OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milford (Massachusetts)

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​MILFORD, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., about 16 m. S.E. of Worcester. Pop. (1890), 8780; (1900) 11,376, of whom 3342 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,055. Within its area of about 15 sq. m. are a large rural population and the village of Milford, on the Charles river, about 33 m. S.W. of Boston, served by the Boston & Albany, the New York, New Haven & Hartford and the Grafton & Upton railways (the last named having its passenger department operated by electricity and its freight by steam, and connecting Milford with North Grafton), and by inter-urban electric lines. The village has a memorial hall, housing the public library, and in the township there is an excellent hospital, the gift of Eben. S. Draper. The village is a shipping point for an agricultural and manufacturing district. In 1905 the value of the township’s factory products was $3,390,504 (32·8% more than in 1900). The most important manufactures are boots and shoes; the industry was established in 1795, and for many years the special product was brogans for Southern negroes. In 1908 there were 12 large granite quarries in the township (north and north-east of the village). Milford granite is the typical stone of an area reaching into Rhode Island south of the southern boundary of Providence county; it is a biotite granite of post-Cambrian age, is generally pinkish-gray in colour (owing to the large proportion of feldspar among its constituents), and is widely used for building purposes. The township was the east precinct of Mendon until 1780, when it was incorporated; in 1835 parts of Holliston and Hopkinton were annexed; in 1886 a part was separated as Hopedale.
See Adin Ballou, History of Milford (Boston, 1882); and T. Nelson Dale, The Chief Commercial Granites of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island (Washington, 1908), Bulletin 354 of the U.S. Geological Survey.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Latina, Via

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​LATINA, VIA, an ancient highroad of Italy, leading S.E. from Rome. It was probably one of the oldest of Roman roads, leading to the pass of Algidus, so important in the early military history of Rome; and it must have preceded the Via Appia as a route to Campania, inasmuch as the Latin colony at Cales was founded in 334 B.C. and must have been accessible from Rome by road, whereas the Via Appia was only made twenty-two years later. It follows, too, a far more natural line of communication, without the engineering difficulties which the Via Appia had to encounter. As a through route it no doubt ​preceded the Via Labicana (see Labicana, Via), though the latter may have been preferred in later times. After their junction, the Via Latina continued to follow the valley of the Trerus (Sacco), following the line taken by the modern railway to Naples, and passing below the Hernican hill-towns, Anagnia, Ferentinum, Frusino, &c. At Fregellae it crossed the Liris, and then passed through Aquinum and Casinum, both of them comparatively low-lying towns. It then entered the interval between the Apennines and the volcanic group of Rocca Monfina, and the original road, instead of traversing it, turned abruptly N.E. over the mountains to Venafrum, thus giving a direct communication with the interior of Samnium by roads to Aesernia and Telesia. In later times, however, there was in all probability a short cut by Rufrae along the line taken by the modern highroad and railway. The two lines rejoined near the present railway station of Caianello and the road ran to Teanum and Cales, and so to Casilinum, where was the crossing of the Volturnus and the junction with the Via Appia. The distance from Rome to Casilinum was 129 m. by the Via Appia, 135 m. by the old Via Latina through Venafrum, 126 m. by the short cut by Rufrae. Considerable remains of the road exist in the neighbourhood of Rome; for the first 40 m., as far as Compitum Anagninum, it is not followed by any modern road; while farther on in its course it is in the main identical with the modern highroad.
See T. Ashby in Papers of the British School at Rome iv. 1 sq., v. 1 sq. (T. As.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Latini, Brunetto

