OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Paulding, James Kirke

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​PAULDING, JAMES KIRKE (1778–1860), American writer and politician, was born in Dutchess county. New York, on the 22nd of August 1778. After a brief course at a village school, he removed in 1800 to New York City, where in connexion with his brother-in-law, William Irving, and Washington Irving, he began in January 1807 a series of short lightly humorous articles, under the title of The Salmagundi Papers. In 1814 he published a political pamphlet, "The United States and England," which attracted the notice of President Madison, who in 1815 appointed him secretary to the board of navy commissioners, which position he held until November 1823. Subsequently Paulding was navy agent in New York City from 1825 to 1837, and from 1837 to 1841 was secretary of the navy in the cabinet of President Van Buren. From 1841 until his death on the 6th of April 1860 he lived near Hyde Park, in Dutchess county, New York. Although much of his literary work consisted of political journalism, he yet found time to write a large number of essays, poems and tales. From his father, an active revolutionary patriot, Paulding inherited strong anti-British sentiments. He was among the first distinctively American writers, and protested vigorously against intellectual thraldom to the mother-country. As a prose writer he is chaste and elegant, generally just, and realistically descriptive. As a poet he is gracefully commonplace, and the only lines by Paulding which survive in popular memory are the familiar
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers: Where is the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”
which may be found in Koningsmarke.
The following is a partial list of his writings: The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan (1812); The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle (1813), a good-natured parody on The Lay of the Last Minstrel; Letters from the South (1817); The Backwoodsman: a Poem (1818); Salmagundi (2nd series, 1819–1820); A Sketch of Old England, by a New England Man (1822); Koningsmarke, the Long Finne (1823), a quiz on the romantic school of Walter Scott; John Bull in America; or the New Munchausen (1824), a broad caricature of the early type of British traveller in America; The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham (1826); Chronicles of the City of Gotham, from the Papers of a Retired Common Councilman (1830); The Dutchman’s Fireside (1831); Westward Ho! (1832); A Life of Washington (1835), ably and gracefully written; Slavery in the United States (1836), in which he defends slavery as an institution; The Book of Saint Nicholas (1837), a series of stories of the old Dutch settlers; American Comedies (1847), the joint production of himself and his son William J. Paulding; and The Puritan and his Daughter (1849). The same son also published an edition of Paulding’s Select Works (4 vols., 1867–1868), and a biography called. Literary Life of James K. Paulding (New York, 1867).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Patton, Francis Landey

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​PATTON, FRANCIS LANDEY (1843–), American educationalist and theologian, was born in Warwick parish, Bermuda, on the 22nd of January 1843. He studied at Knox College and at the university of Toronto; graduated at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1865; was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in June 1865; was pastor of the 84th Street Presbyterian Church, New York City, in 1865–1867, of the Presbyterian Church of Nyack, New York, in 1867–1870, of the South Church, Brooklyn, in 1871, and of the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church, Chicago, in 1874–1881; and in 1872–1881 was professor in McCormick Seminary, Chicago. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1878. In 1881–1888 he was Stuart professor “of the relation of philosophy and science to the Christian religion” (a chair founded for him) in Princeton Theological Seminary; in 1888–1902 he was president of the College of New Jersey, which in 1896 became Princeton University; in 1902 he became president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He brought charges of heresy in 1874 against David Swing, and was prosecuting attorney at Swing’s trial. In 1891 and 1892 he was one of the opponents of Dr Charles A. Briggs at the time of the Briggs heresy case. Dr Patton was an opponent of the revision of the Confession ​of Faith. He was editor, with Dr Briggs, of the Presbyterian Review, in 1880–1888. He wrote The Inspiration of the Scriptures (1869), and Summary of Christian Doctrine (1874).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peridot

