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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/La Taille, Jean de

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​LA TAILLE, JEAN DE (c. 1540–1608), French poet and dramatist, was born at Bondaroy. He studied the humanities in Paris under Muret, and law at Orleans under Anne de Bourg. He began his career as a Huguenot, but afterwards adopted a mild Catholicism. He was wounded at the battle of Arnay-le Duc in 1570, and retired to his estate at Bondaroy, where he wrote a political pamphlet entitled Histoire abrégée des singeries de la ligue, often published with the Satire Ménippée. His chief poem is a satire on the follies of court life, Le Courtisan retiré; he also wrote a political poem, Le Prince nécessaire. But his fame rests on his achievements in drama. In 1572 appeared the tragedy of Saül le furieux, with a preface on L’ Art de la tragédie. Like Jodelle, Grévin, La Péruse and their followers, he wrote, not for the general public to which the mysteries and farces had addressed themselves, but for the limited audience of a lettered aristocracy. He therefore depreciated the native drama and insisted on the Senecan model. In his preface La Taille enunciates the unities of place, time and action; he maintains that each act should have a unity of its own and that the scenes composing it should be continuous; he objects to deaths on the stage on the ground that the representation is unconvincing, and he requires as subject of the tragedy an incident really terrible, developed, if possible, by elaborate intrigue. He criticizes e.g. the subject of the sacrifice of Abraham, chosen by Théodore de Bèze for his tragedy (1551), as unsuitable because “pity and terror” are evoked from the spectators without real cause. If in Saül le furieux he did not completely carry out his own convictions he developed his principal character with great ability. A second tragedy, La Famine ou les Gabéonites (1573), is inferior in construction, but is redeemed by the character of Rizpah. He was also the author of two comedies, Le Négromant and Les Corrivaux, both written apparently by 1562 but not published until 1573. Les Corrivaux is remarkable for its colloquial prose dialogue, which foreshadows the excellence of later French comedy.
His brother, Jacques de la Taille (1542–1562), composed a number of tragedies, of which La Mort de Daire and La Mort d’Alexandre (both published in 1573) are the chief. He is best known by his Manière de faire des vers en français comme en grec et en latin, an attempt to regulate French verse by quantity. He died of plague at the age of 20. His Poésies diverses were published in 1572.
The works of Jean de la Taille were edited by René de Maulde (4 vols., 1878–1882). See also É. Faguet, La Tragédie française au XVI $^e$ siècle (1883).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/La Trémoille

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​LA TRÉMOILLE, an old French family which derives its name from a village (the modern La Trimouille) in the department of Vienne. The family has been known since the middle of the 11th century, and since the 14th century its members have been conspicuous in French history. Guy, sire de la Trémoille, standard-bearer of France, was taken prisoner at the battle of Nicopolis (1396), and Georges, the favourite of King Charles VII., was captured at Agincourt (1415). Louis (2), called the chevalier sans reproche, defeated and captured the duke of Orleans at the battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier (1488), distinguished himself in the wars in Italy, and was killed at Pavia (1525). In 1521 François (2) acquired a claim on the kingdom of Naples by his marriage with Anne de Laval, daughter of Charlotte of Aragon. Louis (3) became duke of Thouars in 1563, and his son Claude turned Protestant, was created a peer of France in 1595, and married a daughter of William the Silent in 1598. To this family belonged the lines of the counts of Joigny, the marquises of Royan and counts of Olonne, and the marquises and dukes of Noirmoutier.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/La Tène

