rd, and became Master
of Balliol in 1361, professor of Divinity in 1372, and rector of
Lutterworth in 1375; here he laboured and preached with such faithfulness
that the Church grew alarmed, and persecution set in, which happily,
however, proved scatheless, and only the more emboldened him in the work
of reform which he had taken up; and of that work the greatest was his
translation of the Bible from the Vulgate into the mother-tongue, at
which, with assistance from his disciples, he laboured for some 10 or 15
years, and which was finished in 1380; he may be said to have died in
harness, for he was struck with paralysis while standing before the altar
at Lutterworth on 29th December 1384, and died the last day of the year;
his remains were exhumed and burned afterwards, and the ashes thrown into
the river Swift close by the town, "and thence borne," says Andrew
Fuller, "into the main ocean, the emblem of his doctrine, which now is
dispersed all the world over" (1325-1384).

WIDDIN (14), a town on the right bank of the Danube, Bulgaria; is a
centre of industry and trade; was a strong place, but by decree of the
Berlin Congress in 1879 the fortress was demolished.

WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN, eminent German litterateur, born near
Biberach, a small village in Swabia, son of a pastor of the pietist
school; studied at Tuebingen; became professor of Philosophy at Erfurt,
and settled in Weimar in 1772 as tutor to the two sons of the Duchess
Amalia, where he by-and-by formed a friendship with Goethe and the other
members of the literary coterie who afterwards settled there; he wrote in
an easy and graceful style, and his best work is a heroic poem entitled
"Oberon" (1733-1813).

WIELICZKA (6), a town in Austrian Galicia, near Cracow, famous for
its salt mines, which have been wrought continuously since 1250, the
galleries of which extend to more than 50 m. in length, and the annual
output of which is over 50,000 tons.

WIER, JOHANN, physician, born in North Brabant; was distinguished as
the first to attack the belief in witchcraft, and the barbarous treatment
to which suspects were subjected; the attack was treated as profane, and
provoked the hostility of the clergy, and it would have cost him his life
if he had not been protected by Wilhelm IV., Duke of Juelich and Cleves,
whose physician he was (1516-1566).

WIERTZ, ANTOINE, a Belgian painter, born at Dinant, did a great
variety of pictures on a variety of subj