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

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​AGENT (from Lat. agere, to act), a name applied generally to any person who acts for another. It has probably been adopted from France, as its function in modern civil law was otherwise expressed in Roman jurisprudence. Ducange (s.v. Agentes) tells us that in the later Roman empire the officers who collected the grain in the provinces for the troops and the household, and afterwards extended their functions so as to include those of government postmasters or spies, came to be called agentes in rebus, their earlier name having been frumentarii. In law an agent is a person authorized, expressedly or impliedly, to act for another, who is thence called the principal, and who is, in consequence of, and to the extent of, the authority delegated by him, bound by the acts of his agent. (See Principal and Agent; Factor, &c.)
In Scotland the procurators or solicitors who act in the preparation of cases in the various law-courts are called agents. (See Solicitor.)
In France the agents de change were formerly the class generally licensed for conducting all negotiations, as they were termed, whether in commerce or the money market. The term has, however, become practically limited to those who conduct transactions in public stock. The laws and regulations as to ​courtiers, or those whose functions were more distinctly confined to transactions in merchandise, have been mixed up with those applicable to agents de change. Down to the year 1572 both functions were free; but at that period, partly for financial reasons, a system of licensing was adopted at the suggestion of the chancellor, l’Hôpital. Among the other revolutionary measures of the year 1791, the professions of agent and courtier were again opened to the public. Many of the financial convulsions of the ensuing years, which were due to more serious causes, were attributed to this indiscriminate removal of restrictions, and they were reimposed in 1801. From that period regulations have been made from time to time as to the qualifications of agents, the security to be found by them and the like. They are now regarded as public officers, appointed, with certain privileges and duties, by the government to act as intermediaries in negotiating transfers of public funds and commercial stocks and for dealing in metallic currency. See Stock Exchange: France.)
In diplomacy the term “agent” was originally applied to all “diplomatic agents,” including ambassadors. With the evolution of the diplomatic hierarchy, however, the term gradually sank until it was technically applied only to the lowest class of “diplomatic agents,” without a representative character and of a status and character so dubious that, by the regulation of the congress of Vienna, they were wholly excluded from the immunities of the diplomatic service. (See Diplomacy.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aggtelek

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​AGGTELEK, a village of Hungary, in the county of Gömör, situated to the south of Rozsnyó, on the road from Budapest to Dobsina. Pop. (1900) 557. In the neighbourhood is the celebrated Aggtelek or Baradla cavern, one of the largest and most remarkable stalactite grottos in Europe. It has a length, together with its ramifications, of over 5 miles, and is formed of two caverns—one known for several centuries, and another discovered by the naturalist Adolf Schmidl in 1856. Two entrances give access to the grotto, an old one extremely narrow, and a new one, made in 1890, through which the exploration of the cavern can be made in about 8 hours, half the time it took before. The cavern is composed of a labyrinth of passages and large and small halls, and is traversed by a stream. In these caverns there are numerous stalactite structures, which, from their curious and fantastic shapes, have received such names as the Image of the Virgin, the Mosaic Altar, &c. The principal parts are the Paradies with the finest stalactites, the Astronomical Tower and the Beinhaus. Rats, frogs and bats form actually the only animal life in the caves, but a great number of antediluvian animal bones have been found here, as well as human bones and numerous remains of prehistoric human settlements.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agent-General

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​AGENT-GENERAL, the term given to a representative in England of one of the self-governing British colonies. Agents-general may be said to hold a position mid-way between agents of provinces and ambassadors of foreign countries. They are appointed, and their expenses and salaries provided, by the governments of the colonies they represent, viz. Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, New Zealand and Canada (whose representatives are termed high commissioners). Their duties are to look after the political and economic interests of their colonies in London, to assist in all financial and commercial matters in which their colonies may be concerned, such as shipping arrangements and rates of freight, cable communications and rates, tenders for public works, &c., and to make known the products of their colonies. Those colonies which are not under responsible government are represented in London by crown agents.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barker, Edmund Henry

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​BARKER, EDMUND HENRY (1788–1839), English classical scholar, was born at Hollym in Yorkshire. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a scholar in 1807, but left the university without a degree, being prevented by religious scruples from taking the oath then required. He had previously obtained (in 1809) the Browne medal for Greek and Latin epigrams. After acting as amanuensis to the famous Samuel Parr, the vicar of Hatton in Warwickshire, he married and settled down at Thetford in Norfolk, where he lived for about twenty-five years. He was in the habit of adding the initials O.T.N. (of Thetford, Norfolk) to the title-page of his published works. In later life he became involved in a law-suit in connexion with a will, and thus exhausted his means. In 1837–1838 he was a prisoner for debt in the king’s bench and in the Fleet. He died in London on the 21st of March 1839. Barker was a prolific writer on classical and other subjects. In addition to contributing to the Classical Journal, he edited portions of several classical authors for the use of schools. He was one of the first commentators to write notes in English instead of Latin. In a volume of letters he disputed the claims of Sir Philip Francis to the authorship of the Letters of Junius; his Parriana (1828) is a vast and ill-digested compilation of literary anecdotes and criticisms. He also saw through the press the English edition of Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary (revised by Anthon) and of Webster’s English Dictionary. It is as a lexicographer, however, that Barker is chiefly known. While at Hatton, he conceived the design of a new edition of Stephanus’s Thesaurus Graecae Linguae. The work was undertaken by A. J. Valpy, and, although not expressly stated, it was understood that Barker was the responsible editor. When a few parts had appeared, it was severely criticized in the Quarterly Review (xxii., 1820) by Blomfield; the result was the curtailment of the original plan of the work and the omission of Barker’s name in connexion with it. It was completed in twelve volumes (1816–1828). The strictures of the Quarterly were answered by Barker in his Aristarchus Anti-Blomfieldianus, which, although unconvincing, was in turn answered by Bishop Monk. He also published notes on the Etymologicum Gudianum, and collaborated with Professor Dunbar of Edinburgh in a Greek and English Lexicon (1831). The editio princeps (1820) of the treatise attributed to Arcadius, Περὶ τόνων, was published by him from a Paris MS. Continental scholars entertained a more favourable opinion of him than those of his own country. He expressed contempt for the minute verbal criticism of the Porsonian school, in which he was himself deficient.
An account of his life will be found in the Gentleman’s Magazine for May 1839; see also Notes and Queries (6th series, xii. p. 443), where a full list of his works is given.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Baring-Gould, Sabine

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​BARING-GOULD, SABINE (1834–), English novelist, was born at Exeter on the 28th of January 1834. After graduating at Clare College, Cambridge, he spent some years in travel, and became in 1864 curate of Horbury, Yorkshire; then perpetual curate of Dalton, in the same county, in 1867; and in 1871 rector of East Mersea, Essex. On his father’s death in 1872 he inherited the estate of Lew Trenchard, North Devon, where his family had been settled for nearly three centuries, and he exchanged his Essex living for the rectory of Lew Trenchard in 1881. He had a ready pen, and began publishing books on one subject or another - fiction, travel, history, folk-lore, religion, mythology, from 1854 onwards. His novel Mehalah (1880), the scene of which is laid on the east coast of England, was an excellent story, and among many others may be mentioned John Herring (1883), a tale “of the west country; Court Royal (1886); Red Spider (1887); The Pennycomequicks (1889); Cheap Jack Zita (1893); and Broom Squire (1896), a Sussex tale. His contributions to the study of topography, antiquities and folk-lore, while popularly written, were also full of serious research and real learning, notably his Book of Were-wolves (1865), Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1866), Curious Survivals (1892). He produced at the same time many volumes of sermons and popular theology, and edited (1871–1873) The Sacristy, a quarterly review of ecclesiastical art and literature.
Living the life of the rapidly disappearing English “squarson,” and full of cultivated interests, especially in humanizing the local village mind, and investigating and recording the good things of old-time, his many-sided activities were shown in every direction and his literary facility made his work known far and wide. His familiarity with the country-side and his interest in folk-lore were of special utility in recovering and preserving for publication a large mass of English popular song, and in assisting the new English movement for studying and appreciating the old national ballad-music.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Baringo

