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

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​CHENONCEAUX, a village of central France, in the department of Indre-et-Loire, on the right bank of the Cher, 20 m. E. by S. of Tours on the Orléans railway. Pop. (1906) 216. Chenonceaux owes its interest to its château (see Architecture: Renaissance Architecture in France), a building in the Renaissance style on the river Cher, to the left bank of which it is united by a two-storeyed gallery built upon five arches, and to the right by a drawbridge flanked by an isolated tower, part of an earlier building of the 15th century. Founded in 1515 by Thomas Bohier (d. 1523), financial minister in Normandy, the château was confiscated by Francis I. in 1535. Henry II. presented it to his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who on his death was forced to exchange it for Chaumont-sur-Loire by Catherine de’ Medici. The latter built the gallery which leads to the left bank of the Cher. Chenonceaux passed successively into the hands of Louise de Vaudémont, wife of Henry III., the house of Vendôme, and the family of Bourbon-Condé. In the 18th century it came into the possession of the farmer-general Claude Dupin (1684–1769), who entertained the most distinguished people in France within its walls. In 1864 it was sold to the chemist Théophile Pélouze, whose wife executed extensive restorations. It subsequently became the property of the Crédit Foncier, and again passed into private occupancy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chenopodium

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​CHENOPODIUM, or Goose-foot, a genus of erect or prostrate herbs (natural order Chenopodiaceae), usually growing on the seashore or on waste or cultivated ground. The green angular stem is often striped with white or red, and, like the leaves, often more or less covered with mealy hairs. The leaves are entire, lobed or toothed, often more or less deltoid or triangular in shape. The minute flowers are bisexual, and borne in dense axillary or terminal clusters or spikes. The fruit is a membranous one-seeded utricle often enclosed by the persistent calyx. Ten species occur in Britain, one of which, C. Bonus-Henricus, Good King Henry, is cultivated as a pot-herb, in lieu of asparagus, under the name mercury, and all-good.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cherat

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​CHERAT, a hill cantonment and sanatorium in the Peshawar district of the North-West Frontier Province, India, 34 m. S.E. of Peshawar. It is situated at an elevation of 4500 ft, on the west of the Khattak range, which divides the Peshawar from the Kohat district. It was first used in 1861, and since then has been employed during the hot weather as a health station for the British troops quartered in the hot and malarious vale of Peshawar.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chepstow

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​CHEPSTOW, a market town and river-port in the southern parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, on the Wye, 2 m. above its junction with the Severn, and on the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3067. It occupies the slope of a hill on the western (left) bank of the river, and is environed by beautiful scenery. The church of St Mary, originally the conventual chapel of a Benedictine priory of Norman foundation, has remains of that period in the west front and the nave, but a rebuilding of the chancel and transepts was effected in the beginning of the 19th century. The church contains many interesting monuments. The castle, still a magnificent pile, was founded in the 11th century by William Fitz-Osbern, earl of Hereford, but was almost wholly rebuilt in the 13th. There are, however, parts of the original building in the keep. The castle occupies a splendid site on the summit of a cliff above the Wye, and covers about 3 acres. The river is crossed by a fine iron bridge of five arches, erected in 1816, and by a tubular railway bridge designed by Sir Isambard Brunel. There is a free passage on the Wye for large vessels as far as the bridge. From the narrowness and depth of the channel the tide rises suddenly and to a great height, forming a dangerous bore. The exports are timber, bark, iron, coal, cider and millstones. Some shipbuilding is carried on.
As the key to the passage of the Wye, Chepstow (Estrighorel, Striguil) was the site successively of British, Roman and Saxon fortifications. Domesday Book records that the Norman castle was built by William Fitz-Osbern to defend the Roman road into South Wales. On the confiscation of his son’s estates, the castle was granted to the earls of Pembroke, and after its reversion to the crown in 1306, Edward II. in 1310 granted it to his half-brother Thomas de Brotherton. On the latter’s death it passed, through his daughter Margaret, Lady Segrave, to the dukes of Norfolk, from whom, after again reverting to the crown, it passed to the earls of Worcester. It was confiscated by parliament and settled on Oliver Cromwell, but was restored to the earls in 1660. The borough must have grown up between 1310, when the castle and vill were granted to Thomas de Brotherton, and 1432, when John duke of Norfolk died seised of the castle, manor and borough of Struguil. In 1524 Charles, first earl of Worcester and then lord of the Marches, granted a new charter of incorporation to the bailiffs and burgesses of the town, which had fallen into decay. This was sustained until the reign of Charles II., when, some dispute arising between the earl of Bridgwater and the burgesses, no bailiff was appointed and the charter lapsed. Chepstow was afterwards governed by a board of twelve members. A port since early times, when the lord took dues of ships going up to the forest of Dean, Chepstow had no ancient market and no manufactures but that of glass, which was carried on for a short time within the ruins of the castle.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cherbuliez, Charles Victor