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​LATINI, BRUNETTO (c. 1210–c. 1294), Italian philosopher and scholar, was born in Florence, and belonged to the Guelph party. After the disaster of Montaperti he took refuge for some years (1261–1268) in France, but in 1269 returned to Tuscany and for some twenty years held successive high offices. Giovanni Villani says that “he was a great philosopher and a consummate master of rhetoric, not only in knowing how to speak well, but how to write well.... He both began and directed the growth of the Florentines, both in making them ready in speaking well and in knowing how to guide and direct our republic according to the rules of politics.” He was the author of various works in prose and verse. While in France he wrote in French his prose Trésor, a summary of the encyclopaedic knowledge of the day (translated into Italian as Tesoro by Bono Giamboni in the 13th century), and in Italian his poem Tesoretto, rhymed couplets in heptasyllabic metre, a sort of abridgment put in allegorical form, the earliest Italian didactic verse. He is famous as the friend and counsellor of Dante (see Inferno, xv. 82-87).
For the Trésor see P. Chabville’s edition (1863); for the Tesoro, Gaiter’s edition (1878); for the Tesoretto, B. Wiese’s study in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, vii. See also the biographical and critical accounts of Brunetto Latini by Thoe Sundby (1884), and Marchesini (1887 and 1890).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Latona

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​LATONA (Lat. form of Gr. Λητώ, Leto), daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, mother of Apollo and Artemis. The chief seats of her legend are Delos and Delphi, and the generally accepted tradition is a union of the legends of these two places. Leto, pregnant by Zeus, seeks for a place of refuge to be delivered. After long wandering she reaches the barren isle of Delos, which, according to Pindar (Frag. 87, 88), was a wandering rock borne about by the waves till it was fixed to the bottom of the sea for the birth of Apollo and Artemis. In the oldest forms of the legend Hera is not mentioned; but afterwards the wanderings of Leto are ascribed to the jealousy of that goddess, enraged at her amour with Zeus. The foundation of Delphi follows immediately on the birth of the god; and on the sacred way between Tempe and Delphi the giant Tityus offers violence to Leto, and is immediately slain by the arrows of Apollo and Artemis (Odyssey, xi. 576-581; Apollodorus i. 4). Such are the main facts of the Leto legend in its common literary form, which is due especially to the two Homeric hymns to Apollo. But Leto is a real goddess, not a mere mythological figure. The honour paid to her in Delphi and Delos might be explained as part of the cult of her son Apollo; but temples to her existed in Argos, in Mantineia and in Xanthus in Lycia; her sacred grove was on the coast of Crete. In Lycia graves are frequently placed under her protection, and she is also known as a goddess of fertility and as κουροτρόφος. It is to be observed that she appears far more conspicuously in the Apolline myths than in those which grew round the great centres of Artemis worship, the reason being that the idea of Apollo and Artemis as twins is one of later growth on Greek soil. Lycia, one of the chief seats of the cult of Apollo, where most frequent traces are found of the worship of Leto as the great goddess, was probably the earlier home of her religion.
In Greek art Leto usually appears carrying her children in her arms, pursued by the dragon sent by the jealous Hera, which is slain by the infant Apollo; in vase paintings especially she is often represented with Apollo and Artemis. The statue of Leto in the Letoön at Argos was the work of Praxiteles.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Latouche, Hyacinthe Joseph Alexandre Thabaud de