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​BARINGO, a lake of British East Africa, some 30 m. N. of the equator in the eastern rift-valley. It is one of a chain of lakes which stud the floor of the valley and has an elevation of 3325 ft. above the sea. It is about 16 m. long by 9 broad and has an irregular outline, the northern shore being deeply indented. Its waters are brackish. Fed by several small streams it has no outlet. The largest of the rivers which enter it, the Tigrish and the Nyuki, run north through a flat marshy country which extends south of the lake. This district, inhabited by the negro tribe of Njamusi, was by the first explorers called Njemps. It is a fertile grain-growing region containing two considerable villages. The Njamusi are peaceful agriculturists who show marked friendliness to Europeans. N. of the lake rise the Karosi hills; to the E. the land rises in terraces to the edge of the Laikipia escarpment. A characteristic of the country in the neighbourhood of the lake are the “hills” of the termites (white ants). They are hollow columns 10 to 12 ft. high and from 1 ft. to 18 in. broad. The greater kudu, almost unknown elsewhere in East Africa, inhabits the flanks of the Laikipia escarpment to the east of the lake and comes to the foot-hills around Baringo to feed.
The existence of Lake Baringo was first reported in Europe by Ludwig Krapf and J. Rebmann, German missionaries stationed at Mombasa, about 1850; in J. H. Speke’s map of the Nile sources (1863) Baringo is confused with Kavirondo Gulf of Victoria Nyanza; it figures in Sir H. M. Stanley’s map (1877) as a large sheet of water N.E. of Victoria Nyanza. Joseph Thomson, in his journey through the Masai country in 1883, was the first white man to see the lake and to correct the exaggerated notions as to its size. Native tradition, however, asserts that the lake formerly covered a much larger area.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barking

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​BARKING, a market-town in the Romford parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the river Roding near its junction with the Thames, 8 m. E. of Fenchurch Street station and Liverpool Street station, London, by the London, Tilbury & Southend and Great Eastern railways. Pop. of urban district of Barking town (1891) 14,301; (1901) 21,547. The church of St Margaret is Norman with perpendicular additions, and contains many monuments of interest. Barking was celebrated for its nunnery, one of the oldest and richest in England, founded about 670 by Erkenwald, bishop of London, and restored in 970 by King Edgar, about a hundred years after its destruction by the Danes. The abbess was a baroness ex officio, and the revenue at the dissolution of the monasteries was £1084. There remains a perpendicular turreted gateway. There is also an ancient market-house, used as a town-hall. Victoria Gardens form a public pleasure-ground, and there are recreation grounds. The Gaslight and Coke Company’s works at Beckton are in the parish, and also extensive rubber works. At the mouth of the Roding (Barking Creek) are great sewage works, receiving the Northern Outfall sewer from London. There are also chemical works, and some shipping trade, principally in timber and fish. Barking is a suffragan bishopric in the diocese of St Albans.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barkly East

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​BARKLY EAST, a town of Cape province, South Africa, capital of a district of the same name, and 80 m. by rail E.S.E. of Aliwal North. The town lies north of the Drakensberg on the Kraai tributary of the Orange river at an elevation of 5831 ft. The district has an area of 1564 sq. m. and a population (1904) of 8490, of whom 50% are whites. The chief occupation followed is sheep-farming, the pasturage being excellent. Like Barkly West, the town and district are named after Sir Henry Barkly, governor of Cape Colony, 1870–1877.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barkly West

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​BARKLY WEST, a town of Cape province, South Africa, 21 m. N.W. of Kimberley, capital of a district and of an electoral division of the same name in Griqualand West. It is built on the right bank of the Vaal, here spanned by a bridge. Pop. (1904) 1037. Originally called Klipdrift, the town was the first founded by the diggers after the discovery in 1867 of diamonds along the valley of the Vaal, and it had for some years a large floating population. On the discovery of the “dry diggings” at Kimberley, the majority of the diggers removed thither. Barkly West remains, however, the centre of the alluvial diamonds industry. The diamonds of this district are noted for their purity and lustre, and are generally associated with other crystals—garnets, agates, quartz and chalcedonies.
Barkly West electoral division includes the whole of Griqualand West save the Kimberley division. It is divided into the fiscal districts of Barkly West, Hay and Herbert, with a total pop. (1904) of 48,388, of whom 12,170 are whites (see Griqualand).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barker's Mill

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​BARKER’S MILL, a mechanical contrivance invented by a Dr Barker about the end of the 17th century. It consisted of a hollow vertical cylinder, provided with a number of horizontal arms fitted with lateral apertures; the contrivance is mounted so as to rotate about the vertical axis. By allowing water to enter the vertical tube, a rotation, due to the discharge through the lateral orifices, is set up.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aumale

