assistant bishop of Kentucky, 1866. In 1873, he resigned this position; and, withdrawing from the denomination, founded the reformed Episcopal church, of which he was made bishop, 1873. He was an earnest and eloquent preacher. He d. 1876.

CUMMINS, MARIA S., 1827-66; b. Mass., known as a writer of works of fiction, among them, The Lamplighter, and Mabel Vaughan.

CUM'NOCK, OLD, a t. in the s.e. of Ayrshire, on the left bank of Lugar Water, and on the Glasgow and Dumfries railway, 16 m. e. of Ayr, in the middle of the district of Kyle. The pop., in 1881, was 3,345. It was once famous for the manufacture of wooden snuff-boxes, with "invisible wooden hinges," 2,500 to 3,500 being made yearly, but this business has for many years been almost wholly in the hands of the Mauchline manufacturers. Around old C. there is an abundant supply of good coal, and of rich iron ore. It has also manufactures of reaping and thrashing machines, and other agricultural implements. New Cumnock is a village 5 m. s. of old C., amid the high lands in the upper part of Kyle district. Pop. '81, 1,265. Near New Cumnock are found ironstone, antimony, smiths' and cannel coal, and plumbago.

CUMYN, CUMMING, or COMYN, a family which rose to great power and eminence in England and Scotland. It took its name from the town of Comines, near Lille, on the frontier between France and Belgium. While one branch remained there, and, in 1445, gave birth, in its old château, to the historian Philippe de Comines (q.v.), another followed the banners of William of Normandy to the conquest of England. In 1069, the conqueror sent Robert of Comines, or Comyn, with 700 horse to reduce the yet unsubdued provinces of the north. He seized Durham, but had not held it for 48 hours, when the people suddenly rose against him, and he perished in the flames of the bishop's palace. His nephew, William, became chancellor of Scotland about 1133, and, nine years later, all but possessed himself of the see of Durham. The chancellor's nephew, Richard, inherited the English possessions of his family, and acquired lands in Scotland. By his marriage with Hexilda, countess of Athol, the granddaughter of Donald Bane, king of the Scots, he had a son William, who, about 1210, became earl of Buchan by marrying the Celtic heiress of that great northern earldom. By this marriage, he was father of Alexander, earl of Buchan, who, by marrying a daughter of Roger de Quenci, earl of Winchester, acquired the high office of constable of Scotland, with great estates in Galloway, Fife, and the Lothians. By a previous marriage with a wife whose name has not been ascertained, William C. was father of Richard-whose son John became lord of Badenoch-and of Walter, who by marriage became earl of Monteith. By other marriages, the family obtained, for a time, the earldom of Angus and the earldom of Athol, so that, by the middle of the 13th c., there were in Scotland 4 earls, 1 lord, and 32 belted knights of the name of Cumyn. Within 70 years, this great house was so utterly overthrown that, in the words of a contemporary chronicle, there was no memorial left of it in the land, save the orisons of the monks of Deer" (a monastery founded by William C., earl of Buchan, in 1219). The Cumyns perished in the memorable revolution which placed Bruce on the throne of Scotland. Their chief, the lord of Badenoch, had, in 1291, been an unsuccessful competitor for the crown, as a descendant, through king Donald Bane, of the old Celtic dynasty. His son, Red John C., was one of the three wardens of Scotland, and distinguished himself by his gallant resistance to the English. He fell under Bruce's dagger, before the altar of the Franciscan friars at Dumfries, in 1306; and his kindred went down, one after another, in the struggle to avenge him. John C., earl of Buchan, was defeated by Bruce in a pitched battle, near Inverury, in 1308, when his earldom was wasted with such relentless severity, that we are told by the poet who sang the victories of Bruce-for sixty years afterwards, men mourned the desolation of Buchan. Such of the Cumyns as escaped the sword, found refuge, with their wives and children, in England, where, although they were so poor as to be dependants on the bounty of the English court, they married into the best families, so that, in the words of Mr. Riddel, "their blood at this day circulates through all that is noble in the sister kingdom, including the numerous and royal descendants of king Henry IV." The earl of Shrewsbury seems to be the representative of the lord of Badenoch, who was the head of the race.

