OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sederunt, Act of

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​SEDERUNT, ACT OF, in Scots law, an ordinance for regulating the forms of judicial procedure before the Court of Session, passed by the judges under authority of a power originally conferred by an act of the Scottish parliament, 1540, c. 93. A quorum of nine judges is required to pass an act of Sederunt.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedgwick, John

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​SEDGWICK, JOHN (1813–1864), American general, was born at Cornwall, Connecticut, on the 13th of September 1813, and graduated at West Point in 1837. Amongst his classmates were Joseph Hooker, Braxton Bragg and J. A. Early. He saw active service against the Seminoles in Florida, and took part as an artillery officer in the Mexican War, winning the brevets of captain and major for his conduct at Contreras-Churubusco and Chapultepec. In command first of a brigade and later of a. division in the Army of the Potomac, he took part in the Seven Days' and Maryland campaigns. At the battle of Antietam he was twice wounded, but remained on the field. Soon afterwards he was given command of the VI. corps, in which position he took an important part in the battle of Chancellorsville, capturing the famous lines of Fredericksburg and fighting the severe battle of Bank's Ford. The VI. corps bore a share in the battle of Gettysburg, having made a fine forced march to the field. Sedgwick had been offered the chief command of the army upon Hooker's resignation; but he declined, and retained his command of the VI. corps during the Virginian campaign of the autumn of 1863, being on several occasions placed by Meade in charge of a wing of the army. He was also given the command of the whole army in Meade's absence. At the action of Rappahannock station Sedgwick by a brilliant night attack destroyed two brigades of Early's division (November 7th). When Grant became commanding-general and the Army of the Potomac was reorganized in three corps, the VI. was one of these, and Sedgwick thus led his old corps, now greatly augmented, at the battle of the Wilderness. At the opening of the battle of Spottsylvania Court House, Sedgwick was killed (9th of May 1864) by a shot from a Confederate skirmisher. A monument to his memory, cast from the guns taken in action by the VI. corps, was erected at West Point in 1868.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lotti, Antonio

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​LOTTI, ANTONIO (1667?–1740), Italian musical composer, was the son of Matteo Lotti, Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover. He was born, however, at Venice and as a pupil of Legrenzi. He entered the Doge’s chapel as a boy, and in 1689 was engaged as an alto singer, succeeding later to the posts of deputy organist (1690), second organist (1692), first organist (1704), and, finally, in 1736 Maestro di Cappella at St Mark’s church. He was also a composer of operas, and having attracted the interest of the crown prince of Saxony during his visit to Venice in 1712, he was invited to Dresden, where he went in 1717. After producing three operas there he was obliged to return to his duties at Venice in 1719. He died on the 5th of January 1740. Like many other Venetian composers he wrote operas for Vienna, and enjoyed a considerable reputation outside Italy. A volume of madrigals published in 1705 contains the famous In una siepe ombrosa, passed off by Bononcini as his own in London. Another is quoted by Martini in his Saggio di Contrappunto. Among his pupils were Alberti, Bassani, Galuppi, Gasparini and Marcello. Burney justly praises his church music, which is severe in style, but none the less modern in its grace and pathos. A fine setting of the Dies Irae is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and some of his masses have been printed in the collections of Proske and Lück.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Loudun

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​LOUDUN, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Vienne, on an eminence overlooking a fertile plain, 45 m. by rail S.W. of Tours. Pop. (1906) 3931. It was formerly surrounded by walls, of which a single gateway and two towers remain. Of the old castle of the counts of Anjou which was destroyed under Richelieu, the site now forming a public promenade, a fine rectangular donjon of the 12th century is preserved; at its base traces of Roman constructions have been found, with fragments of porphyry pavement, mosaics and mural paintings. The Carmelite convent was the scene of the trial of Urban Grandier, who was burnt alive for witchcraft in 1634; the old Romanesque church of Sainte Croix, of which he was curé, is now used as a market. The church of St Pierre-du-Marché, Gothic in style with a Renaissance portal, has a lofty stone spire. There are several curious old houses in the town. ​Théophraste Renaudot (d. 1653), founder of the Gazette de France, was born at Loudun, where there is a statue of him. The manufacture of lace and upholstery trimming and of farm implements is carried on, and there is a considerable trade in agricultural products, wine, &c. Loudun (Laudunum in ancient times) was a town of importance during the religious wars and gave its name in 1616 to a treaty favourable to the Protestants.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lotto

