OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duff-Gordon, Lucie

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​DUFF-GORDON, LUCIE (1821–1869), English woman of letters, daughter of John and Sarah Austin (q.v.), was born on the 24th of June 1821. Her chief playfellows as a child were her cousin, Henry Reeve, and John Stuart Mill, who lived next door in Queen Square, London. In 1834 the Austins went to Boulogne, and at table d’hôte Lucie found herself next to Heinrich Heine. The poet and the little girl became fast friends, and years afterwards she contributed to Lord Houghton’s Monographs Personal and Social a touching account of a renewal of their friendship when Heine lay dying in Paris. Her parents went to Malta in 1836, and Lucie Austin was left in England at school, but her unconventional education made the restrictions of a girls’ school exceedingly irksome. She showed her independence of character by joining the English Church, though this step was certain to cause pain to her parents, who were Unitarians, and to many of her friends. She married in 1840 Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon (1811–1872). With her mother’s beauty she had inherited her social gifts, and she gathered round her a brilliant circle of friends. George Meredith has analysed and described her extraordinary success as a hostess, and the process by which she reduced too ardent admirers to “happy crust-munching devotees.” “In England, in her day,” he says, “while health was with her, there was one house where men and women conversed. When that house perforce was closed, a light had gone out in our country.” After her father’s death, she fell into weak health and was obliged to seek sunnier climes. She went in 1860 to the Cape of Good Hope, and later to Egypt, where she died on the 14th of July 1869. She had translated among other works Ancient Grecian Mythology (1839) from the German of Niebuhr; Mary Schweidler; The Amber Witch (1844) from the German of Wilhelm Meinhold; and Stella and Vanessa (1850) from the French of A. F. L. de Wailly. Her Letters from the Cape (1862–1863) appeared in 1865; and in 1865 her Letters from Egypt, edited by her mother, attracted much attention. Last Letters from Egypt (1875) contained a memoir by her daughter, Mrs Janet Ross. Lady Duff-Gordon won the hearts of her Arab dependents and neighbours. She doctored their sick, taught their children, and sympathized with their sorrows.
The Letters from Egypt were not originally published in a complete form. A fuller edition than had before been possible, with an introduction by George Meredith, was edited in 1902 by Mrs Janet Ross. See also Mrs Ross’s Three Generations of Englishwomen (1886).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dufresny, Charles

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​DUFRESNY, CHARLES, Sieur de la Rivière (1648–1724), French dramatist, was born in Paris in 1648. The allegation that his grandfather was an illegitimate son of Henry IV. procured him the liberal patronage of Louis XIV., who gave him the post of valet de chambre, and affixed his name to many lucrative privileges. Dufresny’s expensive habits neutralized all efforts to enrich him, and as if to furnish a piquant commentary on the proverb that poverty makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows, he married, as his second wife, a washerwoman, in discharge of her bill—a whimsicality which supplied Le Sage with an episode in the Diable boiteux, and was made the subject of a comedy by J. M. Deschamps (Charles Rivière Dufresny, ou le mariage impromptu). He died in Paris on the 6th of October 1724. His plays, destitute for the most part of all higher qualities, abound in sprightly wit and pithy sayings. In the six volumes of his Théâtre (Paris, 1731), some of the best are L’Esprit de contradiction (1700), Le Double Veuvage (1701), La Joueuse (1709), La Coquette de village (1715), La Réconciliation normande (1719) ​and Le Mariage fait et rompu (1721). A volume of Poésies diverses, two volumes of Nouvelles historiques (1692), and Les Amusements sérieux et comiques d’un Siamois (1705), a work to which Montesquieu was indebted for the idea of his Lettres persanes, complete the list of Dufresny’s writings. The best edition of his works is that of 1747 (4 vols.). His Théâtre was edited (1882) by Georges d’Heylli.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duet

