OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Markirch

See also Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer. Part of France since 1919.
​MARKIRCH (French, Ste-Marie-aux-Mines), a town of Germany, in Upper Alsace, prettily situated in the valley of the Leber, an affluent of the Rhine, near the French frontier. Pop. (1900), 12,372. The once productive silver, copper and lead ​mines of the neighbourhood were practically unworked during the whole of the 19th century, but have recently been reopened. The main industries of the place are, however, weaving and dyeing, and it is estimated that there are about 40,000 work-people in the industrial district of which Markirch is the centre. The small river Leber, which intersects the town, was at one time the boundary between the German and French languages, and traces of this separation still exist. The German-speaking inhabitants on the right bank were Protestants, and subject to the counts of Rappoltstein, while the French inhabitants were Roman Catholics, and under the rule of the dukes of Lorraine.
See Mühlenbeck, Documents historiques concernant Ste-Marie aux Mines (Markirch, 1876–1877); Hauser, Das Bergbaugebiet von Markirch (Strass., 1900).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maseru

See also Maseru on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASERU, the capital of Basutoland, British South Africa. It is pleasantly situated on the left bank of the Caledon river, 90 m. by rail E. by S. of Bloemfontein, and 40 m. N.E. of Wepener. It is in the centre of a fertile grain-growing district. Pop. (1904), 862, of whom 99 were Europeans. The principal buildings are Government House, the church of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, the hospital, and the railway station. (See Basutoland.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mason, Francis

See also Mason, Francis on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASON, FRANCIS (1799–1874), American missionary, was born in York, England, on the 2nd of April 1799. His grandfather, Francis Mason, was the founder of the Baptist Society in York, and his father, a shoemaker by trade, was a Baptist lay preacher there. After working with his father as a shoemaker for several years, he emigrated in 1818 to the United States, and in Massachusetts was licensed to preach as a Baptist in 1827. In 1830 he was sent by the American Baptist Missionary Convention to labour among the Karens in Burma. Besides conducting a training college for native preachers and teachers at Tavoy, he translated the Bible into the two principal dialects of the Karens, the Sgaw and the Pwo (his translation being published in 1853), and Matthew, Genesis, and the Psalms into the Bghai dialect. He also published A Pali Grammar on the Basis of Kachchayano, with Chrestomathy and Vocabulary (1868). In 1852 he published a book of great value on the fauna and flora of British Burma, of which an improved edition appeared in 1860 under the title Burmah, its People and Natural Productions, and a third edition (2 vols.) revised and enlarged by W. Theobald in 1882–1883. He died at Rangoon on the 3rd of March 1874.
See his autobiography, The Story of a Working Man’s Life, with Sketches of Travel in Europe, Asia, Africa and America (New York, 1870).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mason, George Hemming

See also George Hemming Mason on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASON, GEORGE HEMMING (1818–1872), English painter, was born at Wetley Abbey, the eldest son of a Staffordshire county gentleman. He was educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and studied for the medical profession for five years under Dr Watt of that city. But all his thoughts being given to art, he abandoned medicine in 1844 and travelled for a time on the Continent, finally settling in Rome, where he remained for some years and sought to make a living as an artist. During this period he underwent many privations which permanently affected his health; but he continued to labour assiduously, making studies of the picturesque scenery that surrounded him, and with hardly any instruction except that received from Nature and from the Italian pictures he gradually acquired the painter’s skill. At least two important works are referable to this period: “Ploughing in the Campagna,” shown in the Royal Academy of 1857, and “In the Salt Marshes, Campagna,” exhibited in the following year. After Mason’s return from the continent, in 1858, when he settled at Wetley Abbey, he continued for a while to paint Italian subjects from studies made during his stay abroad, and then his art began to touch in a wonderfully tender and poetic way the peasant life of England, especially of his native Staffordshire, and the homely landscape in the midst of which that life was set. The first picture of this class was “Wind on the Wold,” and it was followed—along with much else of admirable quality—by the painter’s three greatest works: The “Evening Hymn” (1868), a band of Staffordshire mill-girls returning from their work; “Girls dancing by the Sea” (1869); and the “Harvest Moon” (1872). He left Staffordshire in 1865 and went to live at Hammersmith; and he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1869. By that time he had fully established his position as an artist of unusual power and individuality. Mason died on the 22nd of October 1872. In his work he laboured under the double disadvantage of feeble and uncertain health, and a want of thorough art-training, so that his pictures were never produced easily, or without strenuous and long-continued effort. His art is great in virtue of the solemn pathos which pervades it, of the dignity and beauty in rustic life which it reveals, of its keen perception of noble form and graceful motion, and of rich effects of colour and subdued light. In motif and treatment it has something in common with the art of Millet and Jules Breton, as with that of Frederick Walker among Englishmen; though he had neither the occasional uncouth robustness of Millet nor the firm actuality of Jules Breton. His pictures “Wind on the Wold” and “The Cast Shoe” are in the National Gallery of British Art.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mask

