OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sylvester, Joshua

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​SYLVESTER, JOSHUA (1563-1618), English poet, the son of a Kentish clothier, was born in 1563. In his tenth year he was sent to school at Southampton, where he gained a knowledge of French. After about three years at school he appears to have been put to business, and in 1591 the title-page of his Yvry states that he was in the service of the Merchant Adventurers' Company. He was for a short time a land steward, and in 1606 Prince Henry gave him a small pension as a kind of court poet. In 1613 he obtained a position as secretary to the Merchant Adventurers. He was stationed at Middelburg, in the Low Countries, where he died on the 28th of September 1618. He translated into English heroic couplets the scriptural epic of Guillaume du Bartas. His Essay of the Second Week was published in 1598; and in 1604 The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth. The ornate style of the original offered no difficulty to Sylvester, who was himself a disciple of the Euphuists and added many adornments of his own invention. The Sepmaines of Du Bartas appealed most to his English and German co-religionists, and the trans- lation was immensely popular. It has often been suggested that Milton owed something in the conception of Paradise Lost to Sylvester's translation. His popularity ceased with the Restora- tion, and Dryden called his verse " abominable fustian."
His works were reprinted by Dr A. B. Grosart (1880) in the "Chertsey Worthies Library." See also C. Dunster's Considerations on Milton’s early Reading (1800).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Symbol

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​SYMBOL (Gr. σύμβολον, a sign), the term given to a visible object representing to the mind the semblance of something which is not shown but realized by association with it. This is conveyed by the ideas usually associated with the symbol; thus the palm branch is the symbol of victory and the anchor of hope. Much of early Christian symbolism owes its origin to pagan sources, the interpretations of the symbols having a different meaning; thus "the Good Shepherd with the lamb" is thought by some to have been derived from the figure of Hermes (Mercury) carrying the goat to sacrifice, and "Orpheus charming the wild beasts," which, when painted in the catacombs, was probably intended as the representation of a type of Christ. One of the earliest symbols of the Saviour, the fish, was derived from an acrostic of the Greek wordίχθύς, the component letters of which were the initials of the five words Ίησούς Χριστός, Θεού Ύίός, Σώτηρ, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The ship, another early symbol, represented the Church in which the faithful are carried over the sea of life. Other symbols are those which were represented by animals, real or fabulous, and were derived from Scripture: thus the lamb typified Christ from St John's Gospel (i. 29 and 36), and the lion from the Book of Revelations, in which Christ is called the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." The peacock stood for immortality; the phoenix for the Resurrection; the dragon or the serpent for Satan; and the stag for the soul thirsting for baptism. The sacred monogram Chi Rho, ${\tfrac {\chi }{\rho }}$ supposed to have been the celestial sign seen by the emperor Constantine on the eve of the defeat of Maxentius, represents the two first letters of the Greek word ​Χριστός which Constantine figured on his labarum, or standard, and is found on early Christian coins, bearing also the favourite decoration of the Byzantine sarcophagi. The four evangelical symbols are taken from the book of Ezekiel and from the Book of Revelations; thus the winged man is St Matthew, the winged lion St Mark, the winged ox St Luke and the eagle St John; and these four symbols became the favourite subject for representation in the Church. Besides these the other evangelists and the saints carry emblems by which they may be recognized; thus St Andrew by the cross, St Peter by the keys, St Paul by the sword, St Edward by a cup and dagger, St Mary Magdalene by a box or vase, St Lawrence by a gridiron, St Faith also by a gridiron, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sylph

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​SYLPH, an imaginary spirit of the air; according to Paracelsus, the first modern writer who uses the word, an air-elemental, coming between material and immaterial beings. In current usage, the term is applied to a feminine spirit or fairy, and is often used in a figurative sense of a graceful, slender girl or young woman. The form of the word points to a Greek origin, and Aristotle's aiK4>i), a kind of beetle (Hist. anim. 8. 17. 8), has usually been taken as the source. Similarly, the earth-elementals or earth-spirits were in Paracelsus's nomenclature, "gnomes" (Gr. γνώμη, intelligence, γιγνώσκειν, to know) as being the spirits that gave the secrets of the earth to mortals. Littre, however, takes the word to be Old Celtic, and meaning " genius," and states that it occurs in such forms as sulfi, sylfi, &c, in inscriptions, or latinized as sulevae or suleviae.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sylvanite

