PREJEVALSKI, NICHOLAS, Russian explorer, born in Smolensk; joined the army, served against the Poles in 1861, and was appointed to Siberia in 1867; his first explorations were in the country S. of the Amur; in 1871-73 he travelled through Southern Mongolia from Pekin to the upper Yangtse-kiang region; thereafter his energies were devoted to Thibet; he made repeated unsuccessful attempts to reach Lhassa, exploring by the way the desert of Gobi and the upper Hoang-ho, and died finally at Karakol, in West Turkestan; he discovered the wild camel and wild horse, and brought back valuable zoological and botanical collections, which are now in St. Petersburg (1839-1888)

PRE-RAPHAELITISM, a movement headed by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais, of revolt against the style of art in vogue, traceable all the way back to Raphael, and of a bold return to the study of nature itself, agreeably to the advice of Ruskin, that “they should go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought than how best to penetrate her meaning:  rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing”; the principle of the movement, as having regard not merely to what the outer eye sees in an object, but to what the inner eye sees of objective truth and reality in it.

PRESBURG (52), the ancient capital of Hungary, close to the Austrian frontier, on the Danube, by rail 40 m.  E. of Vienna; is a pleasant town, with a cathedral, a town-house, and a Franciscan church, all of the 13th century, the old Parliament House, and a ruined royal castle; manufactures beer, dynamite, and starch, and trades largely in live stock and corn.

PRESBYOPIA, diminution of sight due to age, occurring usually about forty-five, when near objects are less distinctly seen than distant, an affliction due to the flattening of the lens.

PRESBYTERIANISM, that form of Church government which, discarding prelacy, regards all ministers in conclave as on the same level in rank and function, and which is the prevailing form of Church government in Scotland; inherited from Geneva, as also prevailing extensively in the United States of America.  The government is administered by a gradation of courts, called “Kirk-Sessions,” of office-bearers in connection with a particular congregation; “Presbyteries,” in connection with a small district; “Synods,” in connection with a larger; and finally a General Assembly or a Synod of the whole Church, which, besides managing the affairs of the collective body, forms a court of final appeal in disputed matters or cases.