DOMBROW'SKI (properly DABROwSKr), JAN HENRYK, a _distinguished Polish gen., was b. 29th Aug., 1755, at Pierszowice, in the district of Cracow. He entered the ser vice of the elector of. Saxony in 1770; but in 1792, on the first symptoms of the insur rection in Poland, proceeded to Warsaw. He took part in the Polish campaigns against Russia and Prussia, and exhibited such remarkable military talent, that on the termina. tion of hostilities, Suwarrow offered him employment in the Russian service, and Prussia made him a similar offer. Both were refused, and D. went to France, where, in 1796, he was commissioned by the directory to form a Polish legion among his exiled coun trymen, of which he was appointed commander. The legion brilliantly distinguished itself in the Italian campaign. While in Rome, the admirable discipline which D. pre served among his troops, raised him so high in the estimation of the senate, that it pre sented him with the standards which his great countryman Sobieski had taken from the Turks, when he compelled them to raise the siege of Vienna, and which he had sent to the church of San Loretto. In the campaign of 1799-1800, D. gave splendid proofs of his courage. After the peace of Amiens, D. became a gen. of division in the service of the Cisalpine republic; and after the battle of Jena, along with Wybicki, he was ordered by Napoleon (1806) to summon his countrymen to arms. His entrance into Warsaw, at the head of 12 Polish divisions, resembled a classical "triumph." At Dirschau and Friedland, he won fresh laurels. In the fatal Russian campaign of 1812, he commanded one of the three divisions of the fifth corps d'armee, and at the passage of the Beresina, saved from destruction the relics of Poniatowski's corps. In 1813, at the head of his Poles, he took an honorable part in the battles of Teltow, Grossbeeren, Juterbogk, and Leipsic. After the fall of Napoleon, D. returned to Poland, and in 1815 was appointed by the emperor Alexander a gen. of cavalry and Polish senator; but in the following year he withdrew from public employment to his estate in the duchy of Posen. He died 6th June, 1818.
DOME (Ital. duomo). Though often used synonymously with cupola (q.v.), a dome, in the stricter sense which it has obtained in the languages of northern Europe, signifies the external part of the spherical or polygonal roof, of which the cupola (cupo, or cup) is the internal part. In Italian usage, however, it has a wider signification than even the first, being used to denote the cathedral or chief church of a town, the house (domus) par excellence, or house of God. The cause of the name of the building being thus
applied to the form of the roof which covered it, arose from the fact, that the chief churches of Italy were at one period almost universally so roofed. In tracing the his torical origin of the D., we are usually in the habit of regarding it as originating with the architecture of the eastern empire, because it was at Constantinople and in the Byzantine provinces that it was first employed in ecclesiastical structures. But it was the Romans who, in reality, were the inventors of the D., as of all the other applications of the semicircular arch. Of their success in applying it to large buildings, we have abundant proof in the ancient domes still to be seen in Rome and its neighborhood. The D of the Pantheon is still probably the most magnificent D. in existence, and others of smaller size are to be seen in the temples of Bacchus, Vesta, Romulus, Hercules, etc. "From Rome it went to Constantinople, and from the same source, also, came the few insignificant attempts at domes in the western empire."—Fergusson's Handbook of Archi tecture, ii. 943. The external form of the D. of the church of St. Sophia at Constanti nople, which became the typical Christian structure of the kind, will be seen in the illustration appended to BYZANTLNE ARCHITECTURE. SCC PANTHEON. The D. of San Vitale, at Ravenna (q.v.), is said to be still more ancient than that of San Sophia. and is a very remarkable structure of the same class. On the church of St. Marco, at Venice, there are no less than five domes, the center one, as is usual, being much larger than the others. The interior of these domes is covered with mosaic (q.v.). So far from being peculiar to the few churches we have mentioned, domes occur in the churches of almost every town along the western shore of the Adriatic, and form, in fact, the chief archi tectural feature of this side of Italy. The construction of domes in modern times was revived in Rome, by the building of that of Our Lady of Loretto in 1507. But the three most celebrated modern domes are those of St. Peter's (q.v.) at Rome. of St. Paul's (q.v.) in London, and of the Pantheon (q.v.) in Paris. A very complete article on domes, which has been condensed in the Penny Cyclopedia, will be found in the Encyclopedie 3Iithodi gue, under " Architecture." 4/it iz&d by "bac:W.501i