their own lives, he is full of wisdom and sound advice for others; his ethical precepts and practical rules are frequently excellent. To complete the catalogue of his accomplishments, he is no contemptible poet.
The work of Cardan’s, however, which retains most interest for this generation is his autobiography, De Vita Propria. In its clearness and frankness of self-revelation this book stands almost alone among records of its class. It may be compared with the autobiography of another celebrated Italian of the age, Benvenuto Cellini, but is much more free from vanity and self-consciousness, unless the extreme candour with which Cardan reveals his own errors is to be regarded as vanity in a more subtle form. The general impression is highly favourable to the writer, whose impetuosity and fits of reckless dissipation appear as mere exaggerations of the warmth of heart which imparted such strength to his domestic affections, and in the region of science imparted that passionate devotion to research which could alone have enabled him to persevere so resolutely and effect such marked advances in such multifarious fields of inquiry.
Cardan’s autobiography has been most ably condensed, and at the same time supplemented by information from the general body of his writings and other sources, by Henry Morley (Jerome Cardan, 1854, 2 vols). His capital treatises, De Subtilitate and De Varietate Rerum, are combined and fully analysed in vol. ii. of Rixner and Siber’s Leben und Lehrmeinungen berühmter Physiker am Ende des xvi. und am Anfange des xvii. Jahrhunderts (Sulzbach, 1820). Cardan’s works were edited in ten volumes by Sponius (Lyons, 1663). A biography was prefixed by Gabriel Naudé, whose unreasonable depreciation has unduly lowered Cardan’s character with posterity. (R. G.)
CÁRDENAS (San Juan de Dios de Cárdenas), a maritime town of Cuba, in Matanzas province, about 75 m. E. of Havana, on the level and somewhat marshy shore of a spacious bay of the northern coast of the island, sheltered by a long promontory. Pop. (1907) 24,280. It has railway communication with the trunk railway of the island, and communicates by regular steamers with all the coast towns. The city lies between the sea and hills. There are broad streets, various squares (including the Plaza de Colón, with a bronze statue of Columbus given to the city by Queen Isabel II. and erected in 1862) and substantial business buildings. Cárdenas is one of the principal sugar-exporting towns of Cuba. The shallowness of the harbour necessitates lighterage and repeated loading of cargoes. The surrounding region is famed for its fertility. A large quantity of asphalt has been taken from the bed of the harbour. A flow of fresh water from the bed of the harbour is another peculiar feature; it comes presumably from the outlets of subterranean rivers. There is a large United States business element, which has been, indeed, prominent in the city ever since its foundation. At El Varadero, on a peninsula at the mouth of the bay, there is fine sea-bathing on a long beach, and El Varadero is a winter resort. Cárdenas was founded in 1828, and in 1861 already had 12,910 inhabitants. In 1850 General Narciso Lopez landed here on a filibustering expedition, and held the town for a few hours, abandoning it when he saw that the people would not rise to support him in his efforts to secure Cuban independence. On the 11th of May 1898 an American torpedo-boat and revenue cutter here attacked three Spanish gun-boats, and Ensign Worth Bagley (1874–1898) was killed—the first American naval officer to lose his life in the Spanish-American War.
CARDIFF, a city, municipal, county and parliamentary borough, seaport and market-town, and the county town of Glamorganshire, South Wales, situated on the Taff, 1 m. above its outflow, 14514 m. from London by the Great Western railway via Badminton, 4012 m. W. of Bristol and 4512 m. E.S.E. of Swansea. Cardiff is also the terminus of both the Taff Vale and the Rhymney railways, the latter affording the London & North-Western railway access to the town. The Barry line from Barry dock joins the Great Western and Taff Vale railways at Cardiff, and the Cardiff Railway Company (which owns all the docks) has a line from Pontypridd via Llanishen to the docks. The Glamorganshire canal, opened in 1794, runs from Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil, with a branch to Aberdare. The increase of the population of Cardiff during the 19th century was phenomenal; from 1870 inhabitants in 1801, and 6187 in 1831 it grew to 32,954 in 1861. The borough, which originally comprised only the parishes of St John’s and St Mary’s, was in 1875 and 1895 extended so as to include Roath and a large part of Llandaff, known as Canton, on the right of the Taff. The whole area was united as one civil parish in 1903, and the population in 1901 was 164,333, of whom only about 8% spoke Welsh.
Probably no town in the kingdom has a nobler group of public buildings than those in Cathays Park, which also commands a view of the castle ramparts and the old keep. On opposite sides of a fine avenue are the assize courts and new town hall (with municipal offices), which are both in the Renaissance style. The Glamorgan county council has also a site of one acre in the park for offices.
The University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, founded in 1883, under the principalship of J. Viriamu Jones, for some time carried on its work in temporary buildings, pending the erection of the commodious and imposing building from the plans of Mr W. D. Caröe, in Cathays Park, where the registry of the university of Wales (of which the college is a constituent) is also situated. The Drapers’ Company has given £15,500 towards building a library, in addition to previous donations to the engineering department and the scholarship fund of the college. The college has departments for arts, pure and applied science and technology, medicine, public health, music, and for the training of men and women teachers for elementary and secondary schools. Its library includes the Salesbury collection of books relating to Wales. Aberdare Hall is a hostel for the women students. The Baptist theological college of Pontypool was removed to Cardiff in 1895.
The public library and museum were founded in 1863, but in 1882 were removed to a new building which was enlarged in 1896. The library is especially rich in books and MSS. relating to Wales and in Celtic literature generally. These comprise the Welsh portion of the MSS. which belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middlehill (including the Book of Aneurin—one of the “Four ancient books of Wales”), purchased for £3500. A catalogue of the printed books in the Welsh department, which soon became a standard work of reference, was published in 1898, while a calendar of the Welsh MSS. was issued by the Historical MSS. Commission in 1903. There are six branch libraries, while a scheme of school libraries has been in operation since 1899. The chief features of the museum are collections of the fossils, birds and flora of Wales and of obsolete Welsh domestic appliances, casts of the pre-Norman monuments of Wales, and reproductions of metal and ivory work illustrating various periods of art and civilization. There is also a unique collection of Swansea and Nantgarw china. The fine arts department contains twenty-seven oil paintings by modern English and continental artists bequeathed by William Menelaus of Dowlais in 1883, the Pyke-Thompson collection of about 100 water-colour paintings presented in 1899, and some 3000 prints and drawings relating to Wales. In 1905 Cardiff was selected by a privy council committee to be the site of a state-aided national museum for Wales, the whole contents of the museum and art gallery, together with a site in Cathays Park, having been offered by the corporation for the purpose. A charter providing for its government was granted on the 19th of March 1907. In Cathays Park there is also a “gorsedd” or bardic circle of huge monoliths erected in connexion with the eisteddfod of 1899.
The other public buildings of the town include the infirmary founded in 1837, the present buildings being erected in 1883, and subsequently enlarged; the sanatorium, the seamen’s hospital, the South Wales Institute of Mining Engineers (which has a library) built in 1894, the exchange, an institute for the blind, a school for the deaf and dumb, and one of the two prisons for the county (the other being at Swansea). There are a technical school, an intermediate school for boys and another for girls, a “higher-grade” and a pupil teachers’ school. A musical festival is held triennially.
In the business part the buildings are also for the most part imposing and the thoroughfares spacious, while the chief