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​SYLVANITE, a mineral consisting of gold and silver telluride, AuAgTe$_4$, containing gold 24.2 and silver 13.3 %; an important ore of gold. Crystals are monoclinic and often very rich in faces; they are frequently twinned, giving rise to branching forms resembling written characters; on this account the mineral was early known as "graphic gold" or "graphic tellerium" (German Schrifterz). It was also known as "white gold," the colour being tin-white with a brilliant metallic lustre. The hardness is 2 and the specific gravity 8.2. It occurs with native gold in veins trasversing porphyry at Offenbánya and Nagyág, near Déva in Transylvania (from which country it takes its name); also at several places in Boulder county, Colorado, and at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Sylvanite may be ​readily distinguished from calaverite (AuTe$_2$) by its perfect cleavage in one direction (parallel to the plane of symmetry),but in this character it resembles the very rare orthorhombic mineral krennerite ([Au, Ag] Te$_2$).
(L. J. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Pol, Counts of

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​ST POL, COUNTS OF. The countship of St Pol-sur-Ternoise in France (department of Pas-de-Calais), belonged in the 11th and 12th centuries to a family surnamed Candavène. Elizabeth, heiress of this house, carried the count ship to her husband, Gaucher de Châtillon, in 1205. By the marriage of Mahaut de Chatillon with Guy VI. of Luxemburg, St Pol passed to the house of Luxemburg. It was in possession of Louis of Luxemburg, constable of France, who was beheaded in 1475. The constable’s property was confiscated by Louis XI., but was subsequently restored in 1488 to his granddaughters, Marie and Françoise of Luxemburg. Marie (d. 1542) was countess of St Pol, and married François de Bourbon, count of Vendôme. Their son, François de Bourbon, count of St Pol (1491–1545), was one of the most devoted and courageous generals of Francis I. Marie, daughter of the last-mentioned count, brought the count ship of St Pol to the house of Orleans-Longueville. In 1705 Marie of Orleans sold it to Elizabeth of Lorraine-Lillebonne, widow of, Louis de Melun, prince of Épinoy, and their daughter married the prince of Rohan-Soubise, who thus became count of St Pol. (M. P.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Paul's Rocks

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​ST PAUL’S ROCKS, a number of islets in the Atlantic, nearly 1° N. of the equator and 540 m. from South America, in 29° 15′ W. The whole space occupied does not exceed 1400 ft. in length by about half as much in breadth. Besides sea-fowl the only land creatures are insects and spiders. Fish are abundant, seven species (one, Holocentrum sancta pauli, peculiar to the locality) being collected by the “ Challenger ” during a brief stay. Darwin (On Volcanic Islands) decided that St Paul’s Rocks were not of volcanic origin; later investigators maintain that they probably are eruptive.
See Reports of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger: Narrative of the Cruise, vol. 1.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Paul (island)

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​ST PAUL, a volcanic island in the southern Indian Ocean, in 38° 42′ 50″ S., 77° 32′ 29″ E., 60 m. S. of Amsterdam Island, belonging to France. The two islands belong to two separate eruptive areas characterized by quite different products; and the comparative bareness of St Paul contrasts with the dense vegetation of Amsterdam. On the north-east of St Paul, which has an area of 23/4 sq. m., is a land-locked bay, representing the old crater, with its rim broken down on one side by the sea. ​The highest ridge of the island is not more than 820 ft. above the sea. On the south-west side the coasts are inaccessible. According to Vélain, the island originally rose above the ocean as a mass of rhyolitic trachyte similar to that which still forms the Nine Pin rock to the north of the entrance to the crater. Next followed a period of activity in which basic rocks were produced by submarine eruptions—lavas and scoriae of anorthitic character, palagonitic tuffs, and basaltic ashes; and finally from the crater, which must have been a vast lake of fire like those in the Sandwich Islands, poured forth quiet streams of basaltic lavas which are seen dipping from the centre of the island towards the cliffs at angles of 20° to 30°. The only remaining indications of volcanic activity are the warm springs and emanations of carbon dioxide.
See C. Vélain, Passage de Vénus sur le soleil (9 décembre 1874). Expédition française aux Îles St Paul et Amsterdam (Paris, 1877); Description géologique de la presqu’île d’Aden . . . Réunion . . . St Paul et Amsterdam (Paris, 1878); and an article in Annales de géographie, 1893.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Peter