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​DUET (an adaptation of the Ital. duetto, from Lat. duo, two), a term in music for a composition for two performers, both either vocal or instrumental. The term is not properly applied to a composition for one voice and one instrument, the latter being regarded as an accompaniment, though in the modern evolution of this latter form of composition it often has the same character. Both parts must be of equal importance; if one is subordinated to the other it becomes an accompaniment and the work ceases to be a duet. Instrumental duets are written either for two different instruments, such as Mozart’s duets for violin and piano, or for two similar instruments. Duets written for the pianoforte are either for two performers on two separate instruments or for two performers on the same instrument, when they are termed “duets à quatre mains.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duenna

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​DUENNA (Span. dueña, a married lady or mistress, Lat. domina), specifically the chief lady-in-waiting upon the queen of Spain. The word is more widely applied, however, to an elderly lady in Spanish and Portuguese households (holding a position midway between a governess and companion) appointed to take charge of the young girls of the family; and “duenna” is thus used in English as a synonym for chaperon (q.v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dufaure, Jules Armand Stanislas

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​DUFAURE, JULES ARMAND STANISLAS (1798–1881), French statesman, was born at Saujon (Charente-Inférieure) on the 4th of December 1798. He became an advocate at Bordeaux, where he won a great reputation by his oratorical gifts, but soon abandoned law for politics, and in 1834 was elected deputy. In 1839 he became minister of public works in the Soult ministry, and succeeded in freeing railway construction in France from the obstacles which till then had hampered it. Losing office in 1840, Dufaure became one of the leaders of the Opposition, and on the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he frankly accepted the Republic, and joined the party of moderate republicans. On October 13th he became minister of the interior under G. Cavaignac, but retired on the latter’s defeat in the presidential election. During the Second Empire Dufaure abstained from public life, and practised at the Paris bar with such success that he was elected bâtonnier in 1862. In 1863 he succeeded to Pasquier’s seat in the French Academy. In 1871 he became a member of the Assembly, and it was on his motion that Thiers was elected President of the Republic. Dufaure became the minister of justice as chief of the party of the “left-centre,” and his tenure of office was distinguished by the passage of the jury-law. In 1873 he fell with Thiers, but in 1875 resumed his former post under L. J. Buffet, whom he succeeded on the 9th of March 1876 as president of the council. In the same year he was elected a life senator. On December the 12th he withdrew from the ministry owing to the attacks of the republicans of the left in the chamber and of the conservatives in the senate. After the check which the conservatives received on the 16th of May he returned to power on the 24th of December 1877. Early in 1879 Dufaure took part in compelling the resignation of Marshal MacMahon, but immediately afterwards (1st February), worn out by opposition, he himself retired. He died in Paris on the 28th of June 1881.
See G. Picot, M. Dufaure, sa vie et ses discours (Paris, 1883).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan

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​DUFFY, SIR CHARLES GAVAN (1816–1903), Irish and colonial politician, was born in Monaghan, Ireland, on the 12th of April 1816. At an early age he became connected with the press, and was one of the founders (1842) of the Nation, a Dublin weekly which was remarkable for its talent, for its seditious tendencies, and for the fire and spirit of its political poetry. In 1844 Duffy was included in the same indictment with O’Connell, and shared his conviction in Dublin and his acquittal by the House of Lords upon a point of law. His ideas, nevertheless, were too revolutionary for O’Connell; a schism took place in 1846, and Duffy united himself to the “Young Ireland” party. He was tried for treason-felony in 1848, but the jury were unable to agree. Duffy continued to agitate in the press and in parliament, to which he was elected in 1852, but his failure to bring about an alliance between Catholics and Protestants upon the land question determined him in 1856 to emigrate to Victoria. There he became in 1857 minister of public works, and after an active political career, in the course of which he was prime minister from 1871 to 1873, when he was knighted, he was elected speaker of the House of Assembly in 1877, being made K.C.M.G. in the same year. In 1880 he resigned and returned to Europe, residing mostly in the south of France. He published The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845), several works on Irish history, Conversations with Carlyle (1892), Memoirs (1898), &c. In 1891 he became first president of the Irish Literary Society. He was married three times, his third wife dying in 1889. He died on the 9th of February 1903.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dufftown