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​LOTTO (Ital. for “lot”), a gambling game usually called Keno in America, played by any number of persons upon large boards or cards, each of which is divided into three horizontal rows of nine spaces, four spaces in each row being left blank and the other five marked with numbers up to 90. Each card is designated by a general number. The cards usually lie on the gambling-table, and a player may buy from the bank as many as he cares to use, each card being registered or pegged on an exposed table as soon as bought. Ninety small ivory markers, generally balls flattened on one side, numbered from 1 to 90, are placed in a bag and shaken out one by one, or, more usually, in a so-called keno-goose, a kind of urn with a spout through which the balls are allowed to roll by means of a spring. When a number falls out, the banker, or keno-roller, calls it out distinctly, and each player upon whose card that number occurs places a mark over it. This is repeated until one player has all the numbers in one row of his card covered, upon which he calls out “Keno !” and wins all the money staked excepting a percentage to the bank.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lotus

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​LOTUS, a popular name applied to several plants. The lotus fruits of the Greeks belonged to Zizyphus Lotus, a bush native ​in south Europe with fruits as large as sloes, containing a mealy substance which can be used for making bread and also a fermented drink. In ancient times the fruits were an important article of food among the poor; whence “lotophagi” or lotus-eaters. Zizyphus is a member of the natural order Rhamnaceae to which belongs the British buckthorn. The Egyptian lotus was a water-lily, Nymphaea Lotus; as also is the sacred lotus of the Hindus, Nelumbium speciosum. The lotus tree, known to the Romans as the Libyan lotus, and planted by them for shade, was probably Celtis australis, the nettle-tree (q.v.), a southern European tree, a native of the elm family, with fruits like small cherries, which are first red and then black. Lotus of botanists is a genus of the pea-family (Leguminosae), containing a large number of species of herbs and undershrubs widely distributed in the temperate regions of the old world. It is represented in Britain by L. corniculatus, bird’s foot trefoil, a low-growing herb, common in pastures and waste places, with clusters of small bright yellow pea-like flowers, which are often streaked with crimson; the popular name is derived from the pods which when ripe spread like the toes of a bird’s foot.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lotus-Eaters

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​LOTUS-EATERS (Gr. Λωτοφάγοι), a Libyan tribe known to the Greeks as early as the time of Homer. Herodotus (iv. 177) describes their country as in the Libyan district bordering on the Syrtes, and says that a caravan route led from it to Egypt. Victor Bérard identifies it with the modern Jerba. When Odysseus reached the country of the Lotophagi, many of his sailors after eating the lotus lost all wish to return home. Both Greeks and Romans used the expression “to eat the lotus” to denote forgetfulness (cf. Tennyson’s poem “The Lotus-Eaters”).
There has been considerable discussion as to the identification of the Homeric lotus. Some have held that it is a prickly shrub, Zizyphus Lotus, which bears a sweet-tasting fruit, and still grows in the old home of the Lotophagi. It is eaten by the natives, who also make a kind of wine from the juice. P. Champault (Phéniciens et Grecs en Italie d’après l’Odyssée, p. 400, note 2), however, maintains that the lotus was a date; Victor Bérard (Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée, 1902–1903, ii. 102) is doubtful, but contends that it was certainly a tree-fruit. If either of these be correct, then the lotus of Od. iv. 603–604 is quite a different plant, a kind of clover. Now Strabo (xvii. 829a) calls the lotus πόαν τινὰ καὶ ῥίζαν. Putting these two references together with Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi i. 4. 4, R. M. Henry suggests that the Homeric lotus was really the πόα of Strabo, i.e. a kind of clover (Classical Review, December 1906, p. 435).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Utrecht (Natal)