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​ST PETER, a city and the county-seat of Nicollet county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Minnesota river, about 75 m. S.W. of Minneapolis. Pop. (1905, state census) 4514 (875 foreign-born); (1910) 4176. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western railway and by steamboat lines on the Minnesota river, which is navigable for light draft steamboats to this point. The neighbouring lakes with their excellent fishing attract many summer visitors. The city has a Carnegie library, and is the seat of the Minnesota Hospital for the Insane (1866), and of Gustavus Adolphus College (Swedish Evangelical Lutheran; co-educational), which was founded in 1862 and has a college, an Academy and School of Pedagogy, a School of Commerce and a School of Music. St Peter is an important market for lumber and grain; it has stone quarries and various manufactures. Settled about 1852, St Peter was incorporated as a village in 1865, and was chartered as a city in 1891. In 1857 the legislature, a short time before its adjournment for the session, passed a bill to remove the capital of Minnesota to St Peter, but the bill was not presented to the governor for his signature within the prescribed time, and when the legislature re-convened a similar bill could not be passed.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Peter Port

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​ST PETER PORT, the chief town of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. Pop. (1901) 18,264. It lies picturesquely on a steep slope above its harbour on the east coast of the island. The harbour is enclosed by breakwaters, the southern of which connects with the shore and continues beyond a rocky islet on which stands Castle Cornet. It dates from the 12th century and retains portions of that period. Along the sea-front of the town there extends a broad sea-wall, which continues northward nearly as far as the small port of St Sampson’s, connected with St Peter Port by an electric tramway. To the south of the town Fort George, with its barracks, stands high above the sea. On the quay there is a bronze statue of Albert, Prince Consort (1862), copied from that on the south side of the Albert Hall, London. St Peter Port was formerly walled, and the sites of the five gates are marked by stones. St Peter’s, or the town church, standing low by the side of the quay, was consecrated in 1312, but includes little of the building of that date. It has, however, fine details of the 14th and 15th centuries, and is, as a whole, the most noteworthy ecclesiastical building in the islands. The other principal buildings are the court house, used for the meetings of the royal court and the states, the Elizabeth College for boys, founded by Queen Elizabeth, but occupying a house of the year 1825, and the Victoria Tower, commemorating a visit of Queen Victoria in 1846. Hauteville House, the residence of Victor Hugo from 1856 to 1870, is preserved as he left it, and is open to the public. The harbour is the chief in the island, and a large export trade is carried on especially in vegetables, fruit and flowers. The construction of the harbour was ordered by King Edward I. in 1275.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Pierre and Miquelon