CUNARD, Sir SAMUEL, 1787-1865; an English engineer, the founder of the Cunard line of ocean steamers plying between England and America. He was made a baronet in 1859.

CUNAX'A, a place in Babylonia, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, about 60 m. n. from Babylon, noted for the battle fought there (401 B.C.) between Cyrus the younger and his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon, in which the former was killed.

CUNDINAMARCA, the central department of the United States of Colombia (formerly New Granada), has an estimated area of 79,000 sq. miles. The western portion is mountainous, intersected by luxuriant valleys; in the e. are vast plains. The state of C. is well timbered and rich in minerals, and produces all the crops grown in other parts of Colombia. The population appears to be equally divided between_whites, aborigines, and half-breeds, and was in 1876 estimated to consist, exclusive of the Indians, of 410,000 souls. Bogota, the capital of the state of C., is also the capital of the

Cuneiform.

United States of Colombia (q.v.). C. derives its name from an old American goddess, and before the conquest of the land by the Spaniards was one of the chief regions of native civilization. There are still to be met with here ruins of old buildings, broken statues of the gods, and other monuments of a worship that has wholly passed away.

CUNDURAN'GO, a vine growing in n. South America, containing a strong bitter principle. It was at one time supposed to be valuable in the cure of cancer, and was sold in the United States at enormous prices. But it was worthless, and cargoes of it were used for fuel.

CUNE IFORM, cuneatic, wedge-shaped, arrow-headed (Fr. tête-à-clou, Ger. keilförmig), are terms for a certain form of writing, of which the component parts may be said to resemble either a wedge, the barb of an arrow, or a nail. It was used for monumental records, and was either hewn or carved in rocks and sculptures, or impressed on tiles and bricks. The first date that can be assigned to it is about 2000 B.C., and it seems to have died out shortly before or after the reign of Alexander the great. It appears to have been employed first in Assyria and Media, and to have thence spread over the whole of that vast portion of Asia which formed the Persian monarchy under the Achæmenidæ. For nearly 2,000 years after its extinction its very existence was forgotten. Although the immense ruins found all over that ancient kingdom, and principally those of splendid palaces and tombs, which, at a distance of about 12 m. from Shiraz, designate the site of ancient Persepolis, had at all times attracted the attention of eastern travelers, still no one seems to have dreamed that those strange wedges which completely covered some of them could have any meaning. It was Garcia de Sylva Figueroa, ambassador of Philip III. of Spain, who, on a visit to Persepolis in 1618, first became possessed with the firm conviction that these signs must be inscriptions in some lost writing and, perhaps, language, and had a line of them copied. Amongst subsequent travelers whose attention was attracted to the subject, Chardin, after his return to Europe in 1674, published three complete groups of cuneiforms, copied by himself at Persepolis, together with a comparatively long and minute account of the mysterious character. He likewise declared it to be writing and no hieroglyphs: the rest, however, will always be unknown." Michaux, a French botanist, sent, in 1782, an entire altar, found at Bagdad, to Paris, covered with inscriptions, and bearing a large wedge-evidently an object of worship-on its top. Ever since, the materials for the investigation of a subject, the high importance of which by that time was fully recog nized, have been rapidly accumulating. Sir H. Jones, Ker Porter, Robert Stewart, sir W. Ouseley, Bellino, Dr. Schultz-up to Rich and Botta, Flandin, Rouet, Layard, Oppert, and, above all, Rawlinson, each in his turn brought back more or less valuable materials from his eastern travels; and, naturally enough, those explorers are among the foremost to engage in the study of the records they had brought to light.