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​Utrecht, a town of northern Natal, 30 m. by rail E. by N. of Newcastle. Pop. (1904) 1315. It is the chief place in a district of the same name, originally settled in 1848 by emigrant Boers from Natal. They formed an independent community and in 1854 obtained, in exchange for a hundred head of cattle, formal cession of the territory from Panda, the Zulu king. In 1858 the district was united with the republic of Lydenburg, and in 1860, with Lydenburg, became part of the South African Republic. In 1903 it was, with the neighbouring district of Vryheid, annexed to Natal. The town of Utrecht is built in a hollow among the foothills of the Drakensberg. In the neighbourhood are extensive coal-fields.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Utamaro

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​UTAMARO (1754-1806), one of the best known of the Japanese designers of colour-prints, was born at Kawayoye. His father was a well-known painter of the Kanō School, Toriyama Sekiyen (Toyofusa), a pupil of Kanō Chikanobu; and Utamaro traced his descent from the old feudal clans of the Minamoto, whose war with the Taira family belongs to the romantic period of Japanese history. Utamaro's personal name was Yusuke; and he first worked under the signature Toriyama Toyo-aki; but after a quarrel with his father substituted the name Kitagawa for the former appellation. His distinct style was the outcome of that of his father, tempered with the characteristics of the Kanō school. As a painter, his landscapes and drawings of insects are most highly considered by Japanese critics; but his fame will always rest among Europeans on his designs for colour-prints, the subjects of which are almost entirely women—professional beauties and the like. These were done for the most part while he lived, in a sort of bondage, in the house of a publisher, Tsutaya Shigesaburo. His talents were wasted by an unbroken career of dissipation, culminating in a term of imprisonment for a pictorial libel on the shogun Iyenari, in 1804. From this he never recovered, and died on the third day of the fifth month, 1806. The colour-prints of Utamaro are distinguished by an extreme grace of line and of colour. His composition is superb; and even in his lifetime he achieved such popularity among his contemporaries as to gain the title Ukiyo-ye Chūkō-no-so, “great master of the Popular School.” His work has a considerable reputation with the Dutch who visited Nagasaki, and was imported into Europe before the end of the 18th century. His book illustrations are also of great beauty. Three portraits of him are known: two colour-prints by himself, and one painting by Chobunsai Yeishi (in the collection of Mr Arthur Morrison). His prints were frequently copied by his contemporaries, especially by the first Toyokuni and by Shunsen; and many of those bearing his name are really the work of Koikawa Harumachi, who had been a fellow-student, and afterwards married his widow. That artist is known by the name of Utamaro II. Most of these imitations were made between 1808 and 1820. Utamaro II., who afterwards changed his name to Kitagawa Tetsugorō, died between 1830 and 1843.
See E. de Goncourt, Outamaro (1891); E. F. Strange, Japanese Illustration (1897); and Japanese Colour-Prints (Victoria and Albert Museum Handbook, 1904).
(E. F. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Utopia