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​AUMALE, a town of northern France, in the department of Seine-Inférieure, on the left bank of the Bresle, 47 m. N.E. of Rouen on the Northern railway. Pop. (1906) 1999. The church is an interesting building of the 16th and 17th centuries, and has a portal attributed to Jean Goujon. The town has glass and steel works.
The territory of Aumale (Albemarle, Aubemale, Aumerle; Lat. Alba Marla) in Normandy, a dependency of the archbishopric of Rouen, was granted to Odo of Champagne, brother-in-law of William the Conqueror, who founded the first line of counts of Aumale. Hawise (Hadwide, Havoise or Avoie), countess of Aumale, after the death of her first husband William de Mandeville, earl of Essex (d. 1189), married William des Forts (de Fors, or de Fortz; Lat. de Fortibus), a military adventurer who had been one of the commanders of the fleet under Richard I. during his first crusade. He died in 1195, and his widow married Baldwin de Betun, who became count of Aumale in her right. He died in 1213, and in 1214 William de Fortibus, son of Hawise by her second husband, was confirmed by King John in all his mother’s lands. Meanwhile, however, the territory of Aumale shared the fate of the rest of Normandy, and was annexed to the French crown by King Philip Augustus; but the title of earl of Albemarle, derived from it, continued to be borne in England by William de Fortibus, and was passed on to his heirs (see Albemarle). Aumale itself was conferred by Philip Augustus as an appanage on his son Philip. It was subsequently granted by Louis VIII. to Simon, count of Dammartin, whose daughter, Jeanne, countess of Dammartin, transferred it, together with the countship of Ponthieu, to the house of Castile, by her marriage with Ferdinand III., king of Castile, called the Saint (1238). It then remained in the possession of a branch of her descendants bearing the name of Ponthieu, until it passed to the house of Harcourt on the marriage of Blanche of Ponthieu with John, count of Harcourt (1340). Marie d’Harcourt (d. 1476), heiress of Aumale, married Anthony of Lorraine, count of Vaudémont, and Aumale was created a duchy in the peerage of France for Claude and Francis of Lorraine in 1547. By the marriage of Anne of Lorraine with the duke of Nemours in 1618 the duchy of Aumale passed to the house of Savoy-Nemours. In 1686 Marie Jeanne Baptiste, duchess of Nemours and of Aumale, and wife of Charles Emmanuel II., duke of Savoy, sold Aumale to Louis XIV., who gave it to his natural son, the duke of Maine. After the death of that prince, the dukedom devolved upon his brother, the count of Toulouse, subsequently passing to the latter’s son, the duke of Penthièvre, whose daughter married the duke of Orleans. Since the reign of Louis Philippe, king of the French, the title of duke of Aumale has been borne by a son of the duke of Orleans.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aumont

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​AUMONT, the name of a family which played an important part in French history. The origin of the name is uncertain, but it has usually been derived from Aumont, now a small commune in the department of the Somme. The family was of great antiquity, a Jean, sire d’Aumont, having accompanied Louis IX. on crusade. It was already powerful in the 14th century, and during the English wars of that period its members fought in the armies of the kings of France. Towards the end of the century, the family took the part of the dukes of Burgundy, but returned to the side of France on the death of Charles the Bold. Jean d’Aumont, lieutenant-general to the king of France in the government of Burgundy, rendered important services to Louis XII. and Francis I. Another Jean d’Aumont (d. 1595), a marshal of France and knight of the order of the Holy Ghost since its institution in 1578, fought against the Huguenots under the last of the Valois kings; but he was among the first to recognize Henry IV., and was appointed governor of Champagne and of Brittany, where he had to fight against the League. His grandson Antoine (1601–1669) was also a marshal of France (1651), governor of Paris (1662), duke and peer (1665). Louis Marie Augustin, duc d’Aumont (1709–1782), was a celebrated collector of works of art. Louis Marie Celeste d’Aumont, duc de Piennes, afterwards duc d’Aumont (1762–1831), emigrated during the Revolution and served in the army of the royalists, as also in the Swedish army. During the Hundred Days he effected a descent upon Normandy in the Bourbon interest, and succeeded in capturing Bayeux and Caen.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Auncel

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​AUNCEL (from the Anglo-Fr. auncelle, a confused derivation from l’auncelle, Ital. lancella, a little balance), a balance formerly used in England; now, in dialectical use, a term for the weighing of meat by hand instead of by scales.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aulis

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​AULIS, an ancient Boeotian town on the Euripus, situated on a rocky peninsula between two bays, near the modern village of Vathy, about 3 m. S. of Chalcis. Its fame was due to the tradition that it was the starting-place of the Greek fleet before the Trojan War, the scene of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The temple of Artemis was still to be seen in the time of Pausanias.