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​LATOUCHE, HYACINTHE JOSEPH ALEXANDRE THABAUD DE [known as Henri] (1785–1851), French poet and novelist, was born at La Châtre (Indre) on the 2nd of February 1785. Among his works may be distinguished his comedies: Projets de sagesse (1811), and, in collaboration with Émile Deschamps, Selmours de Florian (1818), which ran for a hundred nights; also La Reine d’Espagne (1831), which proved too indecent for the public taste; a novel, Fragoletta: Naples et Paris en 1799 (1829), which attained a success of notoriety; La Vallée aux coups (1833), a volume of prose essays and verse; and two volumes of poems, Les Adieux (1843) and Les Agrestes (1844). Latouche’s chief claim to remembrance is that he revealed to the world the genius of André Chénier, then only known to a limited few. The remains of the poet’s work had passed from the hands of Daunou to Latouche, who had sufficient critical insight instantly to recognize their value. In editing the first selection of Chénier’s poems (1819) he made some trifling emendations, but did not, as Béranger afterwards asserted, make radical and unnecessary changes. Latouche was guilty of more than one literary fraud. He caused a licentious story of his own to be attributed to the duchesse de Duras, the irreproachable author of Ourika. He made many enemies by malicious attacks on his contemporaries. The Constitutionnel was suppressed in 1817 by the government for an obscure political allusion in an article by Latouche. He then undertook the management of the Mercure du XIX $^e$ siècle, and began a bitter warfare against the monarchy. After 1830 he edited the Figaro, and spared neither the liberal politicians nor the romanticists who triumphed under the monarchy of July. In his turn he was violently attacked by Gustave Planche in the Revue des deux mondes for November 1831. But it must be remembered to the credit of Latouche that he did much to encourage George Sand at the beginning of her career. The last twenty years of his life were spent in retirement at Aulnay, where he died on the 9th of March 1851.
Sainte-Beuve, in the Causeries du lundi, vol. 3, gives a not too sympathetic portrait of Latouche. See also George Sand in the Siècle for the 18th, 19th and 20th of July 1851.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Latinus

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​LATINUS, in Roman legend, king of the aborigines in Latium, and eponymous hero of the Latin race. In Hesiod (Theogony, 1013) he is the son of Odysseus and Circe, and ruler of the Tyrsenians; in Virgil, the son of Faunus and the nymph Marica, a national genealogy being substituted for the Hesiodic, which probably originated from a Greek source. Latinus was a shadowy personality, invented to explain the origin of Rome and its relations with Latium, and only obtained importance in later times through his legendary connexion with Aeneas and the foundation of Rome. According to Virgil (Aeneid, vii.-xii.), Aeneas, on landing at the mouth of the Tiber, was welcomed by Latinus, the peaceful ruler whose seat of government was Laurentum, and ultimately married his daughter Lavinia.
Other accounts of Latinus, differing considerably in detail, are to be found in the fragments of Cato’s Origines (in Servius’s commentary on Virgil) and in Dionysius of Halicarnassus; see further authorities in the article by J. A. Hild, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Latreille, Pierre André

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​LATREILLE, PIERRE ANDRÉ (1762–1833), French naturalist, was born in humble circumstances at Brives-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze), on the 20th of November 1762. In 1778 he entered the collège Lemoine at Paris, and on his admission to priestly orders in 1786 he retired to Brives, where he devoted all the leisure which the discharge of his professional duties allowed to the study of entomology. In 1788 he returned to Paris and found means of making himself known to the leading naturalists there. His “Mémoire sur les mutilles découvertes en France,” contributed to the Proceedings of the Society of Natural History in Paris, procured for him admission to that body. At the Revolution he was compelled to quit Paris, and as a priest of conservative sympathies suffered considerable hardship, being imprisoned for some time at Bordeaux. His Précis des caractères génériques des insectes, disposés dans un ordre naturel, appeared at Brives in 1796. In 1798 he became a corresponding member of the Institute, and at the same time was entrusted with the task of arranging the entomological collection at the recently organized Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Jardin des Plantes); in 1814 he succeeded G. A. Olivier as member of the Académie des Sciences, and in 1821 he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. For some time he acted as professor of zoology in the veterinary school at Alfort near Paris, and in 1830, when the chair of zoology of invertebrates at the Muséum was divided after the death of Lamarck, Latreille was appointed professor of zoology of crustaceans, arachnids and insects, the chair of molluscs, worms and zoophytes being assigned to H. M. D. de Blainville. “On me donne du pain quand je n’ai plus de dents,” said Latreille, who was then in his sixty-eighth year. He died in Paris on the 6th of February 1833.
In addition to the works already mentioned, the numerous works of Latreille include: Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des crustacés et insectes (14 vols., 1802–1805), forming part of C. N. S. Sonnini’s edition of Buffon; Genera crustaceorum et insectorum, secundum ordinem naturalem in familias disposita (4 vols., 1806–1807); Considérations générales sur l’ordre naturel des animaux composant les classes des crustacés, des arachnides, et des insectes (1810); Familles naturelles du règne animal, exposées succinctement et dans un ordre analytique (1825); Cours d’entomologie (of which only the first volume appeared, 1831); the whole of the section “Crustacés, Arachnides, Insectes,” in G. Cuvier’s Règne animal; besides many papers in the Annales du Muséum, the Encyclopédie méthodique, the Dictionnaire classique d’histoire naturelle and elsewhere.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Muir, John