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​LA TÈNE (Lat. tenuis, shallow), the site of a lake-dwelling at the north end of Lake Neuchâtel, between Marin and Préfargier. According to some, it was originally a Helvetic oppidum; according to others, a Gallic commercial settlement. R. Forrer distinguishes an older semi-military, and a younger ​civilian settlement, the former a Gallic customs station, the latter, which may be compared to the canabae of the Roman camps, containing the booths and taverns used by soldiers and sailors. He also considers the older station to have been, not as usually supposed, Helvetic, but pre- or proto-Helvetic, the character of which changed with the advance of the Helvetii into Switzerland (c. 110–100 B.C.). La Tène has given its name to a period of culture (c. 500 B.C.–A.D. 100), the phase of the Iron age succeeding the Hallstatt phase, not as being its starting-point, but because the finds are the best known of their kind. The latter are divided into early (c. 500–250 B.C.), middle (250–100 B.C.) and late (100 B.C.–A.D. 100), and chiefly belong to the middle period. They are mostly of iron, and consist of swords, spear-heads, axes, scythes and knives, which exhibit a remarkable agreement with the description of the weapons of the southern Celts given by Diodorus Siculus. There are also brooches, bronze kettles, torques, small bronze ear-rings with little glass pearls of various colours, belt-hooks and pins for fastening articles of clothing. The La Tène culture made its way through France across to England, where it has received the name of “late Celtic”; a remarkable find has been made at Aylesford in Kent.
See F. Keller, Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, vi. (Eng. trans., 1878); V. Gross, La Tène un oppidum helvète (1886); E. Vouga, Les Helvètes à La Tène (1886); P. Reinecke, Zur Kenntnis der la Tène Denkmäler der Zone nordwärts der Alpen (Mainzer Festschrift, 1902); R. Forrer, Reallexikon der prähistorischen . . . Altertümer (1907), where many illustrations are given.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/La Sablière, Marguerite de

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​LA SABLIÈRE, MARGUERITE DE (c. 1640–1693), friend and patron of La Fontaine, was the wife of Antoine Rambouillet, sieur de la Sablière (1624–1679), a Protestant financier entrusted with the administration of the royal estates, her maiden name being Marguerite Hessein. She received an excellent education in Latin, mathematics, physics and anatomy from the best scholars of her time, and her house became a meeting-place for poets, scientists and men of letters, no less than for brilliant members of the court of Louis XIV. About 1673 Mme de la Sablière received into her house La Fontaine, whom for twenty years she relieved of every kind of material anxiety. Another friend and inmate of the house was the traveller and physician François Bernier, whose abridgment of the works of Gassendi was written for Mme de la Sablière. The abbé Chaulieu and ​his fellow-poet, Charles Auguste, marquis de La Fare, were among her most intimate associates. La Fare sold his commission in the army to be able to spend his time with her. This liaison, which seems to have been the only serious passion of her life, was broken in 1679. La Fare was seduced from his allegiance, according to Mme de Sévigné by his love of play, but to this must be added a new passion for the actress La Champmeslé. Mme de la Sablière thenceforward gave more and more attention to good works, much of her time being spent in the hospital for incurables. Her husband’s death in the same year increased her serious tendencies, and she was presently converted to Roman Catholicism. She died in Paris on the 8th of January 1693.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Longwy

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​LONGWY, a fortified town of north-eastern France in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, 89 m. N.N.W of Nancy by rail. Pop. (1906) 8523. Longwy is situated on a plateau overlooking the Chiers, a right-bank affluent of the Meuse, near the frontiers of Belgium and Luxemburg. It comprises an upper and a lower town; the former, on a hill, 390 ft. above the Chiers valley, commands the Luxemburg road, and is strengthened by an enceinte and a few out-lying fortifications. There is garrison accommodation for 5000 men and 800 horses, but the permanent garrison is small. The lower town is the industrial centre. The 17th-century church has a lofty square tower, the hôtel de ville dates from 1730, and there is a fine hospital. Iron is extensively mined in the district, and supplies numerous blast furnaces. Several iron and steel works are in operation, and metal utensils, fire-proof ware and porcelain are manufactured. Longwy (Longus vicus) came into the possession of the French in 1678 and was at once fortified by Vauban. It was captured by the Prussians in 1792, 1815 and 1871.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Longton