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​PERIDOT, sometimes written peridote, a name applied by jewelers to “noble olivine,” or that kind of olivine which can be used as a gem-stone (see Olivine). The word peridot is an old trade-term, of unknown origin, used by French jewelers and introduced into science by J. R. Haüy. Peridot is practically the same stone as chrysolite (q.v.), though it is convenient to restrict that term to transparent olivine of pale yellowish green colour, and to apply the term peridot to those kinds which are darker and decidedly green: the colour, which is due to the presence of ferrous iron, is never vivid, like that of emerald, but is usually some shade of olive-, pistachio- or leek-green. Although the stone is sometimes cut en cabochon, and in rose-form, the cutting best adapted to display the colour is that of a table or a step-cut stone. Unfortunately the hardness of peridot is only about 6·5, or but little above that of glass, so that the polished stone readily suffers abrasion by wear. In polishing peridot the final touch is given on a copper wheel moistened with sulphuric acid.
Although olivine has a fairly wide distribution in nature, the varieties used as gem-stones are of very limited occurrence. Much mystery for a long time surrounded the locality which ​yields most of the peridot of commerce but it is now identified with the island of St John, or Isle Zeboiget, in the Red Sea, where it occurs, as shown by M. J. Couyat. in an altered dunite, or olivine rock (Bull soc. franç. min., 1908). This is probably the Topaz Isle, τοπάζιος νῆσος, of the ancients. It is generally held that the mineral now called topaz was unknown to ancient and medieval writers, and that their τοπάζιον was our peridot. Such was probably the Hebrew pitdah, translated topaz in the Old Testament. Dr G. F. Kunz has suggested that the peridots of modern trade are largely derived from old jewelry. The famous shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral contains a large peridot, which has commonly been regarded as an emerald. It is notable that pebbles of transparent olivine, fit for cutting, are found in the United States in Montana, Arizona and New Mexico; in consequence of their shape and curiously pitted surface they are known as “ Job's tears.” (F. W. R.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peri, Jacopo

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​PERI, JACOPO (1561–16 ?), Italian musical composer, was born at Florence on the 20th of August 1561, of a noble family. After studying under Cristoforo Malvezzi of Lucca, he became maestro di cappella, first to Ferdinand, duke of Tuscany, and later to Cosmo II. He was an important member of the literary and artistic circle which frequented the house of Giovanni Bar, di, conte de Vernio, where the revival of Greek tragedy with its appropriate musical declamation was a favourite subject of discussion. With this end in view the poet Ottav1o Rinuccini supplied a drama with the title of Dafne, to which Peri composed music, and this first attempt at opera was performed privately in 1597 in the Palazzo Corsi at Florence. This work was so much admired that in 1600 Rinuccini and Peri were commissioned to produce an opera on the occasion of the marriage of Henry IV. of France with Maria di’ Medici. This work (L’Euridice) attracted a great deal of attention, and the type once publicly established, the musical drama was set on the road to success by the efforts of other composers and the patronage of other courts. Peri himself seems never to have followed up his success with other operas; he became maestro di cappella to the duke of Ferrara in 1601, but after the publication of his Varie musiche a una, due e tre voci at Florence in 1609, nothing more is known of him.
Peri’s Dafne (which has entirely disappeared) and Euridice (printed at Florence 1600; reprinted Venice 1608 and Florence 1863) are of the greatest importance not only as being the earliest attempts at opera, but as representing the new monodic and declamatory style which is the basis of modern music as opposed to the contrapuntal methods of Palestrina and his contemporaries. Peri’s work is of course primitive in the extreme, but it is by no means without beauty, and there are many scenes in Enridice which show a considerable dramatic power.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Perihelion

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​PERIHELION (Gr. περί, near, ἤλιος, sun), in astronomy, the point of nearest approach of a body to the sun. (See Orbit.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pergolesi, Michael Angelo

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​PERGOLESI, MICHAEL ANGELO, an 18th-century Italian decorative artist, who worked chiefly in England. Biographical details are almost entirely lacking, but like Cipriani he was brought, or attracted, to England by Robert Adam after his famous continental tour. He worked so extensively for the Adams, and his designs are so closely typical of much upon which their reputation rests, that It is impossible to doubt his influence upon their style. His range, like theirs, was catholic. He designed furniture, mantelpieces, ceilings, chandeliers, doors and mural ornament with equal felicity, and as an artist in plaster work in low relief he was unapproached in his day. He delighted in urns and sphinxes and interlaced gryphons, in amorini with bows and torches, in trophies of musical instruments and martial weapons, and in flowering arabesques which were always graceful if sometimes rather thin. The centre panels of his walls and ceilings were often occupied by classical and pastoral subjects painted by Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Antonio Zucchi, her husband, and sometimes by himself. These nymphs and amorini, with their disengaged and riant air and classic grace, were not infrequently used as copies for painting upon that satinwood furniture of the last quarter of the 18th century which has never been surpassed for dainty elegance, and for the popularity of which Pergolesi was in large measure responsible; they were even reproduced in marquetry. Some of this painted work was, apparently, executed by his own hand, most of the pieces attributed to him are remarkable examples of artistic taste and technical skill. His satin-wood table-tops, china cabinets and side-tables are the last word in a daintiness which here and there perhaps is mere prettiness. Pergolesi likewise designed silver plate, and many of his patterns are almost instinctively attributed to the brothers Adam by the makers and purchasers of modern reproductions. There is, moreover, reason to believe that he aided the Adam firm in purely architectural work. In later life Pergolesi appears, like Angelica Kauffmann, to have returned to Italy.
Our chief source of information upon his works is his own publication, Designs for Various Ornaments on Seventy Plates, a series of folio sheets, without text, published between 1777 and 1801.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Perigee