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​CHERBULIEZ, CHARLES VICTOR (1829–1899), French novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 19th of July 1829, at Geneva, where his father, André Cherbuliez (1795–1874), was a classical professor at the university. He was descended from a family of Protestant refugees, and many years later Victor Cherbuliez resumed his French nationality, taking advantage of an act passed in the early days of the Revolution. Geneva was the scene of his early education; thence he proceeded to Paris, and afterwards to the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He returned to his native town and engaged in the profession of teaching. After his resumption of French citizenship he was elected a member of the Academy (1881), and having received the Legion of Honour in 1870, he was promoted to be officer of the order in 1892. He died on the 1st of July 1899. Cherbuliez was a voluminous and successful writer of fiction. His first book, originally published in 1860, reappeared in 1864 under the title of Un Cheval de Phidias: it is a romantic study of art in the golden age of Athens. He went on to produce a series of novels, of which the following are the best known:—Le Comte Kostia (1863), Le Prince Vitale (1864), Le Roman d’une honnête femme (1866), L’Aventure de Ladislas Bolski (1869), Miss Ravel (1875), Samuel Brohl et Cie (1877), L’Idée de Jean Teterol (1878), Noirs et rouges (1881), La Vocation du Comte Ghislain (1888), Une Gageure (1890), Le Secret du précepteur (1893), Jacquine Vanesse (1898), &c. Most of these novels first appeared in the Revue des deux mondes, to which Cherbuliez also contributed a number of political and learned articles, usually printed with the pseudonym G. Valbert. Many of these have been published in collected form under the titles L’Allemagne politique (1870), L’Espagne politique (1874), Profils étrangers (1889), L’Art et la nature (1892), &c. The volume Études de littérature et d’art (1873) includes articles for the most part reprinted from Le Temps. The earlier novels of Cherbuliez have been said with truth to show marked traces of the influence of George Sand; and in spite of modification, his method was that of an older school. He did not possess the sombre power or the intensely analytical skill of some of his later contemporaries, but his books are distinguished by a freshness and honesty, fortified by cosmopolitan knowledge and lightened by unobtrusive humour, which fully account for their wide popularity in many countries besides his own. His genius was the reverse of dramatic, and attempts to present two of his stories on the stage have not succeeded. His essays have all the merits due to liberal observation and thoroughness of treatment; their style, like that of the novels, is admirably lucid and correct.  (C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cherchel

