seventh and eighth while and after fasting; the ninth, an encomium on the Saviour, at all hours. To these are added Songs for Exequies (on the Resurrection), on the feasts of Christmas (" octavo Calendas Januarias") and Epiphany. All these songs breathe an earnest, Christian spirit; they show the rich symbolism of the Christian life of old, and are therefore of great archaeo- logical importance. Several passages of them and of the hymns Xltpi Ere^dviov have been put into the Breviary among the Church hymns. Prudentius culti- vated, as we have seen, the two fundamental kinds of Christian poetry, the didactico- panegyrical and the lyric, which were the necessary consequences of the historico-dogmatic and mystical character of Christian- ity, and borrowed their forms from the ancient Roman poetry, which is also chiefly didactico - parsenetic or panegyric. The poetical form was employed at a very early period for the popular interpretation and defence of the Christian dogmas against pagans and heretics. Prudentius achieved in a short time a great reputation in the Church. Sidonius Apollinaris (Ep. ii, 9) com- pares him witli Horace, who was his chief model in a formal point of view; yet Prudentius moves in the classical forms with incomparably greater ease than his predecessors, Juvencus and Victorinus : he borrows more than the latter writers from the ecclesiastical La- tinity, to keep the expression of his thoughts free from all pagan coloring. His phrases, it is true, show the decay of letters and of good Latin, yet many parts of his poems display taste as well as delicacy ; for instance, his stanzas, Salvete, /lores martyrum, to be found in the Roman Breviary for the feast of the Holy Inno- cents. We are, however, at a loss to understand how any scholars of our critical age can bestow unqualified praise on Prudentius, and place him first in the list of Christian versifiers. Nor are we ready to shut our eyes wilfully to all the beauties of Prudentius's verse, and declare his hymns simply "didactic essays, loaded with moral precepts and doctrinal subtleties." His lyric style is good, and his hymns are good specimens of the best Christian song of the Latin Church in that early age. "The stanzas," says Milman {Hist, of Latin Christian- ity, viii, 309), "which the Latin Church has handed down in her services from Prudentius are but the flow- ers gathered from a wilderness of weeds." Prudentius, even in Germany, was the great popular author of the Middle Ages; no work but the Bible appears with so many glosses (interpretations ot notes) in High Ger- man, which show that it was a book of popular instruc- tion (comp. Raumer, Einwirkung des Christenfhums nnf die Althochdeutsche Sprache, p. 222). Had Ambrose lived earlier, Prudentius would not have been remem- bered at all; but as his contemporary he deserves a place beside that great Church father, whom he never excelled, but sometimes equalled as a hymhologist. The earliest edition of Prudentius's works is that of Deven- ter (1472). By far the best is that of Faustinus Arreva- lus (Rome. 1788-89, 2 vols. -Ito). but excellent editions are also those by Waitz (Hanover, 1613, 8vo); Chamil- lard (in usum Delphini, Paris, 1687, Ito); and Gallandins, Bibl. Patr. vol. viii. The newest and handiest is that by Obbarius (Tubing. 1844), whose Prolegomena em- brace a large amount of information condensed into a small compass. See Gennadius, De Viris Illustr. 13; Ludwig, Dissert. de Vila A . Prudentii (Viteb. 1G42. 4to) ; Le Clerque. Vie de Prudence (Amst. 1689); Micldel- dorpf, Comment, de. Prud. et Theol. Paid. (Vratisl. 1823- 27); Schaff, Ch. Hist. vol. iii; Christian Life in Song, p. 74 sq., 98, 110 sq. ; Saunders. Evenings with tin Sn- ored Poets, p. 34 sq. ; Maittaire, Poetce Latini, p. 1 587 sq. ; Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnol. ii, 102 sq. ; Smith, Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Biog. s. v. (J. II. W.)
Pruning-hook (fll^ta, mazmerdh; Sept. dpe- iravov; Isa. ii, 4; xviii, 5; Joel iv, 10; Mic. iv, 3), a knife for pruning the vine. The manner of trimming the vine ("1 ~T, zamdr), signifying clipping, and also
PRUSSIA
the singular instrument of the vine-dresser, were well known even in the time of Moses (Lev. xxv,3,4),and no doubl both were similar to those employed by the Egyptians. Si e Kkii i ; Vim ; Vineyard.
Prussia (Ger. Preussen) is a kingdom of the new German Empire, virtually embracing within its own history the story of the whole empire, in which it is ling ami ruling power. Before its recent ag- grandizement, it consisted of two large tracts of land extending from Russia on the easl to Holland and Bel- gium on the west, soutb of the Baltic and mirth of Sax- ony, Thuringia, Bavaria, etc., bul separated from each other by the kingdom of Hanover, the duchies ofMeck- leuburg and Oldenburg, the electorate of Hesse-Cassel, duchy of Nassau, and some miner states. In 1866, Prussia received large accessions of territory, having an- nexed the kingdom of Hanover, the duchies of I lesse- Cassel, Nassau, and Sleswig and Holstein, the free city of Frankfort, and some districts of Bavaria and Hesse- Darmstadt The area of Prussia was thus increased from 108,212 Eng. sq. miles to 137,066, and the popula- tion from 19,304,843 to 24,106,847, of whom 23,746,790 formed the civil population, and 310,055 the military, the average density of the population being I7t; per Eng. sq. mile. The variation in density is considera- ble, the greatest being in the manufacturing district ol Dusseldorf, in the Rhine province, where it is four times the average, and smallest in the district of Kos- lin, Pomerania, where il amounts to three fifths of the average. Prussia is now divided into eleven provinces and three annexes, with a population, according to the Gotha Almanac for 1876, as follows: