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

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​SOLEMN (Lat. sollemnis, sollennis, less correctly solennis, yearly, annual; from sollus=totus, whole, entire, Gr. ὄλος and annus, year), properly that which occurs annually, hence at stated intervals, regular, established; the term being particularly used of religious rites or ceremonies which recur at stated intervals, hence festive, sacred, marked by religious ceremony or ritual, and so grave, impressive, serious, the most general current usage. Another branch of meaning stresses the formal, customary aspect; and hence in such phrases as " solemn act," probate in " solemn form," it means that which is done with all due forms and ceremonies.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Solder

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​SOLDER (derived through the French from Lat. soldare, to make solidus, firm), an alloy easily melted and used for uniting as by a metallic cement two metal surfaces, joints, edges, &c. (See (Brazing and Soldering.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Soleto

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​SOLETO, a village of Apulia, Italy, in the province of Lecce, from which it is 11 m. S. by rail, situated 299 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901), 3349. The Romanesque church of S. Stefano contains Byzantine frescoes of the 14th century similar to those in the subterranean chapel of the Santi Stefani at Vaste, south of Otranto, and others showing the formation of an independent style. The fine, richly decorated campanile adjoining the former cathedral was erected in 1397.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Solent, The

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​SOLENT, THE, a strait of the English Channel, between the mainland (the coast of Hampshire, England), and the north-western coast of the Isle of Wight, forming the western entrance to Southampton Water, Spithead being the eastern. Its length, from the eastern shore of Southampton Water to the Needles rocks off the western extremity of Wight, is 15 m. The general breadth is from 2½ to 3 m., but between Stone Point on the mainland and Egypt Point on the north coast of Wight it narrows to 1¾ m.; and 3½ m. north of the Needles there springs from the mainland a great shingle bank, mostly only a few yards in breadth above water, but nearly 2 m. in length.
It reduces the breadth of the Solent to a little over ¾ m., and broadens at the end, on which stands Hurst Castle, an important fortification daiing from the time of Henry VIII. Here Charles I. was imprisoned in 1648. The coast of the mainland is low but picturesque, and is broken by the shallow estuaries of the Beaulieu River and the Lym, with the small port of Lymington upon it. The coast of Wight rises more steeply. On this side the Medina estuary opens northward, and those of the Newtown and the Yar north-westward into the strait. At the mouth of Southampton Water is a projecting bar resembling but smaller than that of Hurst Castle, and like it bearing a Tudor fortress, Calshot Castle. The Solent is frequently the scene of yacht races. The configuration of the coast causes a double tide in the strait.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Solesmes

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​SOLESMES, a village of western France on the left bank of the Sarthe in the department of Sarthe, 29 m. W.S.W. of Le Mans by road. In 1010 a priory was founded at Solesmes and placed under the authority of the abbey of La Couture of Le Mans. Suppressed at the revolution, it was established as a Benedictine monastery in 1830. In 1837 it was raised to the rank of abbey and became a centre of learning; the music here was also famous. A nunnery was afterwards founded beside it, but both institutions were abandoned after the passing of the associations law in 1001. The monastery, rebuilt at the end of the 19th century, forms a lofty mass of buildings on the river bank. Its church (13th and 16th centuries) is interesting only for the possession of two masterpieces of sculpture of uncertain authorship, executed approximately between 1490 and 1550. The most striking represents the burial of Christ and is sheltered by a stone structure, the front of which is beautifully carved. An arched opening in this front reveals the central group of eight figures surrounding the tomb, that of Mary Magdalen in the foreground being remarkably lifelike and expressive. The other work similarly enclosed represents the burial of the Virgin and is the later of the two in date and in the pure Renaissance style. Sculptures representing Jesus among the Doctors and other scenes are also in the church.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Solfatara

