PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHY, the name given to the philosophy of Aristotle, from his habit of walking about with his disciples as he philosophised in the shady walks of the Lyceum.

PERNAMBUCO (130), a seaport in N. Brazil, consists of three portions connected by bridges:  Recife, on a peninsula, the business quarter; San Antonio, the modern quarter, on an intermediate island; and Bon Vista, on the mainland; manufactures cotton and tobacco, and has shipbuilding yards; the trade chiefly with England, the United States, and France; it is the capital of a province (1,100) of the name, producing sugar and cotton.

PERONELLA, in fairy legend a pretty country lass who exchanges places with an old wizened queen, and receives the homage due to royalty, but gladly takes back her rags and beauty.

PEROWNE, STEWART, Bishop of Worcester, born at Burdwan, of Huguenot extraction, educated at Cambridge; became a Fellow of Corpus Christi; held several academic and ecclesiastical appointments; an eminent Hebrew scholar and exegete; his chief work a commentary on the Psalms; b. 1823.

PERPIGNAN (28), a town on the Tet, 7 m. from the sea; a fortress in the French department of Pyrenees-Orientales; has a cathedral of the 14th century and a bourse in Moorish-Gothic, and manufactures wine and brandy; belonged originally to Aragon; was taken by France in 1475, and retaken, after restoration to Spain, in 1642, since which time it has belonged to France.

PERRAULT, CHARLES, French man of letters, born in Paris; bred to the bar; distinguished as the author of inimitable fairy tales, which have immortalised his name, as “Puss in Boots,” “Cinderella,” “Bluebeard,” &c., as also “Parallel des Anciens et des Modernes,” in which his aim was to show—­an ill-informed attempt—­that the ancients were inferior in everything to the moderns (1628-1703).

PERSECUTIONS OF THE CHURCH, by which are meant those at the hands of Imperial Rome, are usually reckoned 10 in number, viz., those under Nero in 64, Domitian 95, Trajan 107, Hadrian 125, Marcus Aurelius 165, Severus 202, Maximinus 235, Decius 249, Valerianus 257, and Diocletian 303; besides these there were others quite as deadly within the Church itself on the part of orthodox against heterodox, or Catholic against Protestant, and Established against Nonconformist.

PERSEPHONE, in the Greek mythology the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the Proserpine of the Romans.  See PROSERPINE.

PERSEPOLIS, the ancient capital of Persia, represented now by its ruins, which stand 25 m. from the NW. shores of Lake Niris, on the banks of the Murghab River, though in its palmy days it was described as “the Glory of the East.”