Military
Academy, on the right bank of the Hudson River, 12 m. N. of New York; the
Academy is on a plateau 188 ft. above the road; it was established in
1802 for training in the science and practice of military engineering,
and the cadets are organised into a battalion of four companies officered
from among themselves, all under strictest discipline.

WEST VIRGINIA. See VIRGINIA.

WESTCOTT, BROOK FOSS, biblical scholar, born near Birmingham;
studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and obtained a Fellowship; took
orders in 1851, and became Bishop of Durham in 1890; edited along with
Dr. Hort an edition of the Greek New Testament, the labour of years, and
published a number of works bearing on the New Testament and its
structure and teachings; _b_. 1825.

WESTKAPPEL DYKE, one of the strongest dykes in the Netherlands;
protects the W. coast of Walcheren; is 4000 yards long, and surmounted by
a railway line.

WESTMACOTT, SIR RICHARD, sculptor, born in London; studied at Rome
under Canova; acquired great repute as an artist on his return to
England, and succeeded Flaxman as professor of Sculpture in the Royal
Academy; he executed statues of Pitt, Addison, and others, and a number
of monuments in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's; his latest work was the
sculptured pediment of the British Museum (1775-1856).

WESTMACOTT, RICHARD, sculptor and writer on art, born in London, son
of preceding; was distinguished for the grace, simplicity, and purity of
his style as an artist; succeeded his father as professor of Sculpture in
the Royal Academy, and wrote a "Handbook of Sculpture" (1799-1872).

WESTMEATH (71), an inland county in Leinster, Ireland; is mostly
level and gently undulating; the soil in many parts is good, but little
cultivated; the only cereal crop raised is oats, but the herbage it
yields supplies food for fattening cattle, which is a chief industry.

WESTMINSTER, a city of Middlesex, on the N. bank of the Thames, and
comprising a great part of the West End of London; originally a village,
it was raised to the rank of a city when it became the seat of a bishop
in 1451, but it was as the seat of the abbey that it developed into a
bishop's see; the abbey, for which it is so famous, was erected as it now
exists at the same period, during 1245-72, on the site of one founded by
Edward the Confessor during 1045-65; in Westminster Parliaments were held
as early as the 13th century, and it is as the seat o