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​MUIR, JOHN (1810–1882), Scottish Orientalist, was born on the 5th of February 1810 in Glasgow, where his father, William Muir (d. 1821), was a merchant. He was educated at the grammar school of Irvine, the university of Glasgow, and the East India Company’s College at Haileybury. He went to India in 1829, and served with distinction in various offices, as assistant secretary to the board of revenue, Allahabad, as collector at Azimgarh, as principal of the Victoria College, Benares, and as civil and session judge at Fatehpur. He encouraged the study of Sanskrit, and furthered schemes for the enlightenment and amelioration of the Hindus. In 1853 he retired and settled in Edinburgh, where he continued his Indian labours. In 1862 he endowed the chair of Sanskrit in the university of Edinburgh, and was the main agent in founding the Shaw fellowship in moral philosophy. He was a D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Edinburgh and Ph.D. of Bonn, and was one of the first to receive the distinction of C.I.E. He died on the 7th of March 1882.
In 1858 appeared vol. i. of his Original Sanskrit Texts (2nd ed., 1868); it was on the origin of caste, an inquiry intended to show that it did not exist in the Vedic age. Vol. ii. (1st ed., 1860; 2nd, 1871) was concerned with the origin and racial affinities of the Hindus, exhibiting all the then available evidences of their connexion, their linguistic, social and political kinship, with the other branches of the Indo-European stock. Vol. iii. (1st ed., 1861; 2nd, 1868) was on the Vedas, a full inquiry as to the ideas of their origin, authority and inspiration held both by the Vedic and later Indian writers. Vol. iv. (1st ed., 1863; 2nd, 1873) was a comparison of the Vedic with the later representations of the principal Indian deities, an exhibition of the process by which three gods hardly known to the Vedic hymns became the deities of the former Hindu Trimurti. Vol. v. (1870) was on the Vedic mythology. Dr Muir was also the author of a volume of Metrical Translations from the Sanskrit, an anonymous work on Inspiration, several works in Sanskrit, and many essays in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and elsewhere.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Muggleton, Lodowicke

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​MUGGLETON, LODOWICKE (1600–1698), English sectarian was born in Bishopsgate Street, London. His father was a farrier, but he himself was bred to be a tailor. In 1651 he began to have revelations, and to proclaim himself and his cousin John Reeve, whose journeyman he was, as the two witnesses mentioned in Rev. xi. 3. In 1652 they put out their “commission book” under the title The Transcendent Spirituall Treatise. An exposition of their doctrines was published in 1656 under the title of The Divine Looking-Glass. Among other views (besides the doctrine of the divine mission of the authors) this work taught that the distinction of the three persons in the Trinity is merely nominal, that God has a real human body, and that He left Elijah as His vicegerent in heaven when He Himself descended to die on the cross. Muggleton’s opinions gained some notable adherents, but also called forth much opposition. In 1653 he was imprisoned for blasphemy, and twice (1660 and 1670) his own followers temporarily repudiated him. His attack on the Quakers drew forth William Penn’s book, The New Witnesses proved old Heretics (1672). In 1677 Muggleton was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted of blasphemy, and fined £500. Reeve died in 1658, but Muggleton survived till 1698.
His collected works, including the posthumous Acts of the Witnesses, were published in 1756; and in 1832 some sixty Muggletonians subscribed to bring out a new edition of The Works of J. Reeve and L. Muggleton (in 3 vols. 4to). Even as late as 1846 The Divine Looking-Glass was reprinted by members of the then almost extinct sect. See A. Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars (1888).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Muir, Sir William