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​ST PIERRE and MIQUELON, two islands 10 m. off the south coast of Newfoundland, united area about 91 sq. m. Both are rugged masses of granite, with a few small streams and lakes, a thin covering of soil and scanty vegetation. Miquelon, the larger of the two, consists of Great Miquelon and Little Miquelon, or Langlade; previous to 1783 these were separated by a navigable channel, but they have since become connected by a dangerous mudbank. St Pierre has a sheltered harbour with about 14 ft. of water, and a good road stead for large vessels. Their importance is due to their proximity to the great Banks, which makes them the centre of the French Atlantic fisheries. These are kept up by an elaborate system of bounties by the French government, which considers them of great importance as training sailors for the navy. Fishing lasts from May till October, and is carried on by nearly five hundred vessels, of which about two-thirds are fitted out from St Pierre, the remainder coming from St Malo, Cancale and other French coast towns. The resident population, which centres in the town of St Pierre, is about 6500, swelled to over 10,000 for a time each year by extra fishing hands from France, but is steadily declining owing to emigration into Canada. Owing to the low rates of duty, vast quantities of goods, especially French wines and liquors, are imported, and smuggled to Newfoundland, the United States and Canada, though of late years this has been checked by a gradual rise in the scale of duties, and by the presence since 1904 of a British consul. St Pierre is connected with Halifax (N.S.) and St Johns (Newfoundland) by a regular packet service, and is a station of the Anglo American Cable Co. and the Compagnie française des câbles télégraphiques. Excellent facilities for primary and secondary education are given, but the attraction of the fisheries prevents their being fully used.
The islands were occupied by the French in 1660, and fortified in 1700. In 1702 they were captured by the British, and held till 1763, when they were given back to France as a fishing station. They are thus the sole remnant of the French colonies in North America. Destroyed by the English in 1778, restored to France in 1783, again captured and depopulated by the English in 1793, recovered by France in 1802 and lost in 1803, the islands have remained in undisputed French possession since 1814 (Treaty of Paris).
See Henrique, Les Colonies françaises, t. ii. (Paris, 1889); Levasseur, La France, t. ii. (Paris, 1893; L’Année coloniale, yearly since 1899, contains statistics and a complete bibliography; P. T. McGrath in The New England Magazine (May 1903) describes the daily life of the people. (W. L. G.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mitrovica

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​MITROVICA (Hungarian, Mitrovicz; German, Mitrowitz), a town of Croatia-Slavonia, Hungary, situated on the river Save, in the county of Syrmia. Pop. (1900), 11,518. Mitrovica is on the railway from Agram, 170 m. W.N.W. to Belgrade, 38 m. E. by S. Roman remains have been discovered in its neighbourhood, and it occupies the site of Sirmium or Syrmium, the chief city of Lower Pannonia under Roman rule. The emperor Probus (232–282) was born and buried at Sirmium, where, according to some authorities, the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180) also died; but this is uncertain. In 351, 357 and 358, ecclesiastical councils of some importance met at Sirmium, which became an episcopal see about 305, and was united with the diocese of Bosnia in 1773. The city was sacked by the Huns in 441, and by the Turks, who destroyed all its ancient buildings, in 1396 and 1521.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mitra, Rajendra Lala

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​MITRA, RAJENDRA LALA (1824–1891), Indian Orientalist, was born in a suburb of Calcutta on the 15th of February 1824, of a respectable family of the Kayasth or writer caste of Bengal. To a large extent he was self-educated, studying Sanskrit and Persian in the library of his father. In 1846 he was appointed librarian of the Asiatic Society, and to that society the remainder of his life was devoted—as philological secretary, as vice-president, and as the first native president in 1885. Apart from very numerous contributions to the society’s journal, and to the series of Sanskrit texts entitled “Bibliotheca indica,” he published three separate works: (1) The Antiquities of Orissa (2 vols., 1875 and 1880), illustrated with photographic plates, in which he traced back the image of Jagannath (Juggernaut) and also the car-festival to a Buddhistic origin; (2) a similarly illustrated work on Bodh Gaya (1878), the hermitage of Sakya Muni, and (3) Indo-Aryans (2 vols., 1881), a collection of essays dealing with the manners and customs of the people of India from Vedic times. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Calcutta in 1875, the companionship of the Indian Empire when that order was founded in 1878, and the title of raja in 1888. He died at Calcutta on the 26th of July 1891.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mithila

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​MITHILA, an ancient kingdom of India, corresponding to that portion of Behar lying N. of the Ganges, with an extension into Nepal, where was the capital of Janakpur. Its early history is obscure, but it has always been noted for its peculiar conservatism and the learning of its Brahmans. They form to this day one of the five classes of northern Brahmans, and their head is the Maharaja of Darbhanga. The language, known as Maithili, is a dialect of Bihari, with an archaic system of grammar and a literature of its own.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murrain

