, and acquit Witanagemot, the name of the great Anglo-Saxon council or parliament, constituting the highest court of judicature in the kingdom. ted, the jury finding "nothing consider- earliest case in the colonies of what is able against them." The event created now known as boycotting. See WITCHbut little excitement. In 1670, however, CRAFT, SALEM. the case of Katherine Harrison led to complications between the judiciary and the people. She was a widow, who on being banished from Weathersfield, Conn., Witchcraft, SALEM. The terrible delusion of belief in witchcraft accompanied the New England settlers, and they adopted English laws against it. For a long |