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​LONGTON, a market-town of Staffordshire, England, on the North Staffordshire railway, 21/2 m. S.E. of Stoke-on-Trent, within which parliamentary and municipal borough it is included. Pop. (1901) 35,815. The town is in the Potteries district, and in the neighbourhood of coal and iron mines. It was governed by a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors until under the “Potteries Federation” scheme (1908) it became part of the borough of Stoke-on-Trent in 1910.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Longus

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​LONGUS, Greek sophist and romancer, author of Daphnis and Chloë. Nothing is known of his life, and all that can be said is that he probably lived at the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. It has been suggested that the name Longus is merely a misreading of the last word of the title Λεσβιακῶν ἐρωτικῶν λόγοι δ´ in the Florentine MS.; Seiler also observes that the best MS. begins and ends with λόγου (not λόγγου) ποιμενικῶν. If his name was really Longus, he was probably a freedman of some Roman family which bore it. Longus’s style is rhetorical, his shepherds and shepherdesses are wholly conventional, but he has imparted human interest to a purely fanciful picture. As an analysis of feeling, Daphnis and Chloë makes a nearer approach to the modern novel than its chief rival among Greek erotic romances, the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, which is remarkable mainly for the ingenious succession of incidents. Daphnis and Chloë, two children found by shepherds, grow up together, nourishing a mutual love which neither suspects. The development of this simple passion forms the chief interest, and there are few incidents. Chloë is carried off by a pirate, and ultimately regains her family. Rivals alarm the peace of mind of Daphnis; but the two lovers are recognized by their parents, and return to a happy married life in the country. Daphnis and Chloë was the model of La Sireine of Honoré d’Urfé, the Diana enamorada of ​Montemayor, the Aminta of Tasso, and The Gentle Shepherd of Allan Ramsay. The celebrated Paul et Virginie is an echo of the same story.
See J. Dunlop’s History of Prose Fiction (1888), and especially E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman (1900). Longus found an incomparable translator in Jacques Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, whose French version, as revised by Paul Louis Courier, is better known than the original. It appeared in 1559, thirty-nine years before the publication of the Greek text at Florence by Columbani. The chief subsequent editions are those by G. Jungermann (1605), J. B. de Villoison (1778, the first standard text with commentary), A. Coraes (Coray) (1802), P. L. Courier (1810, with a newly discovered passage), E. Seiler (1835), R. Hercher (1858), N. Piccolos (Paris, 1866) and Kiefer (Leipzig, 1904), W. D. Lowe (Cambridge, 1908). A. J. Pons’s edition (1878) of Courier’s version contains an exhaustive bibliography. There are English translations by G. Thorneley (1733, reprinted 1893), C. V. Le Grice (1803), R. Smith (in Bohn’s Classical Library), and the rare Elizabethan version by Angel Day from Amyot’s translation (ed. J. Jacobs in Tudor Library, 1890). The illustrated editions, generally of Amyot’s version, are numerous and some are beautiful, Prudhon’s designs being especially celebrated.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lons-le-Saunier

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​LONS-LE-SAUNIER, a town of eastern France, capital of the department of Jura, 76 m. N.N.E. of Lyons on the Paris-Lyons railway, on which it is a junction for Chalon-sur-Saône, Dôle, Besançon and Champagnole. Pop. (1906) 10,648. The town is built on both sides of the river Vallière and is surrounded by the vine-clad hills of the western Jura. It owes its name to the salt mines of Montmorot, its western suburb, which have been used from a very remote period. The church of St Désiré, a building of the 12th and 15th centuries, preserves a huge Romanesque crypt. The town is the seat of a prefect and of a court of assizes, and there are tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, lycées and training-colleges for both sexes, and a branch of the Bank of France. There is an establishment for the use of the mineral waters, which are sodio-chlorinated and have strengthening properties. The principal industry of the place is the manufacture of sparkling wines, the Étoile growth being the best for this purpose. Trade is in cheese, cereals, horses, cattle, wood, &c.
Lons-le-Saunier, known as Ledo in the time of the Gauls, was fortified by the Romans, who added the surname Salinarius to the Gallic name. An object of contention owing to the value of its salt, it belonged for a long time during the medieval period to the powerful house of Chalon, a younger branch of that of Burgundy. It was burned in 1364 by the English, and again in 1637, when it was seized by the duke of Longueville for Louis XIII. It became definitively French in 1674. It was here that the meeting between Ney and Napoleon took place, on the return of the latter from Elba in 1815. Rouget de l’Isle, the author of the Marseillaise, was born at Montaigu near this town, where there is a statue erected to him.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Longueville