See also Mask on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASK (Fr. masque, apparently from med. Lat. mascus, masca, spectre, through Ital. maschera, Span. mascara), a covering for the face, taking various forms, used either as a protective screen or as a disguise. In the latter sense masks are mostly associated with the artificial faces worn by actors in dramatic representations, or assumed for exciting terror (e.g. in savage rites). The spelling “masque,” representing the same word, is now in English used more specially for certain varieties of drama in which masks were originally worn (see Drama); so also “masquerade,” particularly in the sense of a masked ball or an entertainment where the personages are disguised. Both “mask” and “masquerade” have naturally passed into figurative and technical meanings, the former especially for various senses of face and head (head of a fox, grotesque faces in sculpture), or as equivalent to “cloak” or “screen” (as in fortification or other military uses, fencing, &c.). And in the case of “death-masks” the term is employed for the portrait-casts, generally of plaster or metallic foil, taken from the face of a dead person (also similarly from the living), an ancient practice of considerable interest in art. An interesting collection made by Laurence Hutton (see his Portraits in Plaster, 1894), is at Princeton University in the United States. (For the historical mystery of the “man in the iron mask,” see Iron Mask.)
The ancient Greek and Roman masks worn by their actors—hollow figures of heads—had the double object of identifying the performers with the characters assumed, and of increasing the power of the voice by means of metallic mouthpieces. They were derived like the drama from the rural religious festivities, the wearing of mock faces or beards being a primitive custom, connected no doubt with many early types of folk-lore and religion. The use of the dramatic mask was evolved in the later theatre through the mimes and the Italian popular comedy into pantomime; and the masquerade similarly came from Italy, where the domino was introduced from Venice. The domino (originally apparently an ecclesiastical garment) was a loose cloak with a small half-mask worn at masquerades and costume-balls by persons not otherwise dressed in character; and the word is applied also to the person wearing it.
See generally Altmann, Die Masken der Schauspieler (1875; new ed., 1896); and Dale, Masks, Labrets and Certain Aboriginal Customs (1885); also Drama.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Masolino Da Panicale