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​SOLFATARA, a volcanic vent emitting vapours chiefly of sulphurous character, whence the name, from the Italian solfo (sulphur). The typical example is the famous Solfatara, near Puzzuoli, in the Phlegraean Fields, west of Naples. This is an old crater which has not been in active eruption since A.D. 1108, but which is continuously exhaling heated vapours, chiefly hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide and steam. These issue from orifices in the crust, on the walls, of which are yellow incrustations of sublimed sulphur, sometimes orange-red by association with arsenic sulphide, whilst the trachytic rocks of the volcano are bleached and corroded by the effluent vapours, with formation of such products as gypsum and alum. Sal ammoniac occurs among the sublimates. The term solfatara has been extended to all dormant volcanoes of this type; and a volcano which has ceased to emit lava or ashes but still evolves heated vapours, is said to have passed into the “solfataric stage.” Examples are to be found in many volcanic districts. By French geologists the term soufrière is used instead of the Italian solfatara. (See Volcanoes.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Aldegonde, Philips van Marnix, Heer van

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​ST ALDEGONDE, PHILIPS VAN MARNIX, Heer van (1538-1598), Dutch writer and statesman, was born at Brussels, the son of Jacob van Marnix, baron of Pottes. He studied theology under Calvin and Beza at Geneva and, returning to the Netherlands in 1560, threw himself energetically into the cause of the Reformation, taking an active part in the compromise of the nobles in 1565 and the assembly of St Trond. He made himself conspicuous by issuing a pamphlet in justification of the iconoclasts who devastated Flanders in 1566, and on Alva's arrival next year had to fly the country. After spending some time in Friesland and in the Palatinate he was in 1 5 70 taken into the service of William, prince of Orange, and in 1572 was sent as his representative to the first meeting of the States-general assembled at Dordrecht. In 1573 he was taken prisoner by the Spaniards at Maaslandsluys, but was exchanged in the following year. He was sent as the representative of the insurgent provinces to Paris and London, where he in vain attempted to secure the effective assistance of Queen Elizabeth. In 1578 he was at the diet of Worms, where he made an eloquent but fruitless appeal for aid to the German princes. Equally vain were his efforts in the same year to persuade the magistrates of Ghent to cease persecuting the Catholics in the city. He took a. conspicuous part in arranging the Union of Utrecht, and in 1583 was chosen burgomaster of Antwerp. In 1585 he surrendered the city, after a 13 months' siege, to the Spaniards. Violently attacked by the English and by his own countrymen for this act, he retired from public affairs and, save for a mission to Paris in 1 590, lived henceforth in Leiden or on his estate in Zeeland, where he worked at a translation of the Bible. He died at Leiden on the 15th of December 1598.
St Aldegonde, or Marnix (by which name he is very commonly known), is celebrated for his share in the great development of Dutc literature which followed the classical period represented by such writers as the poet and historian Pieter Hooft. Of his works the best known is the Roman Bee-hive (De roamsche byen-korf), published in 1 569 during his exile in Friesland, a bitter satire on the faith and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. This was translated or adapted in French, German and English. As a poet, St Aldegonde is mainly known through his admirable metrical translation of the Psalms (1580), and the celebrated Wilhelmus 'van Nassauwe, one of the two officially recognized national anthems of Holland, is also ascribed to him. His complete works, edited by Lacroix and Quinet, were published at Brussels in 7 vols. (1855-1859), and his religious and theological writings, edited by Van Turenenbergen, at Paris, in 3 vols. (1871-1891).
See E. Quinet, Marnix de St Aldegonde (Paris, 1854); ]uste, Vie de Mamix (The Ha ue, 1858); Frédéricq, Marnix en zzjne nederlandsche gesehmflen (Ghent, 1882); Tjalma, Philips van Marnix, heer van Sin!-Aldegomle (Amsterdam, 1896).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Arnaud