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​CHERCHEL, a seaport of Algeria, in the arrondissement and department of Algiers, 55 m. W. of the capital. It is the centre of an agricultural and vine-growing district, but is commercially of no great importance, the port, which consists of part only of the inner port of Roman days, being small and the entry difficult. The town is chiefly noteworthy for the extensive ruins of former cities on the same site. Of existing buildings the most remarkable is the great Mosque of the Hundred Columns, now used as a military hospital. The mosque contains 89 columns of diorite, surmounted by a variety of capitals brought from other buildings. ​The population of the town in 1906 was 4733; of the commune of which Cherchel is the centre 11,088.
Cherchel was a city of the Carthaginians, who named it Jol. Juba II. (25 B.C.) made it the capital of the Mauretanian kingdom under the name of Caesarea. Juba’s tomb, the so-called Tombeau de la Chrétienne (see Algeria), is 71/2 m. E. of the town. Destroyed by the Vandals, Caesarea regained some of its importance under the Byzantines. Taken by the Arabs it was renamed by them Cherchel. Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa captured the city in 1520 and annexed it to his Algerian pashalik. In the early years of the 18th century it was a commercial city of some importance, but was laid in ruins by a terrible earthquake in 1738. In 1840 the town was occupied by the French. The ruins suffered greatly from vandalism during the early period of French rule, many portable objects being removed to museums in Paris or Algiers, and most of the monuments destroyed for the sake of their stone. Thus the dressed stones of the ancient theatre served to build barracks; the material of the hippodrome went to build the church; while the portico of the hippodrome, supported by granite and marble columns, and approached by a fine flight of steps, was destroyed by Cardinal Lavigerie in a search for the tomb of St Marciana. The fort built by Arouj Barbarossa, elder brother of Khair-ed-Din, was completely destroyed by the French. There are many fragments of a white marble temple. The ancient cisterns still supply the town with water. The museum contains some of the finest statues discovered in Africa. They include colossal figures of Aesculapius and Bacchus, and the lower half of a seated Egyptian divinity in black basalt, bearing the cartouche of Tethmosis (Thothmes) I. This statue was found at Cherchel, and is held by some archaeologists to indicate an Egyptian settlement here about 1500 B.C.
See Africa, Roman, and the description of the museum by P. Gauckler in the Musées et collections archéologiques de l’Algérie.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cheque

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​CHEQUE, or Check, in commercial law, a bill of exchange drawn on a banker and signed by the drawer, requiring the banker to pay on demand a certain sum in money to or to the order of a specified person or to bearer. In this, its most modern sense, the cheque is the outcome of the growth of the banking system of the 19th century. For details see Banks and Banking: Law, and Bill of Exchange. The word check, of which “cheque” is a variant now general in English usage, signified merely the counterfoil or indent of an exchequer bill, or any draft form of payment, on which was registered the particulars of the principal part, as a check to alteration or forgery. The check or counterfoil parts remained in the hands of the banker, the portion given to the customer being termed a “drawn note” or “draft.” From the beginning of the 19th century the word “cheque” gradually became synonymous with “draft” as meaning a written order on a banker by a person having money in the banker’s hands, to pay some amount to bearer or to a person named. Ultimately, it entirely superseded the word “draft,” and has now a statutory definition (Bills of Exchange Act 1882, s. 73)—” a bill of exchange drawn on a banker payable on demand.” The word “draft” has come to have a wider meaning, that of a bill drawn by one person on another for a sum of money, or an order (whether on a banker or other) to pay money. The employment of cheques as a method of payment offering greater convenience than coin is almost universal in Great Britain and the United States. Of the transactions through the banks of the United Kingdom between 86 and 90% are conducted by means of cheques, and an even higher proportion in the United States. On the continent of Europe the use of cheques, formerly rare, is becoming more general, particularly in France, and to some extent in Germany.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Huon of Bordeaux