Shrouded in comparative mystery though certain portions of these characters and the language they represent still be, it is highly interesting and instructive to notice the opinions first entertained of them by the wise and learned in Europe. In the transac tions of the royal society of June, 1693, they first appeared from a copy made by Plowers, and they are held to be "the ancient writing of the Gaures or Gebres, or a kind of telesmes”- -an expression no less unintelligible than the subject it tries to explain. Thomas Hyde, the eminent orientalist, declared them, in his learned work on the religion of the ancient Persians, which appeared in 1700, to be nothing more or less than idle fancies of the architect, who endeavored to show how many different characters a certain peculiar stroke in different combinations could furnish, and reproved the authors of all those "so-called Persepolitan inscriptions" very strongly for having misled so many wise men, and taken up so much of his own precious time. Witte, in Rostock, saw in them the destructive work of generations upon generations of worms. Generally, they were pronounced to be talismanic signs, mysterious formulæ of priests, astrological symbols, charms, which, if properly read and used, would open immense vaults full of gold and pearls-an opinion widely diffused among the native savants. The next step was to see in them a species of revealed digital language, such as the Almighty had first used to Adam. Lichtenstein read in some of them certain passages from the Koran, written in Cufic, the ancient Arabic character; in others, a record of Tamerlane; and was only surprised that others should not have found this, the easiest and clearest reading, long before him. Kæmpfer was not quite sure whether they were Chinese or Hebrew characters. That they were Runes, Oghams, Samaritan, Greek characters, were some of the soberest explanations.

It was Karsten Niebuhr who first showed the way, to the more sensible portion of the learned, out of this labyrinth of absurdities. Without attempting to read the character itself, he first of all established three distinct cuneiform alphabets instead of one, the letters of which seemed to outnumber those of all other languages together. The three fold inscriptions found at Persepolis he thus took to be transcripts of the same text in three alphabets, in a hitherto unknown language. Tychsen of Rostock (1738), and Münter of Copenhagen (1800), affirmed and further developed this conjecture. The latter went so far as to divide the characters and inscriptions into alphabetical, syllabic, and monogrammatical, and to assume two different languages-Zend for inscriptions of

& religious, Pehlvi for those of a political character. The real and final discovery, however, is due to Grotefend of Hanover, and dates from 1802. On the 7th of Sept. of that year, he laid the first cuneiform alphabet, with its equivalents, before the academy of Göttingen-strangely enough, in the very same sitting in which Heyne gave an account of the first reading of hieroglyphs. The process by which Grotefend arrived at that wonderful result is so supremely interesting, that we cannot omit to sketch it briefly. He fixed upon a Persepolitan inscription of what was called the first class, and counted in it thirty promiscuously recurring groups or combinations of cuneiforms. These groups he concluded to be letters, and not words, as a syllabarium of thirty words could not be thought of in any language. Then, again, a certain oblique wedge, evidently a sign of division, which stood after three, four, five, up to eight or nine such groups or letters, must show the beginning or end, not of a phrase, but of a word. Tyclisen and Münter had already pointed out a certain combination of seven characters as signifying the royal title. Grotefend adopted this opinion. The word occurred here and there in the text, and after the first words of most of the inscriptions, twice; the second time with an appendage, which he concluded to be the termination of the genitive plural, and he translated these two words without regard to their phonetic value, "king of kings." He then, in comparing the words preceding the royal titles in two tablets, found them repeated in what he assumed to be a filial relation; thus: There were three distinct groups, words, or names, which we will call X, D, and H, and this is how they occurred: 1, X, king of kings, son of D., king of kings; 2, D, king of kings, sor of H; but the 3, H, was not followed by the word king. H, therefore, must have been the founder of the dynasty. Now the names themselves had to be found. Grote fend, unlike his predecessors, had no recourse to philology, but to archæology and his tory. The inscriptions in question were by that time proved to belong to the Achæ menian dynasty, founded by Hystaspes = group H. He was followed by Darius, “king of kings, son of Hystaspes," or Darius Hystaspis =group D; he, again, by Xerxes, king of kings, son of Darius, king of kings group X-and the problem was solved. Ir could not have been Cyrus and Cambyses, as the groups did not begin with the same signs (C); nor Cyrus and Artaxerxes, the first being too short for the group, the second too long-it could only be Darius, Xerxes, Hystaspes-of course, in the orthography of their, not of our time; and wherever in these names the same letters recurred, they wer expressed by the same combinations of signs. A further proof of the correctness of the reading was furnished by a vase in Venice, bearing a cuneiform and a hieroglyphica inscription, which were both read at the same time independently: "Xerxes.' Innumerable difficulties, however, remained, and remain, up to this moment. Grotefend had, after all, only read-and not altogether correctly-three names, which did not contain more than 12 letters-the rest being mere conjecture-and there were many more in this alphabet. The two other alphabets, with an infinite variety of letters, had hardly been properly approached yet. Moreover, the discovery of Grotefend was in itself so startling, so extraordinary and bold, that no one ventured to follow it up for the next 20 years, when H. Martin found the grammatical flexions of the plural and genitive case. We cannot now specify his further discoveries, or those of Rask, Burnouf, Lassen, Westergaard, Beer, Jacquet, and others who followed; we will only say, that they mostly secured for themselves fame and name by rectifying or fixing one or two letters. The last and greatest of investigators of this first alphabet is Rawlinson, who not only first copied, but also read, the gigantic Behistun inscription-containing more than 1000 lines -of which more anon.