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​ST ARNAUD, a town of Kara-Kara county, Victoria, Australia, 158 m. by rail N.W. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901), 3656. It is a flourishing town with a fine town hall, a school of mines and the court house, in which sittings of the supreme court are held. There are tanneries, chaff and wood yards, and flour- and bone-mills in the town, which lies in a gold-mining, pastoral and agricultural district, the mining being chiefly quartz. To the N.W. is some of the finest agricultural land in the colony.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Austell

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​ST AUSTELL, a market town in the St Austell parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 14 m. N.E. of Truro, on the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3340. It is pleasantly situated on a steep slope 2 m. inland from St Austell bay on the south coast. To the north the high ground culminates at 1034 ft. above the sea in Hensbarrow Downs, so called from a barrow standing at the loftiest point. The church of the Holy Trinity is Perpendicular, with Decorated chancel, richly ornamented in a manner unusual in the county. The town is the centre of a district productive of china clay (kaolin), about 400,000 tons being annually exported by sea to the potteries of Staffordshire and to Lancashire, when it is used in the calico works for sizing. The deposits of clay became important about 1763, and Josiah Wedgwood acquired mines in the neighbourhood. Mines were previously worked for tin and copper, and in some cases after being exhausted of ore continued to be worked for clay. The Carclaze mine to the north-east is notably rich; it is a shallow excavation of great superficial extent, which appears to have been worked from very early times. Close to St Austell is a good example of an ancient baptistery, called Menacuddle Well, the little chapel being Early English.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Aldwyn, Michael Edward Hicks Beach, 1st Viscount

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​ST ALDWYN, MICHAEL EDWARD HICKS BEACH, 1st Viscount (1837-), English statesman, son of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, 8th Bart., whom he succeeded in 1854, was born in London in 1837, and was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated with a first class in the school of law and modern history. In 1864 he was returned to parliament as a Conservative for East Gloucestershire, the county in which his estates of Williamstrip Park were situated; and during 1868 he acted both as parliamentary secretary to the Poor Law Board and as under-secretary for the Home Department. In 1874 he was made chief secretary for Ireland, and was included in the Cabinet in 1877. From 1878 to 1880 he was secretary of state for the colonies. In 1885 he was elected for West Bristol, and the Conservative party having returned to power, became chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. After Mr Gladstone's brief Home Rule Ministry in 1886 he entered Lord Salisbury's next Cabinet again as Irish secretary, making way for Lord Randolph Churchill as leader of the House; but troubles with his eyesight compelled him to resign in 1887, and meanwhile Mr Goschen replaced Lord Randolph as chancellor of the exchequer. From 1888 to 1892 Sir Michael Hicks Beach returned to active work as president of the Board of Trade, and in 189 5-Mr Goschen being transferred to the Admiralty-he again became chancellor of the exchequer. In 1899 he lowered the fixed charge for the National Debt from twenty-five to twenty-three millions-a reduction imperatively required, apart from other reasons, by the difficulties found in redeeming Consols at their then iniiated price. When compelled to find means for financing the war in South Africa, he insisted on combining the raising of loans with the imposition of fresh taxation; and besides raising the income-tax each year, up to rs. 3d. in 1902, he introduced taxes on sugar and exported coal (1901), and in 1902 proposed the re imposition of the registration duty on corn and flour which had been abolished in 1869 by Mr Lowe. The sale of his Netheravon estates in Wiltshire to the War Office in 1898 occasioned some acrid criticism concerning the valuation, for which, however, Sir Michael himself was not responsible. On Lord Salisbury's retirement in 1902 Sir Michael Hicks Beach also left the government. He accepted the chairmanship of the Royal Commission on Ritualistic Practices in the Church, and he did valuable work as an arbitrator; and though when the fiscal controversy arose he became a member of the Free-food League, his parliamentary loyalty to Mr Balfour did much to prevent the Unionist free-traders from precipitating a rupture. When Mr Balfour resigned in 1905 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount St Aldwyn.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Amand-les-Eaux

