eir inroads as far as Hamburg and the ocean, south also
far over the Elbe in some quarters, and were a source of great trouble to
the Germans in Henry the Fowler's time, and after; they burst in upon
Brandenburg once, in "never-imagined fury," and stamped out, as they
thought, the Christian religion there by wholesale butchery of its
priests, setting up for worship their own god "Triglaph, ugliest and
stupidest of all false gods," described as "something like three whales'
cubs combined by boiling, or a triple porpoise dead-drunk." They were at
length "fairly beaten to powder" by Albert the Bear, "and either swept
away or else damped down into Christianity and keeping of the peace,"
though remnants of them, with their language and customs, exist in
Lusatia to this day.

WENDT, HANS, German theologian, born in Hamburg, professor at Kiel
and at Heidelberg; has written an excellent "Leben Jesu" among other able
works; _b_. 1853.

WENEGELD, among the old Saxons and other Teutonic races a fine, the
price of homicide, of varying amount, paid in part to the relatives of
the person killed and in part to the king or chief.

WENER, LAKE, the largest lake in Sweden, in the SW., 150 ft. above
the sea-level and 100 m. long by 50 m. of utmost breadth, contains
several islands, and abounds in fish.

WENTWORTH. See STRAFFORD.

WEREWOLF, a person transformed into a wolf, or a being with a
literally wolfish appetite, under the presumed influence of a charm or
some demoniac possession.

WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS, a dramatist of a mystic stamp,
born at Koenigsberg; is the subject of an essay by Carlyle, and described
by him as a man of a very _dissolute_ spiritual texture; wrote the
"Templars of Cyprus," the "Story of the Fallen Master," &c. (1768-1823).

WERTHER, the hero of Goethe's sentimental romance, "THE SORROWS
OF WERTHER" (q. v.).

WESLEY, CHARLES, hymn-writer, born at Epworth, educated at Eton and
Oxford; was associated with his more illustrious brother in the
establishment of Methodism; his hymns are highly devotional, and are to
be found in all the hymnologies of the Church (1708-1788).

WESLEY, JOHN, the founder of Methodism, born at Epworth, in
Lincolnshire, son of the rector; was educated at the Charterhouse and at
Lincoln College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow; while there he and
his brother, with others, were distinguished for their religious
earnestness, and were nicknamed Method