We now proceed to give what may be called the results of the investigations of the cuneiform character in general, up to this present moment; but we must warn the reader beforehand, that though much has been done, more remains to be done, and that a few years may change the whole aspect of cuneiform studies.

Cuneiform writing, as we said before, was used for monumental records only, a cursive writing-from right to left-being used for records of minor importance. The inscriptions are mostly found in three parallel columns or tablets, and are then translations of each other in different alphabets and languages, called respectively Persian, Median, and Assyrian; the Achæmenian kings being obliged to make their decrees intelligible to the three principal nations under their sway, as in our days the shah of Persia would use the Persian, Turkish, and Arabic languages, in order that he might be understood in Bagdad and Teheran.

The first of the three, the Persian-first in so far as it always holds the place of honor-consists of 39 to 44 letters, and is the most recent of the three, the most ancient being the Assyrian. It is distinguished by the oblique stroke which divides its words, Its letters are composed of not more than five strokes or wedges placed side by side horizontally or perpendicularly, or both, never-with one exception-crossing each other. The language is pronounced by all investigators (save Gobineau), to be as near Sanscrit as possible, although not so refined, and to be the mother-language of modern Persian. It is only twice found by itself; all the other inscriptions are trilingual. The time of its use is confined to the years 570-370 B.C. The oldest instance of its employment is an inscription of Cyrus the great at Pasargade; the most recent that of Artaxerxes Ochus at Persepolis. The most important is that of Darius Hystaspis, in the great inscription of Behistun, which contains, besides genealogical records, a descrip

tion of the extent of his power, the leading incidents of his reign, prayers to Ormuzd and the angels, and reference to the building of the palaces-the last two subjects generally forming the only contents of the other Persian inscriptions. The inscription of Artaxerxes Ochus is important, in so far as it traces his origin to the Achæmenidæ, through Arsames, grandfather of Darius. Most of these inscriptions occur at Persepolis, Behistun, Naksh-i-Rustam, and Hamadan.

The second kind is called the Median, because it takes the second place in the trilingual inscriptions, under the conquering Persians, but over the conquered Assyrians, and as the Medes stood somewhat in that relation to these two nations, that name was selected. Another name, “Scythic," has been proposed, or, by way of compromise. "Medo-Scythic," and the language-supposed to have been spoken by those innumer able Tartaro-Finnic tribes which occupied the center of Asia-has been pronounced to be a Turanian dialect. But the process of constructing out of such slender elements as Samojed and Ostiak words, a so-called Scythic," is somewhat similar to the attempt of reconstructing Sanscrit from some detached and very doubtful French and English words. These inscriptions never occur by themselves (one instance again excepted), and being translations of the Persian records, about ninety names have been ascertained, and an alphabet of about 100 characters-combinations of a syllabic nature-has been established. The principal investigators of this character are Westergaard, De Saulcy, Hincks, Norris, and Oppert. Gobineau holds the language to be Huzvaresh, a mixture of Iranian and Semitic.

