PRETENDERS, THE, the names given to the son and the grandson of James II. (Prince Charlie) as claiming a right to the throne of England, and called respectively the Elder and the Younger Pretender; the elder, who made one or two attempts to secure his claim, surrendered it to his son, who in 1745 was defeated at Culloden.

PRETORIA (whites, 10), capital of the Transvaal, stands on a mountain-enclosed plain 1000 m.  NE. of Cape Town, and nearly 300 m.  W. of Lorenzo Marquez, Delagoa Bay, with both of which and with Natal it is connected by rail.  It is a thriving town, growing rapidly with flourishing trade, the see of a bishop, and containing twenty English schools.  Coal is found near, and wheat, tobacco, cotton, and indigo grown.  It is the seat of the government of the Transvaal.

PREVOST D’EXILES, ANTOINE FRANCOIS, or ABBE PREVOST, a French romancer, born in Heslin, Artois; was educated by the Jesuits, and became a Benedictine monk, but proving refractory, fled to Holland and England; wrote several novels, but his fame rests on one entitled “Manon Lescaut,” a work of genius, charming at once in matter and style; a “story,” says Professor Saintsbury, “chiefly remarkable for the perfect simplicity and absolute life-likeness of the character-drawing”; derives its name from the subject of it, a young girl named Manon (1697-1763).

PREVOST-PARADOL, LUCIEN ANATOLE, French litterateur and publicist, born in Paris; distinguished himself as journalist and essayist; was an enemy of the Empire, but accepted a post under Ollivier as envoy to the United States in 1870, and committed suicide at Washington almost immediately after landing; it was on the eve of the Franco-German War, and he had been the subject of virulent attacks from the republican press of the day (1829-1870).

PRIAM, the old king of Troy during the Trojan War; was the son of Laomedon, who with the help of Apollo and Poseidon built the city; had a large family by his wife Hecuba, Hector, Paris, and Cassandra, the most noted of them; was too old to take part in the war; is said to have fallen by the hand of Pyrrhus on the capture of Troy by the Greeks.

PRIAPUS, an ancient deity, the personification of the generating or fructifying power, and worshipped as the protector of flocks of sheep and goats, of bees, of the vine and other garden products; a worship known as the Priapus worship prevailed extensively all over the East.

PRICE, RICHARD, English moralist, born in Glamorganshire; wrote on politics and economics as well as ethics, in which last he followed CUDWORTH (q. v.), and insisted on the unimpeachable quality of moral distinctions, and the unimpeachable authority of the moral sentiments (1723-1791).

PRICHARD, JAMES COWLES, founder of ethnology and a philologist, born in Hereford; bred to medicine, and practised in Bristol; wrote “Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,” “The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations,” “Analysis of Egyptian Mythology,” and the “Natural History of Man”; maintained the original unity of the race, and that the original pair were negroes; philology was in his hands the handmaid of ethnology, and he made himself master of the primitive languages (1786-1848).