a and the
Temple of Great Happiness. Outside this are the government offices,
foreign legations, the temple of Confucius, a great Buddhist monastery, a
Roman Catholic cathedral, and Christian mission stations. The Chinese
city has many temples, mission stations, schools, and hospitals; but it
is sparsely populated, houses are poor, and streets unpaved. Pekin has
railway communication with Hankow, and is connected with other cities and
with Russia by telegraph. Its trade and industry are inconsiderable. It
is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was Kubla Khan's capital,
and has been the metropolis of the empire since 1421.

PELAGIUS, a celebrated heresiarch of the 5th century, born in
Britain or Brittany; denied original sin and the orthodox doctrine of
divine grace as the originating and sustaining power in redemption, a
heresy for which he suffered banishment from Rome in 418 at the hands of
the Church. A modification of this theory went under the name of
Semi-Pelagianism, which ascribes only the first step in conversion to
free-will, and the subsequent sanctification of the soul to God's grace.

PELASGI, a people who in prehistoric times occupied Greece, the
Archipelago, the shores of Asia Minor, and great part of Italy, and who
were subdued, and more or less reduced to servitude, by the Hellenes, and
supplanted by them. They appear to have been, so far as we find them, an
agricultural people, settled and not roving about, and to have had
strongholds enclosed in cyclopean walls, that is, walls consisting of
huge boulders unconnected with cement.

PELEUS, the son of AEacus, the husband of Thetis, the father of
Achilles, and one of the Argonauts, after whom Achilles is named Pelides,
i. e. Peleus' boy.

PELEW ISLANDS (10), twenty-six in number, of coral formation, and
surrounded by reefs; are in the extreme W. of the Caroline Archipelago in
the North Pacific, and SE. of the Philippines. They belong to Spain; are
small but fertile, and have a healthy climate. The natives are Malays,
and though gentle lead a savage life.

PELHAM, a fashionable novel by Bulwer Lytton, severely satirised by
Carlyle in "Sartor" in the chapter on "Dandies" as the elect of books of
this class.

PELIAS, king of Iolchus, and son of Poseidon, was cut to pieces by
his own daughters, which were thrown by them into a boiling caldron in
the faith of the promise of Medea, that he might thereby be restored to
them young again.