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​DUFFTOWN, a municipal and police burgh of Banffshire, Scotland, on the Fiddich, 64 m. W.N.W. of Aberdeen by the Great North of Scotland railway. Pop. (1901) 1823. It dates from 1817 and bears the name of its founder, James Duff, 4th earl of Fife. Although planned in the shape of a cross, with a square and tower in the middle, the arms of the cross are not straight, the constructor holding the ingenious opinion that, in order to prevent little towns from being taken in at a glance, their streets should be crooked. The leading industries are lime-works and distilleries, the water being specially fitted for the making of whisky. The town has considerable repute as a health resort, owing partly to its elevation (737 ft.) and partly to the natural charms of the district. The parish of Mortlach, in which Dufftown is situated, is rich in archaeological and historical associations. What is called the Stone of Mortlach is traditionally believed to have been erected to commemorate the success of Malcolm II. over the Danes in 1010. The three large stones known as “The King’s Grave,” a hill-fort, and cairns are of interest to the antiquary. The old church of Mortlach, though restored and almost renewed, still contains some lancet windows and a round-headed doorway, besides monuments dating from 1417. A portion of old Balvenie Castle, a ruin, is considered to be of Pictish origin, but most of it is in the Scots Baronial. It has associations with Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan and lord of Badenoch (1343–1405), son of Robert II., whose ruffianly conduct in Elginshire earned him the designation of the Wolf of ​Badenoch, the Comyns, the Douglases (to whom it gave the title of baron in the 15th century), the Stuarts and the Duffs. The new castle, an uninteresting building, was erected in 1724 by the earl of Fife, and though untenanted is maintained in repair. Two miles to the S.E. of Dufftown is the ruined castle of Auchindown, finely situated on a limestone crag, 200 ft. high, of which three sides are washed by the Fiddich and the fourth was protected by a moat. It dates from the 11th century, and once belonged to the Ogilvies, from whom it passed in 1535 to the Gordons. The Gothic hall with rows of fluted pillars is in fair preservation. Ben Rinnes (2755 ft.) and several other hills of lesser altitude all lie within a few miles of Dufftown. About 4 m. to the N.W. is Craigellachie—Gaelic for “the rock of alarm”—(pop. 454), on the confines of Elginshire. It is situated on the Spey amidst scenery of surpassing loveliness. The slogan of the Grants is “Stand fast Craigellachie!” The place has become an important junction of the Great North of Scotland railway system.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alloa

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​ALLOA, a municipal and police burgh and seaport of Clackmannanshire, Scotland. It is situated on the north bank of the Forth, 32 m. from Edinburgh by the North British railway via the Forth Bridge, and 28 m. from Leith by steamer. Pop. (1891) 12,643; (1901) 14,458. The Caledonian railway enters the town from the south-west by a bridge across the river, and also owns a ferry to South Alloa, on the opposite shore, in Stirlingshire. Between Alloa and Stirling the stream forms the famous “links,” the course being so sinuous that whereas by road the two towns are but 61/2 m. apart, the distance between them by river is nearly 12 m.
For its size and population the town enjoys unusual prosperity, in consequence of its several flourishing industries. Its manufactures of yarn are on the largest scale, the spinning mills often working night and day for many months together. There are also numerous breweries, and Alloa ale has always been famous. The great distillery at Carsebridge yields an immense supply of yeast as well as whisky. Other thriving trades include the glass-works on the shore, pottery-works in the “auld toon,” dye-works and a factory for the making of electrical appliances. There is a good deal of shipbuilding, some ironfounding and a brass foundry. The chief article of export is coal from the neighbouring collieries, the other leading exports being ale, whisky, glass and manufactured goods. The imports comprise timber, grain, iron, linseed and flax. The docks, accessible only at high water, include a wet basin and a dry dock. Amongst the principal buildings are the fine Gothic parish church, with a spire 200 ft. high; the town hall, including the free public library, from designs by Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., the gift of Mr J. Thomson Paton; the county and municipal buildings; handsome public baths and gymnasium, presented to the town by Mr David Thomson; the accident hospital; the fever hospital; the museum of the Natural Science and Archaeological Society; the academy, the burgh school and a secondary school with the finest technical equipment in Scotland, given by Mr A. Forrester Paton. There is a public park, besides bowling-greens and cricket and football fields. The old burying-ground was the kirkyard of the former parish church, the tower of which still exists, but a modern cemetery has been formed in Sunnyside. The town owns the water-supply, gas-works and electric-lighting.
Alloa Park, the seat of the earl of Mar and Kellie, is in the immediate vicinity, and in its grounds stand the ruins of Alloa Tower, an ancient structure 89 ft. high, with walls 11 ft. thick, which was built about 1315, and was once the residence of the powerful family of Erskine, descendants of the earl of Mar. The earl who promoted the Jacobite rising in 1715 was born here. Many of the Scots princes received their education as wards of the Lords Erskine and the earls of Mar, the last to be thus educated being Henry, the eldest son of James VI.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Allifae

