able, on the completion of which, in
1866, he was knighted, to be afterwards raised to the peerage in 1892; he
has invented a number of ingenious and delicate scientific instruments,
as well as written extensively on mathematical and physical subjects;
_b_. 1824.

THOR, in the Norse mythology "the god of thunder; the thunder was
his wrath, the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of
Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of heaven is the
all-rending hammer flung from the hand of Thor; he urges his loud chariot
over the mountain tops--that is the peal; wrathful he 'blows in his
beard'--that is the rustling of the storm-blast before the thunder
begin"; he is the strongest of the gods, the helper of both gods and men,
and the mortal foe of the chaotic powers.

THOREAU, HENRY DAVID, an American author who, next to his friend and
neighbour Emerson, gave the most considerable impulse to the
"transcendental" movement in American literature, born in Concord, where
his life was mostly spent, of remote French extraction; was with
difficulty enabled to go to Harvard, where he graduated, but without
distinction of any sort; took to desperate shifts for a living, but
simplified the problem of "ways and means" by adopting Carlyle's plan of
"lessening your denominator"; the serious occupation of his life was to
study nature in the woods around Concord, to make daily journal entries
of his observings and reflections, and to preserve his soul in peace and
purity; his handicrafts were unwelcome necessities thrust upon him; "What
after all," he exclaims, "does the practicalness of life amount to? The
things immediate to be done are very trivial; I could postpone them all
to hear this locust sing. The most glorious fact in my experience is not
anything I have done or may hope to do, but a transient thought or vision
or dream which I have had"; his chief works are "Walden," the account of
a two years' sojourn in a hut built by his own hands in the Concord Woods
near "Walden Pool," "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac River," essays,
poems, etc. (1817-1862).

THORN (27), a town and fortress of the first rank in West Prussia,
on the Vistula, 115 m. NW. of Warsaw; formerly a member of the
HANSEATIC LEAGUE (q. v.); was annexed by Prussia in 1815; the
birthplace of Copernicus; carries on a brisk trade in corn and timber.

THORNBURY, GEORGE WALTER, a miscellaneous writer, author of numerous
novels, "Songs of the Ca