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​MUIR, SIR WILLIAM (1819–1905), Scottish Orientalist, brother of the preceding, was born at Glasgow on the 27th of April 1819. He was educated at Kilmarnock Academy, at Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, and at Haileybury College, and in 1837 entered the Bengal Civil Service. He served as secretary to the governor of the North-West Provinces, and as a member of the Agra revenue board, and during the Mutiny he was in charge of the intelligence department there. In 1865 he was made foreign secretary to the Indian Government. In 1867 he was knighted (K.C.S.I.), and in 1868 he became lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces. In 1874 he was appointed financial member of the Council, and retired in 1876, when he became a member of the Council of India in London. He had always taken an interest in educational matters, and it was chiefly through his exertions that the central college at Allahabad, known as Muir's College, was built and endowed. In 1885 he was elected principal of Edinburgh University in succession to Sir Alexander Grant, and held the post till 1903, when he retired. Sir William Muir was a profound Arabic scholar, and made a careful study of the history of the time of Mahomet and the early caliphate. His chief books are a Life of Mahomet and History of Islam to the Era of the Hegira; Annals of the Early Caliphate; The Caliphate, an abridgment and continuation of the Annals, which brings the record down to the fall of the caliphate on the onset of the Mongols; The Koran: its Composition and Teaching; and The Mohammedan Controversy, a reprint of five essays published at intervals between 1885 and 1887. In 1881 he delivered the Rede lecture at Cambridge on The Early Caliphate and Rise of Islam. He married in 1840 Elizabeth Huntly Wemyss (d. 1897), and had five sons and six daughters; four of his sons served in India, and one of them, Colonel A. N. Muir (d. 1899), was acting resident in Nepal.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mugwump

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​MUGWUMP, in American political slang, a name applied to any independent voter, and especially to those independents in the Republican party who refused to support James G. Blaine, when nominated by that party for the presidency in 1884; as since adopted in England it usually means one who stays neutral and votes for no party. Originally “mugwump” (mogkiomp) was a North American Indian word, in the Massachusett dialect of the Algonquian, meaning “great man” (mogki, great; omp, man); and in New England it was used of self-conceited politicians.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Muftī

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​MUFTĪ, a consulting canon-lawyer in Islām, who, upon application, gives fatwās (fetvas) or legal opinions on points of canon law (see Mahommedan Law). These are asked and given in strictly impersonal form, but the cadi, or judge, then applies them to the case and decides in accordance with them. In theory, any learned man whose opinion is respected and whose advice is sought can give fatwās. But generally in a Muslim state there are muftīs specifically appointed by the government, one for each school of canon law in each place. Each of these renders opinions in accordance with the law-books of his school; ​he has no scope for free interpretation; everything is fixed there and he must follow the precedents of the elders. In Turkey there is a chief muftī, called the Sheikh al-Islām, whose office was created by the Ottoman sultan, Mahommed II., in 1453, after the capture of Constantinople. He is, in a sense, the head of the ecclesiastical side of the state, that controlled by canon law; while the grand vizier is at the head of secular matters. Although his powers are delegated by the sultan-caliph, and he is appointed and can be dismissed by him, yet in his fatwā-issuing power he is independent. The sultan may dismiss him before he has a chance to issue a fatwā; but if he once issues it the result is legally automatic, even though it means the deposition of the sultan himself. Thus it was by a fatwā of the Sheikh al-Islām that the sultan Abdul Hamid was deposed.
See Juynboll, De mohammedaansche Wet., 40 sqq.; De Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khaldūn’s Prolégomènes, I. lxxviii. 447 seq.; Turkey in Europe, by “Odysseus,” 131 seq.; Young, Corps de droit ottoman, I. x., 285, 289.  (D. B. Ma.)