PHOENIX, a bird which was fabled at the end of certain cycles of time to immolate itself in flames, and rise renewed in youth from the ashes.  It has become the appropriate symbol of the death-birth that ever introduces a new era in the history of the world, and is employed by Carlyle in “Sartor” as symbol of the crisis through which the present generation is now passing, the conflagration going on appearing nowise as a mere conflagration, but the necessary preliminary of a new time, with the germinating principles of which it is pregnant.

PHOENIX PARK, a magnificent public park of 2000 acres in Dublin; is much used for military reviews; it was rendered notorious in 1882 through the murder by the “Invincibles” of Lord Frederick Cavendish, who had just been appointed Irish Secretary, and his subordinate, Thomas Burke.

PHONOGRAPH, an instrument invented by EDISON (q. v.) in 1877 for recording and reproducing articulate sounds of the voice in speech or song, and to which the name of phonogram is given.

PHOTIUS, patriarch of Constantinople; was the great promoter of the schism on the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost, between the Eastern and the Western divisions of the Church, denying as he did, and erasing from the creed the FILIOQUE article (q. v.); d. 891.

PHOTOGRAVURE, a process of reproducing pictures from the negative of a photograph on a gelatine surface with the assistance of certain chemical preparations.

PHOTOSPHERE, name given to the luminous atmosphere enveloping the sun.

PHOTOTYPE, a block with impressions produced by photography from which engravings, &c., can be printed.

PHRENOLOGY claims to be a science in which the relation of the functions of mind to the material of the brain substance is observed.  It asserts that just as speech, taste, touch, &c., have their centres in certain convolutions of the brain, so have benevolence, firmness, conscientiousness, &c., and that by studying the configuration of the brain, as indicated by that of the skull, a man’s character may be approximately discovered.  As a science it is usually discredited, and held to be unsupported by physiology, anatomy, and pathology.  It is held as strongly militating against its claims that it takes no account of the convolutions of the brain that lie on the base of the skull.  Its originators were Gall, Spurzheim, and Andrew and George Combe.

PHRYGIA, a country originally extending over the western shores of Asia Minor, but afterwards confined to the western uplands, where are the sources of the Hermus, Maeander, and Sangarius; was made up of barren hills where sheep famous for their wool grazed, and fertile valleys where the vine was cultivated; marble was quarried in the hills, and gold was found; several great trade roads from Ephesus crossed the country, among whose towns the names of Colosse and Laodicea are familiar; the Phrygians were an Armenian people, with a mystic orgiastic religion, and were successively conquered by Assyrians, Lydians, and Persians, falling under Rome in 43 B.C.