The third and most important is the Assyrian portion of the cuneiforms. The trilingual records gave the first clue to the deciphering of this character; but many original, more than a thousand years older, documents have since been found in Babylon, Nineveh, and other places near the Euphrates and Tigris, and even in Egypt. About 400 different signs have been distinguished on slabs, cylinders, barrels, prisms, of a phonetic, syllabic, and ideographic nature. Proper names are preceded by monograms, which give the same help to their readings as cartouches in hieroglyphics. Of those 400 signs, however, hardly one tenth are known for certain. Proper names were found varied to about five times, and the characters themselves are both homophonous (same sound expressed by various signs) and polyphonous (same sign with various sounds). Five and more dialects have been distinguished in the language, which is decidedly Semitic (Gobineau takes it to be simply Arabic); and these dialects are supposed to have belonged either to different tribes or subsequent periods. It is this alphabet about which the greatest uncertainty and confusion prevail, for endless subdivisions, and even certain assumed grammatical forms, do not constitute a certainty. There is, however, a hope of its eventually being fully deciphered. A few years ago, the Asiatic society submitted a cylinder of Tiglath-Pileser to four prominent investigators of the subject, and they independently read it nearly alike, with exception of the proper names, where they widely differed. As a proof of the enormous importance of this character for history, grammar, law, mythology, archæology, and antiquities generally, we will name some of the records of which Rawlinson, a few years ago, proposed the publication (now in progress): Chaldean legends (2,000-1500 B.C.); bricks from Kilehsergat, of the early kings of Assur (1273-1100), in a character approaching the cursive; annals of Tiglath-Pileser I. (1120 B.C.); annals of Sardanapalus, of Shamas, father to the biblical Pul, of the biblical Pul and Semiramis, his wife, of Sargon, Sennacherib, Assurbani-Pal, son of Esarhaddon; cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar; cylinders containing the notice of Belshazzar, etc.; besides syllabaries, vocabularies, mathematical and astronomical tablets, calendars and registers, and more than 1000 mythological tablets. Nay, if the Birs-Nimrud really stands on the foundations of the old tower of Babel, we might in the bricks excavated at these very foundations read the language spoken at the time "when the whole earth was of one speech.'

As to the origin of the character, we will briefly state, in conclusion, that nothing certain is known, or is likely to be known for some time. It is not unlikely, however, that it was hieroglyphic, although neither the fishes nor the bees, which these letters are supposed to have been originally, seem to have more in their favor than the worms, which were said to be their unconscious authors. The following is the opinion of Rawlinson on this point: "That the employment of the cuneiform character originated in Assyria, while the system of writing to which it was adapted was borrowed from Egypt, will hardly admit of question. Whether the cuneiform letters in their primitive shapes, were intended like the hieroglyphs to represent actual objects, and were afterwards degraded to their present forms; or whether the point of departure was from the Hieratic, or perhaps the Demotic character, the first change from a picture to a sign having thus taken place before Assyria formed her alphabet, I will not undertake to decide; but the whole structure of the Assyrian graphic system evidently betrays an Egyptian origin. The alphabet is partly ideographic and partly phonetic, and the phonetic signs are in some cases syllabic, and in others literal. Where a sign' represents a syllable. I conjecture that the syllable in question may have been the specific name of the object which the sign was supposed to depict; whilst in cases where a single alphabetical power appertains to the sign, it would seem as if that power had been the dominant sound in the name of the object."

