DAHL, Johann Christian (1778-1857), a landscape painter, born in Bergen, Norway, on the 24th February 1778. He began painting in his native town, and formed his style without much tuition, remaining there till he was twenty-four, when he left for the better field of Copenhagen, and ultimately settled in Dresden in 1818. He is usually included in the German school, although he was thus close on forty years of age when he finally took up his abode in Dresden, where he was quickly received into the Academy and became professor. German landscape-, painting was not greatly advanced at that time, and Dahl contributed to improve it. He continued to reside in Dresden, though he travelled into Tyrol and in Italy, painting many pictures, one of his best works being that of the Outbreak of Vesuvius, 1820. What his works want is the careful expression of nature in its normal conditions. He was fond of extraordinary effects, as seen in his Winter at Munich, and his Dresden by Moonlight; also the Haven of Copenhagen, and the Schloss of Friedrichsburg, under the same condition. At Dresden may be seen many of his works; a large picture called Norway may be mentioned, and a Storm at Sea. He was received into several academic bodies, and had the orders of Wasa and St Olaf sent him by the king of Norway and Sweden. His death took place in 1857....

DAHLGREN, Karl Fredrik (1791-1844), the Swedish poet, was born at Stensbruk in Ostergotland June 20, 1791. At the time when literary partizanship ran so high in Sweden, and the writers divided themselves into “Goths” and “Phosphorists,” Dahlgren came over to the latter body, aud made himself indispensable by his polemical activity. In the mock-heroic poem of Markalls somnlosa natter (Markall’s Sleepless Nights), in which the Phosphorists bitterly, and with eminent success, ridiculed their opponents, Dahlgren, who was a genuine humourist, took a very prominent part. In 1825 he published The Tower of Babel, a satire, and in the same year, a comedy, Argus in Olympus. In 1828 he collected the scattered poems of his youth into two volumes. In 1829 he was appointed to an ecclesiastical post in Stockholm, which he held until his death. In a series cf odes and dithyrambic pieces, entitled Mollbergs Epistlar (1819,1820), he strove to emulate the wonderful lyric genius of Bellman, of whom he was a student and follower. From 1825 to 1827 he edited a critical journal entitled Kometen (The Comet), and he is also the author of a comic novel, Nahum Fredrik Bergstrom's Chronicle, which is said to be extremely witty. In company with Almqvist he founded the celebrated Manhems-forbund, a society of agricultural socialists, which had but a short tenure of existence. In 1834 he collected his poems in one volume; and in 1837 appeared his last book, a volume entitled Steamboat Songs. On the 1st of May 1844 he died at Stockholm. Dahlgren is one of the best humorous writers that Sweden has produced; but it was perhaps in realistic and idyllic description that his peculiar talents displayed themselves to most advantage. His little poem of Zephyr and the Girl, which is to be found in ...

DAHLIA, a genus of herbaceous plants of the natural order Composites, so called after Dr Dahl, a pupil of Lin naeus. The dahlia is indigenous to Mexico, where it flourishes in sandy tracts at a height of 5000 feet above sea-level. Two cultivated species are distinguished by some botanists, D.frustranea and D. superflua, the outer involucre in the former being spreading, in the latter reflexed. The flowers have a chaffy receptacle, a double involucre, and no pappus. The roots or tubers are spindle-shaped, and grow in bundles; they were at one time used as food in France; but their acrid flavour occasioned their rejection as an esculent. They may be stored in winter in the same manner as potatoes. The flowers, at the time of the first introduction of the plant, were single, with a yellow disc and dull scarlet rays; under cultivation, since 1802 in France and 1804 in England, flowers of numerous brilliant hues, with the elements of the disc converted into rayflorets, have been produced. The flower has been modified also from a flat to a globular shape, and the arrangement of the florets has been rendered quite distinct in the ranunculus and anemone-like kinds. The ordinary natural height of the dahlia is about 7 or 8 feet, but one of the dwarf races grows to only 18 inches. With changes in the flower, changes in the shape of the seed have been brought about by cultivation; varieties of the plant have been produced which require more moisture than others; and the period of flowering has been made considerably earlier. In 1808 dahlias were described as flowering from September to November, but some of the dwarf varieties at present grown are in full blossom in the middle of June. The nature of the season has a marked effect upon certain kinds of dahlia, so that those which ...

DAHLMANN, Friedrich Christian (1785-1860), a distinguished German historian and politician, was born on the 13th May 1785, at Wismar. He studied philology at the universities of Copenhagen and Halle, and at the age of twenty-five took his doctor’s degree in that subject. He had already delivered lectures at Dresden; and in 1812 he was appointed professor of history at Kiel. His devotion to historical study had been caused by his wish to take a useful and intelligent part in contemporary politics. In 1815 he was made secretary to the permanent deputation of the prelates and nobles of Schleswig Holstein, in which position his influence was exerted against the policy of the Danish Government, and he henceforth took a prominent place among moderate liberals. In 1829 he was chosen professor of the science of politics in the university of Gottingen. Two or three years later he was engaged in drawing up the Hanoverian constitution of 1833. In 1837, when that constitution was abolished by Ernest Augustus, Dahlmann so strongly opposed the king’s policy that he was banished from Hanover. He retired to Leipsic, and then to Jena, where he gave his time to the study of history and the production of his most important works. In 1842 Dahlmann became professor of history and the science of politics at Bonn. In 1848 he was chosen a member of the committee of seventeen which was appointed to draw up a new German constitution; and he was elected member of the National Assembly of Frankfort. He distinguished himself as an advocate of the election of the king of Prussia as emperor of Germany. He was indeed so much regarded as a leader that he was requested to form a ministry; but his attempt was unsuccessful. In March 1849, when the Parliament rejected the constitution, Dahlmann, who ...

DAHLSTJERNA, Gunno (1661-1709), whose original surname was Eurelius, the Swedish poet, was born September 7,1661, in the parish of Ohr, in Dalsland, where his father was rector. He entered the university of Upsala in 1677, and after gaining his degree, entered the Government office of land-surveying. He was sent in 1681 on professional business to Livonia, then under Swedish rule, and after some time took thence a scientific journey into Germany, in the course of which, being at Leipsic, he published and publicly read, in 1687, a dissertation, De Electro, which caused such a sensation that he was offered a professorial chair at the university of that city. He refused this honour, however, and busied himself, on his return to Sweden, with carrying out the numerous commissions in land-surveying directed by King Charles XL, and in 1699 he became head of the whole department. In 1702 he was ennobled under the name of Dahlstjerna. He spent his life in travelling, and wandered over the whole of the coast of the Baltic, Livonia, Riigen, and Pomerania, preparing maps which still exist in the office of Public Land-Surveying in Stockholm. He died in Pomerania on his forty-eighth birthday, September 7, 1709, just after the disastrous news of the lost battle of Pultowa had reached him. . Dahlstjerna’s life was, as it might seem, fully occupied with those practical mathematical studies in which he laboured so conscientiously for his country; but it is indisputable that his passion for poetry was still more absorbing. His patriotism was touching in its pathos and intensity, and during his long periods of professional exile he comforted himself by the composition of songs to his beloved Sweden. His genius was most irregular; at his best he surpasses all the Swedish poets of his ...