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​PERIGEE (Gr. περί, near, γῆ, the earth), in astronomy that point of the moon’s orbit or of the sun’s apparent orbit at which the moon or sun approach nearest to the earth. The sun’s perigee and the earth’s perihelion are so related that they differ 180° in longitude, the first being on the line from the earth toward the sun, and the second from the sun toward the earth. The longitude of the solar perigee is now 101°, that of the earth’s perihelion 281°.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Perim

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​PERIM, a British island in the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, at the entrance to the Red Sea, and 96 m. W. by S. of Aden. Perim is 2 m. from the Arabian shore, is about 31/2 m. long with an average breadth of over a mile and covers some 7 sq. m. There is a good harbour with easy entrance on the south side with a depth of water from 25 to 30 ft. It is largely used by mercantile vessels as a coaling-station and for taking in stores, including fresh water and ice. Perim, the Diodoros island of the Periplus, was, in consequence of the French occupation of Egypt, garrisoned from 1799 to 1801 by a British force. In view of the construction of the Suez Canal and the increasing importance of the Red Sea route to India the island was annexed to Great Britain in 1857, fortified and placed under the charge of the Aden residency. In 1861 a lighthouse was built at its eastern end. Submarine cables connect the island with Aden, Egypt and Zanzibar. Population, including a garrison of 50 sepoys, about 200.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Claude

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​ST CLAUDE, a town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Jura, 42 m. S.S.E. of Lons-le-Saunier by rail. Pop. (1906) 9558. The town is beautifully situated 1300 ft. above sea-level at the western base of Mont Bayard, among the heights of the eastern Jura at the confluence of the Bienne and the Tacon. The latter river is crossed by a fine suspension bridge. The cathedral of St Pierre, once the abbey church, a building of the 14th to the 18th centuries, contains fine 15th-century stalls and a reredos of the Renaissance period. The town is the seat of a bishop, suffragan of Lyons, and of a sub-prefect. St Claude has been noted since the close of the middle ages for its fancy articles in horn, tortoise-shell, hardwood, ivory, &c., and there are manufactures of briar-root pipes. Diamond-cutting and lapidary work and the manufacture of measures are also prosperous industries.
The town derives its name from that of an archbishop of Besançon who died in the 7th century in the monastery founded here in the 5th century. This monastery subsequently acquired almost independent sovereignty in the locality, and held its retainers in a state of serfdom till the Revolution. Voltaire pleaded the cause of the serfs, though unsuccessfully, before the parlement of Besançon, and in memory of his services a statue was erected to him in 1887. St Claude was constituted a bishopric in 1762. The abbey-buildings and most of the town were destroyed by fire in 1799.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Cloud (France)

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​ST CLOUD, a town of northern France, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, on the left bank of the Seine, 2 m. W. of the fortifications of Paris by road. Pop. (1906) 7316. Picturesquely built on a hill-slope, St Cloud overlooks the river, the Bois de Boulogne and Paris; and, lying amid the foliage of its magnificent park and numerous villa gardens, it is one of the favourite resorts of the Parisians. The palace of St Cloud, which had been a summer residence for Napoleon I., Louis XVIII., Charles X., Louis Philippe and Napoleon III., was burned by the Prussians in 1870 along with part of the village. In spite of the damage inflicted on the park at the same period its magnificent avenues and ornamental water still make it one of the pleasantest spots in the neighbourhood of Paris. Every year in September, at the time of the pilgrimage of St Cloud, a fair lasting four weeks is held in the park. Within its precincts are situated the national Sèvres porcelain manufactory and the Breteuil pavilion, the seat of the international commission on the metre. St Cloud possesses a modern church in the style of the 12th century with an elegant stone spire; and here, too, is established the higher training college for male teachers for the provincial training colleges of primary instruction.
Clodoald or Cloud, grandson of Clovis, adopted the monastic life and left his name to the spot where his tomb was discovered after the lapse of 1200 years, in a crypt near the present church. He had granted the domain to the bishops of Paris, who possessed it as a fief till the 18th century. At St Cloud Henry III. and the king of Navarre (Henry IV.) established their camp during the League for the siege of Paris; and there the former was assassinated by Jacques Clément. The castle was at that time a plain country house belonging to Pierre de Gondi, archbishop of Paris; in 1658 it was acquired by the duke of Orleans, who was the originator of the palace which perished in 1870. Peter the Great of Russia was received there in 1717 by the regent, whose grandson sold the palace to Marie Antoinette. It was at St Cloud that Bonaparte executed the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire (1799); after he became emperor the palace was his favourite residence, and there he celebrated his marriage with Marie Louise. In 1815 it was the scene of the signing of the capitulation of Paris; and in 1830 from St Cloud Charles X. issued the orders which brought about his fall. Napoleon III. was there when he received the senatusconsult which restored the empire in his favour (1st December 1852). Seized by the Prussians at the beginning of the investment of Paris in 1870, St Cloud was sacked during the siege.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Cloud (Minnesota)

