OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alverstone, Richard Everard Webster, 1st Baron

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​ALVERSTONE, RICHARD EVERARD WEBSTER, 1st Baron (1842–), lord chief justice of England, was born on the 22nd of December 1842, being the second son of Thomas Webster, Q.C. He was educated at King’s College and Charterhouse schools, and Trinity College, Cambridge; was called to the bar in 1868, and became Q.C. only ten years afterwards. His practice was chiefly in commercial, railway and patent cases until (June 1885) he was appointed attorney-general in the Conservative Government in the exceptional circumstances of never having been solicitor-general, and not at the time occupying a seat in parliament. He was elected for Launceston in the following month, and in November exchanged this seat for the Isle of Wight, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the House of Lords. Except under the brief Gladstone administration of 1886, and the Gladstone-Rosebery cabinet of 1892–1895, Sir Richard Webster was attorney-general from 1885 to 1900. In 1890 he was leading counsel for The Times in the Parnell inquiry; in 1893 he represented Great Britain in the Bering Sea arbitration; in 1898 he discharged the same function in the matter of the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela; and in 1903 was one of the members of the Alaska Boundary Commission. He was well known as an athlete in his earlier years, having represented his university as a runner, and his interest in cricket and foot-racing was kept up in later life. In the House of Commons, and outside it, he was throughout his political career prominently associated with church work; and his speeches were distinguished for gravity and earnestness. In 1900 he succeeded Sir Nathaniel Lindley as Master of the Rolls, being raised to the peerage as Baron Alverstone, and in October of the same year he was elevated to the office of lord chief justice upon the death of Lord Russell of Killowen.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alzey

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​ALZEY, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, 18 m. S. of Mainz by rail. Pop. (1900) 6893. There are a Roman Catholic and two Protestant churches, several high-grade schools and a teachers' seminary. Alzey has industries of dyeing and weaving, breweries, and does a considerable trade in wine. It is immortalized in the Nibelungenlied in the person of “Volkêr von Alzeie,” the warrior who in the last part of the epic plays a part second only to that of Hagen, and who “was called the minstrel (spilman) because he could fiddle.” It became an imperial city in 1277. In 1620 it was sacked by the Spaniards and in 1689 burnt by the French. Annexed to France during the Napoleonic wars, it passed in 1815 to the grand-duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alzog, Johann Baptist

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​ALZOG, JOHANN BAPTIST (1808–1878), German theologian, was born at Ohlau, in Silesia, on the 29th of June 1808. He studied at Breslau and Bonn and was ordained priest at Cologne in 1834. In the following year he accepted the chairs of exegesis and church history at the seminary of Posen. He removed in 1844 to Hildesheim, where he had been appointed rector of the seminary. He became professor of church history at the university of Freiburg in the Breisgau in 1853 and held that post till his death on the 1st of March 1878. Together with Döllinger, Alzog was instrumental in convoking the famous Munich assembly of Catholic scholars in 1863. He also took part, with Bishops Hefele and Haseberg, in the preparatory work of the Vatican Council and voted in favour of the doctrine of papal infallibility but against the opportuneness of its promulgation. Alzog’s fame rests mainly on his Handbuch der Universal-Kirchengeschichte (Mainz, 1841, often reprinted under various titles; Eng. trans. by Pabisch and Byrne, A Manual of Church History, 4 vols. Cincinnati, 1874). Based upon the foundations laid by Möhler, this manual was generally accepted as the best exposition of Catholic views, in opposition to the Protestant manual by C. A. Hase, and was translated into several languages. Besides a host of minor writings on ecclesiastical subjects, and an active collaboration in the great Kirchenlexicon of Wetzer and Welte, Alzog was also the author of Grundriss der Patrologie (Freiburg, 1866, 4th ed. 1888), a scholarly work, though now superseded by that of O. Bardenhewer.
A full list of Alzog’s writings is given in H. Hurter’s Nomenclator literarius recentioris theologiae catholicae, vol. iii. For an account of his life see the funeral oration by F. X. Kraus, entitled: Gedächtnissrede auf Johannes Alzog (Freiburg, 1879).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alyattes