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​ALLIFAE (mod. Alife), a town of the Samnites, 15 m. N.W. of Telesia, and 17 m. E.N.E. of Teanum. The site of the Samnite city, which in the 4th century B.C. had a coinage of its own, is not known; the Roman town lay in the valley of the Vulturnus, and its walls (4th century) enclose a circuit of 11/2 m., in which are preserved remains of large baths (Thermae Herculis) and a theatre.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Allingham, William

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​ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM (1824–1889), Irish man of letters and poet, was born at Ballyshannon, Donegal, on the 19th of March 1824 (or 1828, according to some authorities), and was the son of the manager of a local bank. He obtained a post in the custom-house of his native town and filled several similar situations in Ireland and England until 1870, when he had retired from the service, and became sub-editor of Fraser’s Magazine, which he edited from 1874 to 1879. He had published a volume of Poems in 1850, followed by Day and Night Songs, a volume containing many charming lyrics, in 1855. Allingham was on terms of close friendship with D. G. Rossetti, who contributed to the illustration of the Songs. His Letters to Allingham (1854–1870) were edited by Dr Birkbeck Hill in 1897. Lawrence Bloomfield, a narrative poem illustrative of Irish social questions, appeared in 1864. Allingham married in 1874 Helen Paterson, known under her married name as a water-colour painter. He died at Hampstead on the 18th of November 1889. Though working on an unostentatious scale, Allingham produced much excellent lyrical and descriptive poetry, and the best of his pieces are thoroughly national in spirit and local colouring.
William Allingham: a Diary (1907), edited by Mrs Allingham and D. Radford, contains many interesting reminiscences of Tennyson, Carlyle and other famous contemporaries.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Allison, William Boyd

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​ALLISON, WILLIAM BOYD (1829–1908), American legislator, was born at Perry, Ohio, on the 2nd of March 1829. Educated at Allegheny and Western Reserve Colleges, he studied law, and practised in Ohio until 1857. In that year he settled in Dubuque, Iowa, where he took a prominent part in Republican politics; ​and in 1860 he was a delegate to the national convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. In 1861 he was appointed a member of the staff of Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood (1813–1894), and was of great service in the work of equipping and organizing the Iowa volunteers. From 1863 until 1871 he served with distinction in the House of Representatives; in 1873 he was elected to the United States Senate, and re-elected in 1878, 1884, 1890, 1896 and 1902. Here he became one of the highest authorities on questions connected with finance, and from 1877 he was a member of the Senate committee on finance. In 1881–1893, and again from 1895, he was chairman of the committee on appropriations, in which position he had great influence. He declined offers of the secretaryship of the treasury made to him by Presidents Garfield and Harrison. He was a prominent candidate for the presidential nomination in the Republican national conventions of 1888 and 1896. In 1892 he was chairman of the American delegation to the International Monetary Conference at Brussels. He died at Dubuque, Iowa, on the 4th of August 1908.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Allman, George James