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​HUON OF BORDEAUX, hero of romance. The French chanson de geste of Huon de Bordeaux dates from the first half of the 13th century, and marks the transition between the epic chanson founded on national history and the roman d’aventures. Huon, son of Seguin of Bordeaux, kills Charlot, the emperor’s son, who had laid an ambush for him, without being aware of the rank of his assailant. He is condemned to be hanged by Charlemagne, but reprieved on condition that he visits the court of Gaudisse, the amir of Babylon, and brings back a handful of hair from the amir’s beard and four of his back teeth, after having slain the greatest of his knights and three times kissed his daughter Esclarmonde. By the help of the fairy dwarf Oberon, Huon succeeds in this errand, in the course of which he meets with further adventures. The Charlot of the story has been identified by A. Longnon (Romania viii. 1-11) with Charles l’Enfant, one of the sons of Charles the Bald and Irmintrude, who died in 866 in consequence of wounds inflicted by a certain Aubouin in precisely similar circumstances to those related in the romance. The epic father of Huon may safely be identified with Seguin, who was count of Bordeaux under Louis the Pious in 839, and died fighting against the Normans six years later. A Turin manuscript of the romance contains a prologue in the shape of a separate romance of Auberon, and four sequels, the Chanson d’Esclarmonde, the Chanson de Clarisse et Florent, the Chanson d’Ide et d’Olive and the Chanson de Godin. The same MS. contains in the romance of Les Lorrains a summary in seventeen lines of another version of the story, according to which Huon’s exile is due to his having slain a count in the emperor’s palace. The poem exists in a later version in alexandrines, and, with its continuations, was put into prose in 1454 and printed by Michel le Noir in 1516, since when it has appeared in many forms, notably in a beautifully printed and illustrated adaptation (1898) in modern French by Gaston Paris. The romance had a great vogue in England through the translation (c. 1540) of John Bourchier, Lord Berners, as Huon of Burdeuxe. The tale was dramatized and produced in Paris by the Confrérie de la Passion in 1557, and in Philip Henslowe’s diary there is a note of a performance of a play, Hewen of Burdoche, on the 28th of December 1593. For the literary fortune of the fairy part of the romance see Oberon.
The Chanson de geste of Huon de Bordeaux was edited by MM F. Guessard and C. Grandmaison for the Anciens poètes de la France in 1860; Lord Berners’s translation was edited for the E.E.T.S. by S. L. Lee in 1883–1885. See also L. Gautier, Les Épopées françaises (2nd ed. vol. iii. pp. 719–773); A. Graf, I complementi della Chanson de Huon de Bordeaux (Halle, 1878); “Esclarmonde, &c.,” by Max Schweigel, in Ausg. u. Abhandl. . . .der roman. phil. (Marburg, 1889); C. Voretzsch, Epische Studien (vol. i., Halle, 1900); Hist. litt. de la France (vol. xxvi., 1873).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hurdy-Gurdy

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​HURDY-GURDY (Fr. vielle à manivelle, symphonie or chyfonie à roue; Ger. Bauernleier, Deutscheleier, Bettlerleier, Radleier; Ital. lira tedesca, lira rustica, lira pagana), now loosely used as a synonym for any grinding organ, but strictly a medieval drone instrument with strings set in vibration by the friction. of a wheel, being a development of the organistrum (q.v.) reduced in size so that it could be conveniently played by one person instead of two. It consisted of a box or soundchest, sometimes rectangular, but more generally having the outline of the guitar; inside it had a wheel, covered with leather and rosined, and worked by means of a crank at the tail end of the instrument. On the fingerboard were placed movable frets or keys, which, on being depressed, stopped the strings, at points corresponding to the diatonic intervals of the scale. At first there were 4 strings, later 6. In the organistrum three strings, acted on simultaneously by the keys, produced the rude harmony known as organum. When this passed out of favour, superseded by the first beginnings of polyphony over a pedal bass, the organistrum gave place to the hurdy-gurdy. Instead of acting on all the strings, the keys now affected the first string only, or “chanterelle,” though in some cases certain keys, made longer, also reached the third string or “trompette”; the result was that a diatonic melody could be played on the chanterelles. The other open strings always sounded simultaneously as long as the wheel was turned, like drones on the bag-pipe.
The hurdy-gurdy originated in France at the time when the Paris School or Old French School was laying the foundations of counterpoint and polyphony. During the 13th and 14th centuries it was known by the name of Symphonia or Chyfonie, and in Germany Lira or Leyer. Its popularity remained undiminished in France until late in the 18th century. Although the hurdy-gurdy never obtained recognition among serious musicians in Germany, the idea embodied in the mechanism stimulated ​ingenuity, the result being such musical curiosities as the Geigenwerk or Geigen-Clavicymbel of Hans Hayden of Nuremberg (c. 1600), a harpsichord in which the strings, instead of being plucked by quills, were set in vibration by friction of one of the little steel wheels, covered with parchment and well rosined, which were kept rotating by means of a large wheel and a series of cylinders worked by treadles. Other instruments of similar type were the Bogenclavier invented by Joh. Hohlfeld of Berlin in 1751 and the Bogenflügel by C. A. Meyer of Görlitz in 1794. In Adam Walker’s Celestina (1772) the friction was provided by a running band instead of a bow. (K. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hurlstone, Frederick Yeates