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​ALYATTES, king of Lydia (609–560 B.C.), the real founder of the Lydian empire, was the son of Sadyattes, of the house of the Mermnadae. For several years he continued the war against Miletus begun by his father, but was obliged to turn his attention to the Medes and Babylonians. On the 28th of May 585, during a battle on the Halys between him and Cyaxares, king of Media, an eclipse of the sun took place; hostilities were suspended, peace concluded, and the Halys fixed as the boundary between the two kingdoms. Alyattes drove the Cimmerii (see Scythia) from Asia, subdued the Carians, and took several Ionian cities (Smyrna, Colophon). He was succeeded by his son Croesus. His tomb still exists on the plateau between lake Gygaea and the river Hermus to the north of Sardis—a large mound of earth with a substructure of huge stones. It was excavated by Spiegelthal in 1854, who found that it covered a large vault of finely-cut marble blocks approached by a flat-roofed passage of the same stone from the south. The sarcophagus and its contents had been removed by early plunderers of the tomb, all that was left being some broken alabaster vases, pottery and charcoal. On the summit of the mound were large phalli of stone.
See A. von Ölfers, “Über die lydischen Königsgräber bei Sardes,” Abh. Berl. Ak., 1858.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alypius (geographer)

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​ALYPIUS of Antioch, a geographer of the 4th century, who was sent by the emperor Julian into Britain as first prefect, and was afterwards commissioned to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem. Among the letters of Julian are two (29 and 30) addressed to Alypius; one inviting him to Rome, the other thanking him for a geographical treatise, which no longer exists.
See also Ammianus Marcellinus xxiii. 1, § 2.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcantara

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​ALCANTARA, a small seaport of Brazil, in the state of Maranhão, on the W. shore of the bay of São Marcos, 16 m. from the city of Maranhão by water. It has a fairly good harbour, and excellent cotton and rice are grown in the vicinity and shipped thence.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcester

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The name (Alnecestre, Alyncester) signifies “the camp on the Alne.” A small Romano-British town or village was situated here, on the road which runs from Derby and Wall, near Lichfield, to join the Fosse Way near Cirencester. Its name is not known. A relief figure in stone, some pavements, potsherds, coins and burials have been found, but nothing to indicate an important station. No written document relating to Alcester exists before the reign of Henry I. No mention occurs in Domesday, but it is given in a list of serjeanties of the reign of Henry III. as having been a royal borough in the time of Henry I., and in 1177 it rendered four marks’ aid with the other boroughs of the county. However, there is no evidence of the grant of a royal charter, and the title of borough soon lapsed. In the reign of Henry III. a moiety of the manor was purchased by Sir Walter Beauchamp, who granted a charter to the inhabitants of the town establishing a Tuesday market for corn, cattle, and all kinds of merchandise, and also obtained grants of fairs at the feasts of St Giles (afterwards transferred to the feast of St Faith) and St Barnabas. In 1444 Sir John Beauchamp purchased the remaining moiety of the manor, and was granted an additional fair at the feast of St Dunstan. From this date the Beauchamps were lords of the whole manor until it passed by female descent to the Grevilles in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1140 a Benedictine monastery was founded here by Ralph Boteler of Oversley, and received the name of the Church of Our Lady of the Isle, owing to its insulation by a moat meeting the river Arrow. The monastery was suppressed among the smaller houses in 1536. Traces of the moat and the foundations are still to be seen in Priory Close. The ancient fairs survived to the end of the 19th century. In 1830 the needle-manufacture employed nearly a thousand hands.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcamo

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​ALCAMO, a town of Sicily, in the province of Trapani, 24 m. W.S.W. of Palermo direct (511/2 m. by rail). Pop. (1881) 37,497; (1901) 51,809. It was founded in A.D. 828 by the Saracenic chief Al-Kamuk, who erected the castle (which still stands, though considerably altered), but was christianized by the emperor Frederick II. in 1233, who removed the site lower down. It possesses some medieval buildings of interest. The surrounding district is very fertile and the trade in agricultural products is considerable.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcavala

