PICKWICK, SAMUEL, the hero of Dickens’s “Pickwick Papers,” a character distinguished for his general goodness and his honest simplicity.

PICO, one of the Azores, consisting of a single volcanic mountain, still in action; produces excellent wine.

PICO DELLA MIRAN`DOLO, a notable Italian champion of the scholastic dogma, who challenged all the learned of Europe to enter the lists with him and controvert any one of 900 theses which he undertook to defend, a challenge which no one, under ban of the Pope, dared accept; he was the last of the schoolmen as well as a humanist in the bud, and was in his lifetime, with an astonishing forecast of destiny, named the PHOENIX (q. v.) (1463-1494).

PICQUART, COLONEL, French military officer; was distinguished as a student at the military schools; served in Algiers; became a captain in 1880; was appointed to the War Office in 1885; served with distinction in Tonquin; became professor at the Military School; rejoined the War Office in 1893, and was made head of the Intelligence Department in 1896; moved by certain discoveries affecting Esterhazy, began to inquire into the Dreyfus case, which led to his removal out of the way to Tunis; returned and exposed the proceedings against Dreyfus, with the result that a revision was demanded, and the charge confirmed; b. 1854.

PICTON, SIR THOMAS, British general, born in Pembroke; served in the West Indies, and became governor of Trinidad, also in the Walcheren Expedition, and became governor of Flushing, and in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, where he fell as he was leading his men to the charge (1758-1815).

PICTS, a race of people now believed to be of Celtic origin, that from 296 to 844 inhabited the NE. of Caledonia from the Forth to the Pentland Firth, and were divided into northern and southern by the Grampians, while the W. of the country, or Argyll, was occupied by the Dalriads or Scots from Ireland, who eventually gained the ascendency over them, to their amalgamation into one nation.

PICTS’ HOUSES, the name popularly given to EARTH-HOUSES (q. v.) in several parts of Scotland.

PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN, the hero of an old German legend, had come to a German town, offered to clear it of the rats which infested it for a sum of money, but after executing his task was unrewarded, upon which he blew a blast on his magic pipe, the sound of which drew the children of the town into a cave, which he locked when they entered, and shut them up for ever.

PIEDMONT, a district of Italy, formerly a principality, ruled by the house of Savoy, surrounded by the Alps, the Apennines, and the river Ticino; occupies the W. end of the great fertile valley of the Po, a hilly region rich in vines and mulberries, and a mountainous tract with forests and grazing land intersected by lovely valleys, which send streams down into the Po; the people are industrious; textile manufactures are extensive, and agriculture is skilful; Turin, the largest town, was the capital of Italy 1859-1865; in the glens of the Cottian Alps the Vaudois or Waldenses, after much persecution, still dwell.