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​ST AMAND-LES-EAUX, a town of northern France, in the department of Nord, at the junction of the Elnon with the Scarpe, 22 m. S.E. of Lille by rail. Pop. (1906), town, 10,195; commune, 14,454. The town has a communal college and a school of drawing, and carries on iron-founding and the manufacture of porcelain, hosiery, chains and nails, but is better known for its mineral waters and mud baths. There are five springs; the water (67° to 77° F.) contains sulphate of lime and sulphur, and deposits white gelatinous threads without smell or taste. The mud baths are of benefit to patients suffering from rheumatism, gout and certain affections of liver and skin. Though from the discovery of statues and coins in the mud it is evident that these must have been frequented during the Roman period, it was only at the close of the 17th century that they again became of more than local celebrity. Of the abbey there remain ​an entrance pavilion serving as town hall and the richly decorated facade of the church, both dating from the 17th century.
St Amand owes its name to St Amand, bishop of Tongres, who founded a monastery here in the 7th century. The abbey was laid waste by the Normans in 882 and by the count of Hainaut in 1340. The town was captured by Mary of Burgundy in 1477, by the count of Ligne, Charles V.’s lieutenant, in 1521, and finally in 1667 by the French. In 1793 St Amand was the headquarters of General Dumouriez in revolt against the Republican government.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Albans, Henry Jermyn, Earl of

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​ST ALBANS, HENRY JERMYN, Earl of (c. 1604–1684), was the third son of Sir Thomas Iermyn of Rushbroke, Suffolk. At an early age he won the favour of Queen Henrietta Maria, whose vice-chamberlain he became in 1628, and master of the horse in 1639. He was a consummate courtier, a man of dissolute morals, and much addicted to gambling. He was member for Bury St Edmunds in the Long Parliament and an active and reckless royalist. He took a prominent part in the army plot of 1641, and on its discovery iled to France. Returning to England in 1643, he resumed his personal attendance on the queen, and after being raised to the peerage as Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury in that year, he accompanied Henrietta Maria in 1644 to ​France, where he continued to act as her secretary. In the same year he was made governor of Jersey, whence he conducted the prince of Wales to Paris. He conceived the idea of ceding the Channel Islands to France as the price of French aid to Charles against the parliament; and in other respects also he meddled with foreign politics, his great influence with the queen being a continual embarrassment to royalist statesmen, especially after the execution of Charles I. When Charles II. went to Breda, Jermyn remained in Paris with Henrietta Maria, who persuaded her son to create him earl of St Albans in 1660. Gossip which the historian Hallam accepted as authentic, but which is supported by no real evidence, asserted that Jermyn was secretly married to the widow of Charles I. At the Restoration St Albans became lord chamberlain, and received other appointments. He supported the policy of friendship with France, and he contributed largely to the close secret understanding between Charles II. and Louis XIV., being instrumental in arranging the preliminaries of the treaty of Dover in 1669. In 1664 he obtained a grant of land in London near St James’s Palace, where Jermyn Street preserves the memory of his name, and where he built the St Albans’ market on a site afterwards cleared for the construction of Regent Street and Waterloo Place. The earl, who was a friend and patron of Abraham Cowley, died in St James’s Square, for the building of which he had provided the plan in January 1684. St Albans being unmarried, the earldom became extinct at his death, while the barony of Termyn of St Edmundsbury passed by special remainder, together with his property, to his nephew Thomas Jermyn, and after the latter’s death to Thomas’s brother Henry Baron Dover (q.v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Asaph