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​LONGUEVILLE, the name of a French family which originated with Jean, count of Dunois, the “Bastard of Orleans,” to whom Charles VII. gave the countship of Longueville in Normandy in 1443. François of Orleans, count of Longueville, was created duke in 1505. The marriage of his brother Louis with Jeanne, daughter and heiress of Philip, count of Baden-Hochberg-Sausenberg (d. 1503), added considerable estates to the house of Longueville. Henry, duc de Longueville (d. 1663), took an important part in the Fronde, and for a long time held the royal troops in check in Normandy. His wife, Anne Geneviève (see below), was a leading figure in the political dissensions of the time. The last of the family was Jean Louis, the Abbé d’Orléans, who died in 1694. The numismatist, Charles d’Orléans-Rothelin (1691–1744), belonged to a bastard branch of the family.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Testaments of the Three Patriarchs

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​TESTAMENTS OF THE THREE PATRIARCHS. This apocryphal work of the Hebrew Scriptures was first published by M. R. James (The Testament of Abraham, the Greek Text now first edited with an Introduction and Notes. With an appendix containing extracts from the Arabic Version of the Testaments of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by Barnes, Texts and Studies, ii. 2: Cambridge). The Greek testament of Abraham is preserved in two recensions from six and three MSS. respectively. This testament is also edited by Vassiliev in his Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina, 1893, i. 292–308 from a Vienna MS. already used by James. According to James, it was written in Egypt in the 2nd century A.D., and was translated subsequently into Slavonic (Tichonrawow, Pamjatniki otretschennoi russkoi Literaturi, 1863, i. 79–90), Rumanian (Gaster, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1887, ix. 195–226), Ethiopic and Arabic.
This testament deals with Abraham’s reluctance to die and the means by which his death was brought about. As regards its origin James writes (op. cit., p. 5 5); “The Testament was originally put together in the second century by a Jewish Christian: for the narrative portions he employed existing jewish legends, and for the apocalyptic, he drew largely on his imagination.” He holds that the book is referred to by Origen, Hom. in Luc. xxxv. With the exception of x.–xi. the work is really a legend and not an apocalypse.
To the above conclusions Schürer, Gesch. des jüd. Volkes, 3rd ed., iii. 252, takes objection. He denies the reference in Origen, and asserts that there are no grounds for the assumption of a partial Jewish origin. But the present writer cannot agree with Schürer in these criticisms, but is convinced that a large body of Jewish tradition lies behind the book. Indeed, Kohler (Jewish Quarterly Review, 1895, v. 581-606) has given adequate grounds for regarding this apocryph as in the main an independent work of Jewish origin subsequently enlarged by a few Christian additions.
An English translation of James’s texts will be found in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Clark, 1897), pp. 185-201. The testaments of Isaac and Jacob are in part still preserved in Arabic and Ethiopic (see James, op. cit., 140-161).  (R. H. C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Testamur

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​TESTAMUR, Latin for "we testify ” or “certify ” (testari). The name given in English universities to a certificate given to a student signifying that he has passed an examination, so called from the word with which the certificate begins.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Teschen

