were wedded to, their cousins, whom their father provided each with a
dagger to murder her husband, which they did, all except Hypermnestra,
whose husband, Lynceus, escaping, succeeded her father as king, to the
defeat of the old man's purpose in the crime.

DANBY, FRANCIS, painter, born near Wexford; settled for a time in
Bristol, then in Switzerland, and finally at Exmouth; his works are
mostly landscape, instinct with feeling, but some of them are historical,
the subjects being taken from Scripture, as the "Passage of the Red Sea,"
or from pagan sources, as "Marius among the Ruins of Carthage"
(1793-1861).

DANCE, GEORGE, English architect; was architect to the City of
London, and designed the Mansion House, his chief work (1700-1768).
GEORGE, his son, built Newgate Prison (1740-1825).

DANCE OF DEATH, an allegorical representation in a dramatic or
pictorial form of Death, figuring, originally as a skeleton, and
performing his part as a chief actor all through the drama of life, and
often amid the gayest scenes of it; a succession of woodcuts by Holbein
in representation of this dance is well known.

DANCING MANIA, an epidemic of frequent occurrence, especially in
German towns, during the Middle Ages, of the nature of hysteria, showing
itself in convulsive movements beyond the control of the will, and in
delirious acts, sometimes violently suicidal; the most signal occurrence
of the mania was at Aix-la-Chapelle in July 1374.

DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON, French dramatist, a prolific author; a
favourite of Louis XIV.; wrote comedies, chiefly on the follies of the
middle classes of the time (1661-1725).

DANDIE DINMONT, a humorous, jovial store-farmer in "Guy Mannering."

DANDIN, GEORGE, one of Moliere's comedies, illustrative of the folly
a man commits when he marries a woman of higher rank than his own, George
being his impersonation of a husband who has patiently to endure all the
extravagant whims and fancies of his dame of a wife.

DANDIN, PERRIN, a simple citizen in the "Pantagruel" of Rabelais,
who seats himself judge-wise on the first stump that offers, and passes
offhand a sentence in any matter of litigation; a character who figures
similarly in a comedy of Racine's, and in a fable of La Fontaine's.

DAN`DOLO, a Venetian family that furnished four Doges to the
Republic, ENRICO being the most illustrious; chosen Doge in his
eighty-fourth year, assisted the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusad