PLUGSTON OF UNDERSHOT, Carlyle’s name in “Past and Present” for a member or “Master-Worker” of the English mammon-worshipping manufacturing class in rivalry with the aristocracy for the ascendency in the land, who pays his workers his wages and thinks he has done his duty with them in so doing, and is secure in the fortune he has made by that cash-payment gospel of his as all the law and the prophets, called of “Undershot,” his mill being driven by a wheel, the working power of which is hidden unheeded by him, to break out some day to the damage of both his mill and him.

PLUMPTRE, EDWARD HAYES, distinguished English divine and scholar, born in London; was Dean of Wells; as a divine he wrote commentaries on books of both the Old and New Testaments, and as a scholar executed able translations in verse of Sophocles, AEschylus, and the “Commedia” of Dante, the last perhaps his greatest and most enduring work (1821-1891).

PLUNKET, LORD, Chancellor of Ireland, born in Ireland, bred to the bar; entered the Irish House of Commons; opposed the Union with Great Britain; after the Union practised at the bar, and held legal appointments; was made a peer, and materially aided the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords in carrying the Catholic Emancipation Bill of 1829 (1764-1854).

PLUTARCH, celebrated Greek biographer and moralist, born at Chaeronea, in Boeotia; studied at Athens; paid frequent visits to Rome, and formed friendships with some of its distinguished citizens; spent his later years at his native place, and held a priesthood; his fame rests on his “Parallel Lives” of 46 distinguished Greeks and Romans, a series of portraitures true to the life, and a work one of the most valuable we possess on the illustrious men of antiquity, and an enduring memorial of them (50-120).

PLUTO, god of the nether world, son of Kronos and Rhea, brother of Zeus and Poseidon, and husband of Persephone; on the dethronement of Kronos the universe was divided among themselves by the three brothers, Zeus assuming the dominion of the upper world and Poseidon that of the ocean, leaving the nether kingdom to him, a domain over which and forth of which he ruled with a greater and more undisputed authority than the other two over heaven, earth, and sea.

PLUTONIC THEORY, the theory that unstratifled rocks were formed by fusion in fire.

PLUTUS, the god of riches, son of Jason and Demeter.  Zeus is said to have put out his eyes that he might bestow his gifts without respect to merit, that is, on the evil and the good impartially.

PLYMOUTH (87), the largest town in Devonshire, stands on the N. shore of Plymouth Sound, 250 m.  W. of London by rail; adjacent to it are the towns of Stonehouse and Devonport.  Among the chief buildings are a Gothic town-hall, a 15th-century church, and a Roman Catholic cathedral.  The chief industry is chemical manufactures.  There is a large coasting and general trade, and important fisheries.  Many sea-going steamship companies make it a place of call.  The Sound is an important naval station, and historically famous as the sailing port of the fleet that vanquished the Armada.