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​TESCHEN (Czech, Těšin; Polish, Cieszyn), a town of Austria, in Silesia, 50 m. S.E. of Troppau by rail. Pop. (1900) 19,142, of which over half is German, 43 per cent. Polish and the remainder Czech. It is situated on the Olsa, a tributary of the Oder, and combines both Polish and German peculiarities in the style of its buildings. The only relic of the ancient castle is a square tower, dating from the 12th century. There are several furniture factories and large saw-mills.
Teschen is an old town and was the capital of the duchy of Teschen. It was at Teschen that Maria Theresa and Frederick II. signed, in May 1779, the Peace, which put an end to the war of Bavarian succession. The duchy of Teschen belonged to the dukes of Upper Silesia, and since 1298 it stood under the suzerainty of Bohemia. It became a direct apanage of the Bohemian crown in 1625 at the extinction of the male line of its dukes, and since 1766 it bore the name of Saxe-Teschen, owing to the fact that Prince Albert of Saxony, who married a daughter of Maria Theresa, received it as part of his wife’s dowry. In 1822, it was bestowed on the Archduke Charles, the victor of Aspern; it was inherited by his eldest son, and, at his death, in 1895 it passed into the hands of his nephew, the Archduke Frederick.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tessellated

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​TESSELLATED (Lat. tessellatus,), formed of tessellate, or small tessellae, cubes from half an inch to an inch square like dice, of pottery, stone, marble, enamel, &c. (See Pavement and Mosaic.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tervueren

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​TERVUEREN, a small town of Belgium in the province of Brabant, midway between Brussels and Louvain. Pop. (1904) 4017. It contained an ancient abbey and a hunting château belonging to the dukes of Brabant. The fine park of Tervueren is really part of the forest of Soignies. The Colonial Museum and World’s Colonial School are established here, and Tervueren is connected with Brussels by a fine broad avenue, traversed by an electric tramway as well as by carriage and other roads, and between 6 and 7 m. in length.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Transom

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​Transom (probably a corruption of Lat. transtrum, athwart, in a boat; equivalents are Fr. traverse, croisillon, Ger. Losholz), the architectural term given to the horizontal lintel or beam which is framed across a window, dividing it into stages or heights. In early Gothic ecclesiastical work transoms are only found in belfry unglazed windows or spire lights, where they were deemed necessary to strengthen the mullions in the absence of the iron stay bars, which in glazed windows served a similar purpose. In domestic work, on account of the opening casements, they are more frequently found. In the later Gothic, and more especially the Perpendicular period, the introduction of transoms became very general in windows of all kinds.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Transverse Rib

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​Transverse Rib (Fr. arc doubleau), the term in architecture given to the rib of a vault which is carried across the nave, dividing the same into bays. Although as a rule it was sunk in the barrel vault of the Thermae, it is found occasionally below it, as in the Piscina at Baiae and the so-called Baths of Diana (Nymphaeum) at Nîmes. In the Romanesque and Gothic styles it becomes the principal feature of the vault, so much so that Scott termed it the master rib (see Vault).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Trap-ball

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​ TRAP-BALL, or Knur and Spell (M. Eng. knurre, knot; Dan. spil, spindle), an old English game, which can be traced back to the beginning of the 14th century, and was commonly played in northern England as late as 1825, but has since been practically confined to children (bat, trap and ball). It was played with a wooden trap, by means of which a ball (knur) of hard wood about the size of a walnut was thrown into the air, where it was struck by the player with the “trip-stick,” a bat consisting of two parts: the stick, which was of ash or lancewood and about 4 ft. long, and the pommel, a piece of very hard wood about 6 in. long, 4 in. wide and 1 in. thick. This was swung in both hands, although shorter bats for one hand were sometimes used. Originally the ball was thrown into the air by striking a lever upon which it rested in the trap; but in the later development of the game, usually called knur and spell, a spell or trap furnished with a spring was used, thus ensuring regularity in the height to which the knur was tossed. The object of the game was to strike the knur the greatest possible distance, either in one or a series of strokes.