See also Masolino da Panicale on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASOLINO DA PANICALE (1383–c. 1445), Florentine painter, was said to have been born at Panicale di Valdelsa, near Florence. It is more probable, however, that he was born in Florence itself, his father, Cristoforo Fini, who was an “imbiancatore,” or whitewasher, having been domiciled in the Florentine quarter of S. Croce. There is reason to believe that Tommaso, nicknamed Masolino, was a pupil of the painter Starnina, and was principally influenced in style by Antonio Veneziano; he may probably enough have become in the sequel the master of Masaccio. He was born in 1383; he died later than 1429, perhaps as late as 1440 or even 1447. Towards 1423 he entered the service of Filippo Scolari, the Florentine-born obergespann of Temeswar in Hungary, and stayed some time in that country, returning towards 1427 to Italy. The only works which can with certainty be assigned to him are a series of wall paintings executed towards 1428, commissioned by Cardinal Branda Castiglione, in the church of Castiglione d’Olona, not far from Milan, and another series in the adjoining baptistery. The first set is signed as painted by “Masolinus de Florentia.” It was recovered in 1843 from a coating of whitewash, considerably damaged; its subject matter is taken from the lives of the Virgin and of SS Lawrence and Stephen. The series in the baptistery relates to the life and death of John the Baptist. The reputation of Masolino had previously rested almost entirely upon the considerable share which he was supposed to have had in the celebrated frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel, in the Church of the Carmine in Florence; he was regarded as the precursor of Masaccio, and by many years the predecessor of Filippino Lippi, in the execution of a large proportion of these works. But from a comparison of the Castiglione with the Brancacci frescoes, and from other data, it is very doubtful whether Masolino had any hand at all in the latter series. Possibly he painted in the Brancacci Chapel certain specified subjects which are now either destroyed or worked over. Several paintings assigned to Masolino on the authority of Vasari are now ascribed to Masaccio.  (W. M. R.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Masham, Samuel Cunliffe Lister, 1st Baron

See also Samuel Lister, 1st Baron Masham on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASHAM, SAMUEL CUNLIFFE LISTER, 1st Baron (1815–1906), English inventor, born at Calverley Hall, near Bradford, on the 1st of January 1815, was the fourth son of Ellis Cunliffe (1774–1853), who successively took the names of Lister and Lister-Kay, and was the first member of parliament elected for Bradford after the Reform Act of 1832. It was at first proposed that he should take orders, but he preferred a business career and became a clerk at Liverpool. In 1838 he and his elder brother John started as worsted spinners and manufacturers in a new mill which their father built for them at Manningham, and about five years later he turned his attention to the problem of mechanical wool-combing, which, in spite of the efforts of E. Cartwright and numerous other inventors, still awaited a satisfactory solution. Two years of hard work spent in modifying and improving existing devices enabled him to produce a machine which worked well, and subsequently he consolidated his position by buying up rival patents, as well as by taking out additional ones of his own. His combing machines came into such demand that though they were made for only £200 apiece he was able to sell them for £1200, and the saving they effected in the cost of production not only brought about a reduction in the price of clothing, but in consequence of the increase in the sales created the necessity for new supplies of wool, and thus contributed to the development of Australian sheep-farming. In 1855 he was sent a sample of silk waste (the refuse left in reeling silk from the cocoons) and asked whether he could find a way of utilizing the fibre it contained. The task occupied his time for many years and brought him to the verge of bankruptcy, but at last he succeeded in perfecting silk-combing appliances which enabled him to make yarn that in one year sold for 23s. a pound, though produced from raw material costing only 6d. or 1s. a pound. Another important and lucrative invention in connexion with silk manufacture was his velvet loom for piled fabrics; and this, with the silk comb worked at his Manningham mill, yielded him an annual income of £200,000 for many years. But the business was seriously affected by the prohibitory duties imposed by America, and this was one reason why he was an early and determined critic of the British policy of free imports. In 1891 he was made a peer; he took his title from the little Yorkshire town of Masham, close to which is Swinton Park, purchased by him in 1888. In 1886 an Albert medal was awarded him for his inventions, which were mostly related to the textile industries, though he occasionally diverged to other subjects, such as an air-brake for railways. He was fond of outdoor sports, especially coursing and shooting, and was a keen patron of the fine arts. He died at Swinton Park on the 2nd of February 1906, and was succeeded in the title by his son.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mashona

See also Shona people on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MASHONA, a Bantu-negro people, inhabitants of Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia. The name Mashona has been derived from the contemptuous term Amashuina applied by the Matabele to the aborigines owing to the habit of the latter of taking refuge in the rocky hills with which the country abounds. Before the Matabele invasion about 1840 most of Southern Rhodesia was occupied by the Makalanga, the Makorikori and the Banyai, all closely related. Most of them became subject to the Matabele, but although they suffered severely from their attacks, the Mashona preserved a certain national unity. In 1890 the Mashona came under British protection (see Rhodesia). They are in general a peaceful, mild-mannered people, industrious and successful farmers, skilful potters, and weavers of bark cloth.
The crafts, however, in which they excel are the smelting and forging of iron and wood-carving. They are also great hunters; and they are very fond of music, the most usual instrument being the “piano” with iron keys. Bows and arrows, assegais and axes are the native weapons, but all who can get them now use guns. Up to their conquest by the Matabele the Mashona worked the gold diggings which are scattered over their country; indeed as late as 1870 certain Mashona were still extracting gold from quartz (Geog. Jour. April 1906).
For the possible connexion of these people with the builders of the ruins at Zimbabwe and elsewhere, see Rhodesia: Archaeology; and Zimbabwe.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rampur

See also Rampur State and Rampur, Uttar Pradesh on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​RAMPUR, a native state of India, in subordination to the United Provinces. It lies in Rohilkhand, between the British districts of Moradabad and Pilibhit. Area, 893 sq. m. The country is level and generally fertile; being watered in the north by the rivers Kosila and Nahul, and in the south by the Ramganga. The chief crops are maize, rice and sugar cane. Pop. (1901) 533,212, showing a decrease of 3.3% in the decade. Estimated revenue, £234,000; military force, 2556 men, including two squadrons of Imperial Service lancers. The chief, whose title is nawab, is a Rohilla Pathan, representing the family which established their power over this part of the country in the 18th century. When the Rohillas were subjugated by the nawab of Oudh, with the assistance of a force lent by Warren Hastings, one of their number, Faiz-ullah Khan, from whom the present nawab traces his descent, was permitted to retain possession of Rampur. During the Mutiny of 1857 the nawab of Rampur rendered important services to the British, for which he received a grant of land assessed at £9000 in perpetuity, besides other honours. The state is crossed by the main line of the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway from Bareilly to Moradabad. The town of Rampur is on the left bank of the river Kosila, 620 ft. above the sea, with a railway station 39 m. N.W. of Bareilly. Pop. (1901) 78,758. There are manufactures of damask, pottery, sword-blades and sugar. It is partially, and was once completely, surrounded by a broad bamboo hedge, which formed a strong defence. In addition to a modern fort and several fine buildings, it contains an Arabic college, which attracts students from all parts of India.
There are two other towns in India called Rampur, one ​of which, the capital of the state of Bashahr in the Punjab, has given its name to the fine woollen shawls, widely known as Rampur chadars.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ramsay, Allan (painter)

See also Allan Ramsay (artist) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​RAMSAY, ALLAN (1713–1784), Scotch portrait-painter, the eldest son of the author of The Gentle Shepherd, was born at Edinburgh in 1713. Ramsay manifested an aptitude for art from an early period, and at the age of twenty we find him in London studying under the Swedish painter Hans Huyssing, and at the St Martin's Lane Academy; and in 1736 he left for Rome, where he worked for three years under Solimena and Imperiali (Fernandi). On his return he settled in Edinburgh; and, having attracted attention by his head of Forbes of Culloden and his full-length of the duke of Argyll, he removed to London, where he was patronized by the duke of Bridgewater. His pleasant manners and varied culture, not less than his artistic skill, contributed to render him popular. In 1767 he was appointed to succeed Shakelton as principal painter to the king; and so fully employed was he on the royal portraits which the king was in the habit of presenting to ambassadors and colonial governors, that he was forced to take advantage of the services of a host of assistants—of whom David Martin and Philip Reinagle are the best known. His life in London was varied by frequent visits to Italy, where he occupied himself more in literary and antiquarian research than with art. But this prosperous career came to an end, his health being shattered by an accidental dislocation of the ​right arm. With unflinching pertinacity he struggled till he had completed a likeness of the king upon which he was engaged at the time, and then started for his beloved Italy, leaving behind him a series of fifty royal portraits to be completed by his assistant Reinagle. For several years he lingered in the south, his constitution finally broken. He died at Dover on the 10th of August 1784.
Among his most satisfactory productions are some of his earlier ones, such as the full-length of the duke of Argyll, and the numerous bust-portraits of Scottish gentlemen and their ladies which he executed before settling in London. They are full of both grace and individuality; the features show excellent draughtsmanship; and the flesh-painting is firm and sound in method, though frequently tending a little to hardness and opacity. His full-length of Lady Mary Coke is remarkable for the skill and delicacy with which the white satin drapery is managed; while in the portrait of his brown-eyed wife, the eldest daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, in the Scottish National Gallery, we have a sweetness and tenderness which shows the painter at his highest. This last-named work shows the influence of French art, an influence which helped greatly to form the practice of Ramsay, and which is even more clearly visible in the large collection of his sketches in the possession of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Board of Trustees, Edinburgh.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rampolla, Count Mariano del Tindaro

See also Mariano Rampolla on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​RAMPOLLA, COUNT MARIANO DEL TINDARO (1843–), Italian cardinal, was born on the 17th of August 1843, at Polizzi, in the Sicilian diocese of Cefalù. Having completed his studies in the Capranica College at Rome, and having taken holy orders, he studied diplomacy at the College of Ecclesiastical Nobles, and in 1875 was appointed councillor to the papal nunciature at Madrid. Two years later he was recalled to Rome and appointed secretary of the Propaganda for Eastern Affairs, and for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Consecrated titular archbishop of Heraclea in 1885, he returned to Madrid as nuncio, but was shortly afterwards created cardinal and appointed to the papal secretaryship of state. New to the Sacred College and free from traditional preconceptions, he was admirably fitted to carry out the papal policy under Leo XIII. (see Papacy). Rightly or wrongly, he was held personally responsible for the rapprochement with France and Russia and the opposition to the Powers of the Triple Alliance; and this attitude had its effect on his career when Leo XIII. died. Rampolla was undoubtedly the favourite among the papabili cardinals; but the veto of Austria was interposed (see Conclave), and the votes of the Sacred College fell to Cardinal Sarto, who on the 4th of August 1903 became pope as Pius X. Cardinal Rampolla at once resigned his office as secretary of state, being succeeded by Cardinal Merry del Val, and ceased to play any conspicuous part in the Curia.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ramsay, Andrew Michael

See also Andrew Michael Ramsay on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​RAMSAY, ANDREW MICHAEL (1686–1743), French writer, of Scottish birth, commonly called the “Chevalier Ramsay,” was born at Ayr on the 9th of January 1686. Ramsay served with the English auxiliaries in the Netherlands, and in 1710 visited Fénelon, who converted him to Roman Catholicism. He remained in France until 1724, when he was sent to Rome as tutor to the Stuart princes, Charles Edward and Henry, the future cardinal of York. He was driven by intrigue from this post, and returned to Paris. He was in England in 1730, and received an honorary degree from the university of Oxford. The claim was nominally his discipleship to Fénelon, but in reality beyond doubt his connexion with the Jacobite party. He died at St Germain-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise) on the 6th of May 1743. Ramsay’s principal work was Les voyages de Cyrus (London, 1728; Paris, 1727), a book composed in avowed imitation of Télémaque. He also edited Télémaque itself (Paris, 2 vols., 1717) with an introduction, and wrote a Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Fénelon (The Hague, 1723), besides a partial biography (Paris, 1735) of Turenne, some poems (Edinburgh, 1728) in English, and other miscellaneous works.