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​ST CLOUD, a city in Stearns, Benton and Sherburne counties, Minnesota, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Stearns county, about 65 m. N.W. of Minneapolis, on both banks of the Mississippi river, and about 970 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1900) 8663, of whom 1907 were foreign-born; (1910 U.S. census) 10,600. It is served by the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railways. It is the seat of one of the State Normal Schools (1869), and of the Minnesota State Reformatory (1887). In the city are a Carnegie library, a Federal building, a Roman Catholic cathedral, St Raphael's Hospital (Roman Catholic), St Clotilda's Academy of Music and two business colleges. The Mississippi has a considerable fall here, and provides valuable water-power. Among the manufactures are flour, barrels, bricks, and foundry and machine-shop products—the Great Northern maintains extensive car and repair shops here. In 1905 the value of the city's factory product was $1,994,476, an increase of 27.8% since 1900. There are large lumber yards, and excellent grey and red granites (St Cloud is called “the Granite City”) from neighbouring quarries are exported. The city lies in a large grain-growing and stock-raising district. St Cloud was settled in 1852, platted in 1854, incorporated as a village in 1868, and chartered as a city in 1889. Until reached by the Great Northern railway, St Cloud was the Hudson's Bay Company's terminus for the unloading of furs from the wooden ox-carts (“Red river” carts).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Croix

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​ST CROIX or Santa Cruz, the largest island in the Danish West Indies. It lies 65 m. S.E. of Puerto Rico, in 17° 40' N. and 64° 14' W., is 22 m. long, varies in breadth from 1 m. to 6 m., and has an area of 84 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 18,590. Parallel with the western coast is a range of hills, culminating in Mount Eagle (1164 ft.). The narrower western part is also hilly, but on the S. shore there are marshy tracts with lagoons of brackish water. Sugar is the staple product, and near Christianstäd there is a central factory conducted by the government. The planters are mostly English, and their language predominates. The capital, Christianstäd (locally known as “Bassin”), is situated at the head of an inlet on the N. coast, but its harbour is to a large extent choked with mud. It is a picturesque town, and the seat of the Danish governor during half the year. The only other town, Frederickstäd, stands on an open road stead on the W. coast. It is locally known as “West End,” and part of the town, wrecked by the blacks in 1878, lies in ruins. The climate is healthy, the mean annual temperature being 74° F. and the average rainfall 45.7 in. per annum.
St Croix was discovered in 1493 by Columbus, and was owned in turn by the Dutch, British and Spanish. In 1651 it was taken by France, and two years later was given to the Knights of Malta by Louis XIV. In 1733 it was purchased by Denmark. Slavery was abolished in 1848 after a violent insurrection which had broken out among the slaves.
See Sir H. H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World (1910).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Cyr-l'École

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​ST CYR-L'ÉCOLE, a town of northern France in the department of Seine-et-Oise, 3 m. W. of Versailles at the end of the old park of Louis XIV. Pop. (1906) 2696. Its importance is due to the famous military school (école spéciale militaire) in which officers for the cavalry and infantry are trained. It was established in 1808 in the convent which Madame de Maintenon founded for the education of noble young ladies in poor circumstances. Racine's Esther and Alhalie were first acted here having been written expressly for the pupils. Madame de Maintenon's tomb is still preserved in the chapel. The convent was suppressed at the Revolution, and the gardens are now partly transformed into parade-grounds.