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​Utopia, an ideal commonwealth, or an imaginary country whose inhabitants are supposed to exist under the most perfect conditions possible. Hence the terms Utopia and Utopian are also used to denote any visionary scheme of reform or social theory, especially those which fail to recognize defects inherent in human nature. The word first occurs in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, which was originally published in Latin under the title De Optima Reipublicae Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia (Louvain, 1516). It was compounded by More (q.v.) from the Greek οὐ, not, and τόπος, a place, meaning therefore a place which has no real existence, an imaginary country.
The idea of a Utopia is, even in literature, far older than More’s romance; it appears in the Timaeus of Plato and is fully developed in his Republic. The idealized description of Sparta in Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus belongs to the same class of literary Utopias, though it professes to be historical. A similar idea also occurs in legends of world-wide currency, the best known of these being the Greek, and the medieval Norse, Celtic and Arab legends which describe an earthly Paradise in the Western or Atlantic Ocean (see Atlantis). Few of these survived after the exploration of the Atlantic by Columbus, Vasco da Gama and others in the 15th century; but in literature More’s Utopia set a new fashion. An ideal state of society is described in the writings of Hobbes, Sir Robert Filmer and J. J. Rousseau. In Bacon’s New Atlantis (1624–29) science is the key to universal happiness; Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis (1623) portrays a communistic society, and is largely inspired by the Republic of Plato; James Harrington’s Oceana (1656), which had a profound influence upon political thought in America, is a practical treatise rather than a romance, and is founded on the ideas that property, especially in land, is the basis of political power, and that the executive should only be controlled for a short period by the same man or men. Bernard de Mandevil1e’s Fable of the Bees is unique in that it describes the downfall of an ideal commonwealth. Other Utopias are the “Voyage en Salente” in Fénelon’s Télémaque (1699); Etienne Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie (1840); Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871); Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Erewhon Revisited (1901); Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888); William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890); H. G. Wells’s Anticipations (1901), A Modern Utopia (1905) and New Worlds for Old (1908). Many Utopias, such as the Fable of the Bees and Erewhon, are designed to satirize existing social conditions as well as to depict a more perfect civilization. There are separate articles on all the authors mentioned above. A large number of the more recent Utopias have been inspired by socialistic or communistic ideals; among these may be mentioned Freiland, ein soziales Zukunftsbild (1890) and Reise nach Freiland (1893), by the Austrian political economist Theodor Hertzka (b. Budapest, 1845), which portray an imaginary communistic colony in Central Africa.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ute

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​UTE, or Utah, a tribe of North American Indians of Shoshonean stock. They originally ranged over central and western Colorado and north-eastern Utah. They were divided into five sub-tribes, all acknowledging the authority of one chief. They were a wild warlike people, constantly fighting the Plain Indians and raiding as far south as New Mexico. Their relations with the whites have been generally friendly. The outbreak of the White River Band in 1879 is almost the only exception. They are now on reservations in Utah and Colorado, and number over 2000.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Utman Khel

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​UTMAN KHEL, a Pathan tribe who occupy the hills to the north of Peshawar in the North-West Frontier Province of India. Their country lies between the Mohmands and the Ranizais of Swat, to the west and south-west of the junction of the Swat and Panjkora rivers. They claim to be descendants of Baba Utman, who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni in his expedition into India in 997. The Utman Khel are a tall, ​stout and fair race, but in their dress and general customs have assimilated themselves to the neighbouring peoples of Bajour. They have none of the vices of the Yusafzais. Their country is very hilly and difficult, but well cultivated in terraces. They number some 40,000, and their fighting strength is about 8000 men. British expeditions were necessary against them in 1852, 1878 and 1898.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wigtown

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​WIGTOWN, a royal burgh and the county town of Wigtownshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 1329. It is situated on the western ​shore of Wigtown Bay—whence the name, from the Scandinavian vik, “bay”—7 m. S. by E. of Newton Stewart by railway. It is built on an eminence around a spacious central area laid out in walks. The town hall stands at a corner of this square, and at the opposite side are two crosses, one of 1738 and the other commemorating Waterloo. Some fishing is carried on. In the old churchyard were buried Margaret MacLachlan, a widow aged 63, and Margaret Wilson, a girl of 18, two covenanting martyrs who were tied to stakes in the sands of Wigtown Bay and drowned by the rising waters (1685), to whose memory, as well as that of three men who were hanged at the same time without trial, an obelisk surmounted by an urn was erected in 1858 on the top of Windy Hill, outside the town. Wigtown was made a royal burgh in 1469.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wihtred