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​ST ASAPH, a cathedral city and a contributory parliamentary borough of Flintshire, N. Wales, on the Rhyl-Denbigh branch of the London & North-Western railway, about 6 m. from each of these towns. Pop. (1901), 1788. Its Welsh name, Llanelwy, is derived from the Elwy, between which stream and the Clwyd it stands. Asaph, to whom the cathedral (one of the smallest in Great Britain) is dedicated, was bishop here after Kentigern’s return hence to Glasgow, and died in 596. The small, irregularly built town has also a parish church (Anglican), remains of a Perpendicular chapel near Ffynnon Fair (St Mary’s Well), a bishop’s house, a grammar school (1882) and almshouses for eight poor widows, founded in 1678 by Bishop Barrow. The hill on which St Asaph stands is Bryn Paulin, supposed to have been the camping-ground of Suetonius Paulinus, on his way to Anglesey. The early cathedral, of wood, was burned by the English in 1247 and 1282, and that built by Bishop Anian in the 13th century (Decorated) was mostly destroyed during the war of Owen Glendower in 1402; Bishop Redman's building (c. 1480) was completed by the erection of the choir about 1770. During the Civil War the Parliamentarians did not spare the building. The choir and chancel were restored, from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott, in 1867-1868, the nave in 1875. The church is plain, cruciform, and in style chiefly Decorated but partly Early English, with a square tower; it has a library of nearly 2000 volumes (some rare); memorials to Bishop Dafydd ab Owain (d. 1502), to Bishop Luxmore (d. 1830), to the poetess Felicia Hemans, a resident near St Asaph (d. 1835); and Perpendicular oak choir stalls. In the neighbourhood is the modern mansion of Bodelwyddan, of which the estate was bought by Sir W. Williams, speaker of the House of Commons in Charles II.’s time.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Larissa

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​LARISSA (Turk. Yeni Shehr, “new town”), the most important town of Thessaly, situated in a rich agricultural district on the right bank of the Salambria (Peneios, Peneus, Peneius), about 35 m. N.W. of Volo, with which it is connected by rail. Pop. (1889) 13,610, (1907) 18,001. Till 1881 it was the seat of a pasha in the vilayet of Jannina; it is now the capital of the Greek province and the seat of a nomarch. Its long subjection to Turkey has left little trace of antiquity, and the most striking features in the general view are the minarets of the disused mosques (only four are now in use) and the Mahommedan burying-grounds. It was formerly a Turkish military centre and most of the people were of Turkish blood. In the outskirts is a village of Africans from the Sudan—a curious remnant of the forces collected by Ali Pasha. The manufactures include Turkish leather, cotton, silk and tobacco; trade and industry, however, are far from prosperous, though improving owing to the immigration of the Greek commercial element. Fevers and agues are prevalent owing to bad drainage and the overflowing of the river; and the death-rate is higher than the birth-rate. A considerable portion of the Turkish population emigrated in 1881; a further exodus took place in 1898. The department of Larissa had in 1907 a population of 95,066.
Larissa, written Larisa on ancient coins and inscriptions, is near the site of the Homeric Argissa. It appears in early times, when Thessaly was mainly governed by a few aristocratic families, as an important city under the rule of the Aleuadae, whose authority extended over the whole district of Pelasgiotis. This powerful family possessed for many generations before 369 B.C. the privilege of furnishing the Tagus, or generalissimo, of the combined Thessalian forces. The principal rivals of the Aleuadae were the Scopadae of Crannon, the remains of which (called by the Turks Old Larissa) are about 14 m. to the S.W. The inhabitants sided with Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and during the Roman invasion their city was of considerable importance. Since the 5th century it has been the seat of an archbishop, who has now fifteen suffragans. Larissa was the headquarters of Ali Pasha during the Greek War of Independence, and of the crown prince Constantine during the Greco-Turkish War; the flight of the Greek army from this place to Pharsala took place on the 23rd of April 1897. Notices of some ancient inscriptions found at Larissa are given by Miller in Mélanges philologiques (Paris, 1880); several sepulchral reliefs were found in the neighbourhood in 1882. A few traces of the ancient acropolis and theatre are still visible.
The name Larissa was common to many “Pelasgian” towns, and apparently signified a fortified city or burg, such as the citadel of Argos. Another town of the name in Thessaly was Larissa Cremaste, surnamed Pelasgia (Strabo ix. p. 440), situated on the slope of Mt. Othrys.  (J. D. B.)