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​ALLMAN, GEORGE JAMES (1812–1898), British biologist, was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1812, and received his early education at the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast. For some time he studied for the Irish bar, but ultimately gave up law in favour of natural science. In 1843 he graduated in medicine at Dublin, and in the following year was appointed professor of botany in that university, succeeding his namesake, William Allman (1776–1846). This position he held for about twelve years until he removed to Edinburgh as regius professor of natural history. There he remained till 1870, when considerations of health induced him to resign his professorship and retire to Dorsetshire, where he devoted himself to his favourite pastime of horticulture. The scientific papers which came from his pen are very numerous. His most important work was upon the gymnoblastic hydrozoa, on which he published in 1871–1872, through the Ray Society, an exhaustive monograph, based largely on his own researches and illustrated with drawings of remarkable excellence from his own hand. Biological science is also indebted to him for several convenient terms which have come into daily use, e.g. endoderm and ectoderm for the two cellular layers of the body-wall in Coelenterata. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1854, and received a Royal medal in 1873. For several years he occupied the presidential chair of the Linnaean Society, and in 1879 he presided over the Sheffield meeting of the British Association. He died on the 24th of November 1898 at Parkstone, Dorsetshire.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Allies, Thomas William

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​ALLIES, THOMAS WILLIAM (1813–1903), English historical writer, was born at Midsomer Norton, near Bristol, on the 12th of February 1813. He was educated at Eton and at Wadham College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1833. In 1840 Bishop Blomfield of London appointed him his examining chaplain and presented him to the rectory of Launton, Oxfordshire, which he resigned in 1850 on becoming a Roman Catholic. Allies was appointed secretary to the Catholic poor school committee in 1853, a position which he occupied till 1890. He died in London on the 17th of June 1903. Allies was one of the ablest of the English churchmen who joined the Church of Rome in the early period of the Oxford movement, his chief work, The Formation of Christendom (London, 8 vols., 1865–1895) showing much originality of thought and historical knowledge. His other writings: St Peter, his Name and Office (1852); The See of St Peter, the Rock of the Church (1850); Per Crucem ad Lucem (2 vols., 1879), have gone through many editions and been translated into several languages.
See his autobiography, A Life’s Decision (1880); and the study by his daughter, Mary H. Allies, Thomas Allies, the Story of a Mind (London, 1906), which contains a full bibliography of his works.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alligator

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​ALLIGATOR (Spanish el lagarto, “the lizard”), an animal so closely allied to the crocodile that some naturalists have classed them together as forming one genus. It differs from the true crocodile principally in having the head broader and shorter, and the snout more obtuse; in having the fourth, enlarged tooth of the under jaw received, not into an external notch, but into a pit formed for it within the upper one; in wanting a jagged fringe which appears on the hind legs and feet of the crocodile; and in having the toes of the hind feet webbed not more than half way to the tips. Alligators proper occur in the fluviatile deposits of the age of the Upper Chalk in Europe, where they did not die out until the Pliocene age; they are now restricted to two species, A. mississippiensis or lucius in the southern states of North America up to 12 ft. in length, and the small A. sinensis in the Yang-tse-kiang. In Central and South America alligators are represented by five species of the genus Caiman, which differs from Alligator by the absence of a bony septum between the nostrils, and the ventral armour is composed of overlapping bony scutes, each of which is formed of two parts united by a suture. C. sclerops, the spectacled alligator, has the widest distribution, from southern Mexico to the northern half of Argentina, and grows to a bulky size. The largest, attaining an enormous bulk and a length of 20 ft. is the C. niger, the jacaré-assu or large caiman of the Amazons. The names “alligator” and “crocodile” are often confounded in popular speech; and the structure and habits of the two animals are so similar that both are most conveniently considered under the heading Crocodile.