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​MURRAIN (derived through O. Fr. morine, from Lat. mori, to die), a general term for various virulent diseases in domesticated animals, synonymous with plague or epizooty. The principal diseases are dealt with under Rinderpest; Pleuro-Pneumonia; Anthrax; and Foot and Mouth Disease. See also Veterinary Science.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murray, Earls of

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​MURRAY (or Moray), EARLS OF. The earldom of Moray was one of the seven original earldoms of Scotland, its lands corresponding roughly to the modern counties of Inverness and Ross. Little is known of the earls until about 1314, when Sir Thomas Randolph, a nephew of King Robert Bruce, was created earl of Moray (q.v.), and the Randolphs held the earldom until 1346, when the childless John Randolph, 3rd earl of this line and a soldier of repute, was killed at the battle of Neville’s Cross. According to some authorities the earldom was then held by John’s sister Agnes (c. 1312–1369) and her husband, Patrick Dunbar, earl of March or Dunbar (c. 1285–1368). However this may be, in 1359 an English prince, Henry Plantagenet, duke of Lancaster (d. 1361), was made earl of Moray by King David II.; but in 1372 John Dunbar (d. 1391), a grandson of Sir Thomas Randolph and a son-in-law of Robert II., obtained the earldom. The last of the Dunbar earls was James Dunbar, who was murdered in August 1429, and after this date his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Archibald Douglas (d. 1455), called themselves earl and countess of Moray.
The next family to bear this title was an illegitimate branch of the royal house of Stuart, James IV. creating his natural son, James Stuart (c. 1499–1544), earl of Moray. James died without sons, and after the title had been borne for a short time by George Gordon, 4th earl of Huntly (c. 1514–1562), who was killed at Corrichie in 1562, it wa.s bestowed in 1562 by Mary Queen of Scots upon her half-brother, an illegitimate son of James V. This was the famous regent, James Stuart, earl of Moray, or Murray (see below), who was murdered in January 1570; after this event a third James Stuart, who had married the regent’s daughter Elizabeth (d. 1591), held the earldom. He, who was called the “bonny earl,” was killed by his hereditary enemies, the Gordons, in February 1592, when his son James (d. 1638) succeeded to the title. The earldom of Moray has remained in the Stuart family since this date. Alexander, the 4th earl (d. 1701), was secretary of state for Scotland from 1680 to 1689; and in 1796 Francis, the 9th earl (1737–1810), was made a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Stuart.
See vol. vi. of Sir R. Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland, new ed. by Sir J. B. Paul (1909).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Murray, Eustace Clare Grenville

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​MURRAY, EUSTACE CLARE GRENVILLE (1824–1881), English journalist, was born in 1824, the natural son of the 2nd duke of Buckingham. Educated at Magdalen Hall (Hertford College), Oxford, he entered the diplomatic service through the influence of Lord Palmerston, and in 1851 joined the British embassy at Vienna as attaché. At the same time he agreed to act as Vienna correspondent of a London daily paper, a breach of the conventions of the British Foreign Office which cost him his post. In 1852 he was transferred to Hanover, and thence to Constantinople, and finally, in 1855, was made consul-general at Odessa. In 1868 he returned to England, and devoted himself to journalism. He contributed to the early numbers of Vanity Fair, and in 1869 founded a clever but abusive society paper, the Queen’s Messenger. For a libel published in this paper Lord Carrington horsewhipped him on the doorstep of a London club. Murray was subsequently charged with perjury for denying on oath his authorship of the article. Remanded on bail, he escaped to Paris, where he subsequently lived, acting as correspondent of various London papers. In 1874 he helped Edmund Yates to found the World.
Murray died at Passy on the 20th of December 1881. His score of books, several of which were translated into French and published in Paris, include French Pictures in English Chalk (1876–1878); The Roving Englishman in Turkey (1854); Men of the Second Empire (1872); Young Brown (1874); Sidelights on English Society (1881); and Under the Lens: Social Photographs (1885).