Page:EB1911 - Volume 09.djvu/487

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ENGLEHEART—ENGLISH CHANNEL
455

See Dict. of Nat. Biog. xvii. 372-374; but additional light has been thrown on Englefield’s career since the date of that article by the publication of the Spanish and Venetian Calendars, the Hatfield MSS., the Acts of the Privy Council, and the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. (A. F. P.) 


ENGLEHEART, GEORGE (1752–1829), English miniature painter, the great rival of Richard Cosway, was born at Kew in October 1752, and received his artistic training first under George Barret, R.A., and then under Sir Joshua Reynolds. He started on his own account in 1773, and exhibited in that year at the Royal Academy. He continued the active pursuit of his profession down to 1813, when he retired, and his fee-book, still in existence, records the names of his sitters, and the amount paid for each portrait, proving that he painted 4853 miniatures during that period of thirty-nine years, and that his professional income for many years exceeded £1200 a year. During the greater part of his life he resided in Hertford Street, Mayfair, where he lived till he retired. He died at Blackheath in 1829, and was buried at Kew.

He painted George III. twenty-five times, and had a very extensive circle of patrons, comprising nearly all the important persons connected with the court. He made careful copies in miniature of many of the famous paintings executed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in some cases these constitute the only information we possess respecting portraits by Sir Joshua that are now missing. His fee-book, colours, appliances and a large collection of his miniatures still remain in the possession of his descendants.

His nephew, John Cox Dillman Engleheart (1784–1862), also a miniature painter, entered George Engleheart’s studio when he was but fourteen years of age. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801, and sent in altogether 157 works. He was a man of substantial means, and in his time a very popular painter, but his health broke down when he was forty-four years old, and he had to relinquish the pursuit of his profession. He lived at Tunbridge Wells for some years and died there in 1862.


ENGLEWOOD, a city of Bergen county, New Jersey, U.S.A., near the Hudson river, 14 m. N. by E. of Jersey City. Pop. (1900) 6253, of whom 1548 were foreign-born and 386 negroes; (1905) 7922; (1910) 9924. It is served by a branch of the Erie railway, and by an electric line connecting with a ferry (at Fort Lee) to New York. Englewood is primarily a residential suburb of New York. The site rises terrace above terrace from the marshes in the valley of the Hackensack to the top of the palisades overlooking the Hudson, from which Englewood is separated by the borough of Englewood Cliffs (pop. in 1905, 266). There are several fine residences, a hospital, a public library and the Dwight school for girls (1859). The site of Englewood was for a long time a part of “English Neighbourhood,” and was known as Liberty Pole; but until 1859, when the place was laid out, there were only a few houses here, one of which was the “Liberty Pole Tavern.” In 1871 Englewood was set off from the township of Hackensack and was incorporated as a separate township, and in 1896 it was chartered as a city; but the act under which it was chartered was declared unconstitutional, and in 1899 Englewood was rechartered as a city by a special act of the state legislature.


ENGLISH CHANNEL (commonly called “The Channel”; Fr. La Manche, “the sleeve”), the narrow sea separating England from France. If its entrance be taken to lie between Ushant and the Scilly Isles, its extreme breadth (between those points) is about 100 m., and its length about 350. At the Strait of Dover, its breadth decreases to 20 m. Along both coasts of the Channel, cliffs and lowland alternate, and the geological affinities between successive opposite stretches are well marked, as between the Devonian and granitic rocks of Cornwall and Brittany, the Jurassic of Portland and Calvados, and the Cretaceous of the Pays de Caux and the Isle of Wight and the Sussex coast, as well as either shore of the Strait of Dover. The English Channel is of comparatively recent geological formation. The land-connexion between England and the continent was not finally severed until the latter part of the Pleistocene period. The Channel covers what was previously a wide valley, and may be described now as a headless gulf. The action of waves and currents, both destructive and constructive, is well seen at many points; thus Shakespeare Cliff at Dover is said to have been cut back more than a mile during the Christian era, and the cliffs of Grisnez have similarly receded. Of the opposite process notable examples are the building of the pebbly beaches of Chesil Bank and near Tréguier in Côtes du Nord, and the promontory of Dungeness. The total drainage area of the English rivers flowing into the Channel is about 8000 sq. m.; of the French rivers, including as they do the Seine, it is about 41,000 sq. m.

From the Strait of Dover the bottom slopes fairly regularly down to the western entrance of the Channel, the average depths ranging from 20 to 30 fathoms in the Strait to 60 fathoms at the entrance. An exception to this condition, however, is found in Hurd’s Deep, a narrow depression about 70 m. long, lying north and north-west of the Channel Islands, and at its nearest point to them only 5 m. distant from their outlying rocks, the Casquets. Towards its eastern end Hurd’s Deep has an extreme depth of 94 fathoms, and in it are found steeper slopes from shoal to deep water than elsewhere within the Channel. Nearing the entrance to the Channel from the Atlantic, the 100 fathoms line may be taken to mark the edge of soundings. Beyond this depth the bottom falls away rapidly. The 100 fathoms line is laid down about 180 m. W. to 120 m. S.W. of the Scilly Isles, and 80 m. W. of Ushant. Within it there are considerable irregularities of the bottom; thus a succession of narrow ridges running N.E. and S.W. occurs west of the Scillies, while only 4 m. N.W. of Ushant there is a small depression in which a depth of 105 fathoms has been found. As a general rule the slope from the English coast to the deepest parts of the Channel is more regular than that from the French coast, and for that reason, and in consideration of the greater dangers to navigation towards the French shore, the fairway is taken to lie between 12 and 24 m. from the principal promontories of the English shore, as far up-channel as Beachy Head. These promontories (the Lizard, Start Point, Portland Bill, St Alban’s Head, St Catherine’s Point of the Isle of Wight, Selsey Bill, Beachy Head, Dungeness, the South Foreland) demarcate a series of bays roughly of sickle-shape, the shores of which run north and south, or nearly so, at their western sides, turn eastward somewhat abruptly at their heads, and then trend more gently towards the south-east. On the French coast the arrangement is similar but reversed; Capes Grisnez, Antifer and La Hague, and the Pointe du Sillon demarcating a series of bays (larger than those on the English coast) whose shores run north and south on the eastern side, and have a gentler trend westward from the head.

The configuration of the coasts is perhaps the chief cause of the peculiarities of tides in the Channel. From the entrance as far as Portland Bill the time of high water is found to be progressively later in passing from west to east, being influenced by the oceanic tidal stream from the west under conditions which are on the whole normal. But eastward of a line between Portland Bill and the Gulf of St Malo these conditions are changed and great irregularities are observed. On the English coast between Portland Bill and Selsey a double tide is found. At Portland this double tide corresponds approximately with the time of low water in the regular tidal progression, and the result is the occurrence of two periods of low water, separated by a slight rise known locally as “gulder.” But farther east the double tide corresponds more nearly with the time of high water, and in consequence either the effect is produced of a prolonged period of high water, or there are actually two periods of high water, as at Southampton. Various causes apparently contribute to this phenomenon. The configuration of the coast line is such as to present at intervals barriers to the regular movement of the tidal wave (west to east), so that reflex waves (east to west) are set up. In the extreme case at Southampton the tidal effect is carried from the outer Channel first by way of