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​HURLSTONE, FREDERICK YEATES (1800–1869), English painter, was born in London, his father being a proprietor of the Morning Chronicle. His grand-uncle, Richard Hurlstone, had been a well-known portrait-painter a generation earlier. F. Y. Hurlstone studied under Sir W. Beechey, Sir T. Lawrence and B. R. Haydon, and in 1820 became a student at the Royal Academy, where he soon began to exhibit. In 1823 he won the Academy’s gold medal for historical painting. In 1831 he was elected to the Society of British Artists, of which in 1835 he became president; it was to their exhibitions that he sent most of his pictures, as he became a pronounced critic of the management of the Academy. He died in London on the 10th of June 1869. His historical paintings and portraits were very numerous. Some of the most representative are “A Venetian Page” (1824), “The Enchantress Armida” (1831), “Eros” (1836), “Prisoner of Chillon” (1837), “Girl of Sorrento” (1847), “Boabdil” (1854), and his portrait of the 7th earl of Cavan (1833).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Huron (tribes)

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​HURON (a French term, from huré, bristled, early used as an expression of contempt, signifying “lout”), a nickname given by the French when first in Canada to certain Indian tribes of Iroquoian stock, occupying a territory, which similarly was called Huronia, in Ontario, and constituting a confederation called in their own tongue Wendat (“islanders”), which was corrupted by the English into Yendat, Guyandotte and then Wyandot. The name persists for the small section of “Hurons of Lorette,” in Quebec, but the remnant of the old Huron Confederacy which after its dispersal in the 17th century settled in Ohio and was afterwards removed to Oklahoma is generally called Wyandot. For their history see Wyandot, and Indians, North American (under “Indian Wars”; Algonkian and Iroquoian).
See Handbook of American Indians (Washington, 1907), s.v. “Huron.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Huon Pine

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​HUON PINE, botanical name Dacrydium Franklinii, the most valuable timber tree of Tasmania, a member of the order Coniferae (see Gymnosperms). It is a fine tree of pyramidal outline 80 to 100 ft. high, and 10 to 20 ft. in girth at the base, with slender pendulous much-divided branchlets densely covered with the minute scale-like sharply-keeled bright green leaves. It occurs in swampy localities from the upper Huon river to Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour, but is less abundant than formerly owing to the demand for its timber, especially for ship- and boat-building. The wood is close-grained and easily worked.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hurdle

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​HURDLE (O. Eng. hyrdel, cognate with such Teutonic forms as Ger. Hürde, Dutch horde, Eng. “hoarding”; in pre-Teutonic languages the word appears in Gr. κυρτία, wickerwork, κύρτη, Lat. cratis, basket, cf. “crate,” “grate”), a movable temporary fence, formed of a framework of light timber, wattled with smaller pieces of hazel, willow or other pliable wood, or constructed on the plan of a light five-barred field gate, filled in with brushwood. Similar movable frames can be made of iron, wire or other material. A construction of the same type is used in military engineering and fortification as a foundation for a temporary roadway across boggy ground or as a backing for earthworks.