In order to give the reader some idea of the appearance of the cuneiform character,

Cup.

we subjoin the name of Darius (Dariyavas, Tariyavaus), written in the Persian, Scythic, and Assyrian alphabets:

For fuller information on this subject, see Rawlinson, The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun deciphered and translated, etc. (Journal As. Soc., 1846, etc.); Grotefend, Erläuterungen der Keilinschriften aus Behistun (Göttingen, 1854): Lassen u. Westergaard, Ueber die Keilinschriften der ersten und zweiten Gattung (Bonn, 1845); Hincks, On the First and Second Kinds of Persepolitan Writing (Transact. Roy. Ir. Soc., 1846); Norris, Memoir on the Scythic Version of the Behistun Inscription (Journ. As. Soc., 1853); Rawlinson, A Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria (1850); Oppert, Études Assyriennes (Journal Asiatique, Paris, 1857); Rénan, Critique, etc. (Journ. d. Sav., Paris, 1859). See PALEOGRAPHY.

CUNEO. See CONI.

CUN'NINGHAM, ALLAN, poet and littérateur, was b. in 1785, at Blackwood, in Dumfriesshire. The circumstances of his parents were humble. At the age of 11, C. was taken from school, and apprenticed to a stone-mason. He worked faithfully at his calling; but his spare time, and his evenings, were given to song and the collection of traditions. He first appeared in print as a contributor to Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song. These contributions, purporting to be ancient ballads, were entirely the composition of the ingenious and ambitious stone-cutter. The publication gained him the acquaintance of Hogg and sir Walter Scott. With the latter, "honest Allan" was always a prodigious favorite. On his removal to London, he became one of the best known writers for the London Magazine. He subsequently obtained a situation in Chantrey's studio as foreman, or confidential manager, and this office he held till his death. During his career, he wielded an indefatigable pen. He wrote novels, poems, and a drama. His principal prose works, apart from his fictitious narratives, are Lives of the Painters, a Life of Burns, and a Life of Sir David Wilkie. He died in London on 21st Oct., 1842. As a Scotch poet, he ranks, perhaps, after James Hogg. His songs, although disfigured by false taste, mannerism, and a superabundance of ornament, have true lyrical impulse and movement.

CUNNINGHAM, PETER, son of Allan Cunningham, the poet (q.v.) (b. 1816, d. 1869), is known in literature as the author of Handbook of London; Life of Drummond of Hawthornden; Life of Inigo Jones; Modern London, etc.; as the editor of various English classics; and as a frequent contributor to periodicals.

CUNNINGHAM, WILLIAM, D.D., a distinguished Scotch theologian, was b. in 1805, and ordained as a minister of the church of Scotland in 1830. He took a prominent part in the discussions previous to the disruptions in 1843, and was one of those who left the establishment to form the free church. In 1847, he became principal of the new (free church) college, Edinburgh. He died in 1861. He is the author of Historic Theology in the Christian Church (1862); Reformers and Theology of the Reformation (1862); and Discourses on Church Principles (1863).—See Life of C., by Rainy and Mackenzie (1871).

CUNNINGHAM'IA, a genus of trees of the natural order conifera, nearly allied in botanical characters to the true pines and firs, but in foliage having considerable resem blance to the araucarias. C. sinenois is an evergreen tree, with narrow ovato-lanceolate, stiff, and sharp-pointed leaves, common in China, but too tender for the climate of Britain.

CUP, DIVINATION BY, a mode of foretelling events, practiced by the ancient Egyptians, and still prevailing in some of the rural districts of England and Scotland. One of the eastern methods consisted in throwing small pieces of gold or silver leaf into & C. of water, in which also were placed precious stones, with certain characters engraved upon them. The infernal powers were then invoked, and returned answer, either in an intelligible voice, or by signs, on the surface of the water, or by a representation in the C. of the person inquired about. By the modern method, a person's fortune is foretold by the disposition of the sediment in his tea-cup after pouring out the last of the liquid. Few people now, however, even among the most ignorant, have implicit faith in the oracle.

IV.-17a.