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​WIHTRED, WIHTRED, king of Kent (d. 725), son of Ecgberht, nephew of Hlothhere and brother of Eadric, came to the Kentish throne in 690 after the period of anarchy which followed the death of the latter king. Bede states that Wihtred and Swefheard were both kings in Kent in 692, and this statement would appear to imply a period of East Saxon influence (see Kent), while there is also evidence of an attack by Wessex. Wihtred, however, seems to have become sole king in 694. At his death, which did not take place until 725, he left the kingdom to his sons Aethelberht, Eadberht and Alric. After the annal 694 in the Chronicle there is inserted a grant of privileges to the church, which purports to have been issued by Wihtred at a place called Baccancelde. This grant, however, cannot be accepted as genuine and ​has merely an illustrative value, but there is still extant a code of laws issued by him in a council held at a place called Berghamstyde (Barham?) during the fifth year of his reign (probably 695).
See Bede, Hist. Eccl., ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Earle and Plummer (Oxford, 1899).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wiggin, Kate Douglas

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​WIGGIN, KATE DOUGLAS (1857–), American novelist, daughter of Robert N. Smith, a lawyer, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 28th of September 1857. She was educated at Abbott Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and removed in 1876 to Los Angeles, California. She taught in Santa Barbara College (1877–1878), established in San Francisco the first free kindergartens for poor children on the western coast (1878), and, with the help of her sister, Miss Nora Archibald Smith, and of Mrs Sarah B. Cooper, organized the California Kindergarten Training School (1880). She married, in 1880, Samuel Bradley Wiggin of San Francisco, who died in 1889. In 1895 she married George Christopher Riggs, but continued to write under the name of Wiggin. Her interest in children’s education was shown in numerous books, some written in collaboration with her sister, in both prose and verse. But her literary reputation rests rather on her works of prose fiction, which show a real gift for depicting character and an original vein of humour. The best known of these are: The Birds' Christmas Carol (1888); Penelope’s English Experiences (1893); Marm Lisa (1896); Penelope’s Progress (1898), being Penelope’s experiences in Scotland; Penelope’s Irish Experiences (1901); The Diary of a Goose-Girl (1902); and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wigglesworth, Michael

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​WIGGLESWORTH, MICHAEL (1631–1705), American clergyman and poet, was born in England, probably in Yorkshire, on the 18th of October 1631. His father, Edward (d. 1653), persecuted for his Puritan faith, emigrated with his family to New England in 1638 and settled in New Haven. Michael studied for a time at a school kept by Ezekiel Cheever, and in 1651 graduated at Harvard, where he was a tutor (and a Fellow) in 1652–1654. Having fitted himself for the ministry, he preached at Charlestown in 1653–1654, and was pastor at Maiden from 1656 until his death, though for twenty years or more bodily infirmities prevented his regular attendance upon his duties—Cotton Mather described him as “a little feeble shadow of a man.” During this interval he studied medicine and began a successful practice. He was again a Fellow of Harvard in 1697–1705. He died at Maiden on the 10th of June 1705. Wigglesworth is best known as the author of The Day of Doom, or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment (1662). At least two English and eight American editions have appeared, notable among them being that of 1867 (New York), edited by W. H. Burr and including other poems of Wigglesworth, a memoir and an autobiography. For a century this realistic and terrible expression of the prevailing Calvinistic theology was by far the most popular work written in America. His other poems include God’s Controversy with New England (written in 1662. “in the time of the great drought,” and first printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1781), and Meat out of the Eater; or Meditations concerning the Necessity, End and Usefulness of Afflictions unto God’s Children (1669; revised in 1703).
His son, Samuel (1689–1768), also a clergyman, was the author of several prose works and of one poem of merit, “A Funeral Song” (1709). Another son, Edward (1693–1765), was the first Hollis professor of Divinity at Harvard (1722–1765), and the author of various theological works; and a grandson, Edward (1732–1794), was the second Hollis professor of Divinity (1765–1791), in which position he was succeeded by Michael Wigglesworth’s great-grandson. Rev. David Tappan (1752–1803).
See J. W. Deane, Memoir of Rev. Michael Wigglesworth (Boston, 1871).