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​ALCAVALA (Spanish, from Arab. al-quabalah, “tax,” quabala, “to receive”; cf. Fr. gabelle), a duty formerly charged in Spain and its colonies on all transfers of property, whether public or private. Originally imposed in 1341 by Alphonso XI. to secure freedom from the Moors, it was an ad valorem tax of 10, increased afterwards to 14%, on the selling price of all commodities, whether raw or manufactured, chargeable as often as they were sold or exchanged. It subjected every farmer, manufacturer, merchant and shopkeeper to the continual visits and examination of the tax-gatherers, whose number was necessarily very great. This monstrous impost was permitted to ruin the industry and commerce of the greater part of the kingdom up to the time of the invasion of Napoleon. Catalonia and Aragon purchased from Philip V. an exemption from the alcavala, and, though still burdened with other heavy taxes, were in consequence in a comparatively flourishing state.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcestis

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​ALCESTIS (Alkestis), in Greek legend the daughter of Pelias and Anaxibia, and wife of Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly. She consented to die in place of her husband, and was afterwards rescued by Heracles. This beautiful story of conjugal devotion forms the subject of the Alcestis of Euripides, which furnished the basis of Robert Browning’s Balaustion’s Adventure. Sophocles also wrote an Alcestis, of which only fragments remain.
See Dissel, Der Mythos von Admetus und Alkestis, 1882.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcidamas

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​ALCIDAMAS, of Elaea, in Aeolis, Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the 4th century B.C. He was the pupil and successor of Gorgias and taught at Athens at the same time as Isocrates, whose rival and opponent he was. We possess two declamations under his name: Περὶ Σοφιστῶν, directed against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore over written speeches (a recently discovered fragment of another speech against Isocrates is probably of later date); Ὀδυσσεύς, in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes of treachery during the siege of Troy (this is generally considered spurious). According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the orator was the power of speaking extempore on every conceivable subject. Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 3) criticizes his writings as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors. Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived: Μεσσηνιακὸς, advocating the freedom of the Messenians and containing the sentiment that “all are by nature free”; a Eulogy of Death, in consideration of the wide extent of human sufferings; a Τέχνη or instruction-book in the art of rhetoric; and a Φυσικὸς λόγος. Lastly, his Μουσεῖον (a word of doubtful meaning) contained the narrative of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, two fragments of which are found in the Ἀγὼν Ὁμήρον καὶ Ἡσιόδου, the work of a grammarian in the time of Hadrian. A 3rd-century papyrus (Flinders Petrie, Papyri, ed. Mahaffy, 1891, pl. xxv.) probably contains the actual remains of a description by Alcidamas.
See the edition by Blass, 1881; fragments in Müller, Oratores Attici, ii. (1858); Vahlen, Der Rhetor Alkidamas (1864); Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alcester, Frederick Beauchamp Paget Seymour, Baron

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​ALCESTER, FREDERICK BEAUCHAMP PAGET SEYMOUR, Baron (1821–1895), British admiral, son of Colonel Sir Horace Beauchamp Seymour and cousin of Francis George Hugh Seymour, 5th marquess of Hertford, was born on the 12th of April 1821. Entering the navy in 1834, he served in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, was for three years flag-lieutenant to his uncle Sir George Seymour, and was promoted to be commander in 1847. He served in Burma as a volunteer in 1852, was made a captain in 1854, took the “Meteor” ironclad battery out to the Black Sea and home again in 1856, was captain of the “Pelorus” on the Australian station from 1857 to 1863, and commanded the naval brigade in New Zealand during the Maori War, 1860–61, for which he was made a C.B. He became a rear-admiral in 1870; in 1871–1872 he commanded the flying squadron, was a lord of the admiralty in 1872–1874, and commanded the Channel fleet, 1874–1876. On the 31st of December 1876 he was made a vice-admiral, a K.C.B. on the 2nd of June 1877. In 1880–1883 he was commander-in-chief of the fleet in the Mediterranean, and in 1880 had also the chief command of the European squadron sent to the coast of Albania as a demonstration to compel the Porte to cede Dulcigno to Montenegro. On the 24th of May 1881 he was made a G.C.B., and on the 6th of May 1882 was promoted to the rank of admiral. In July 1882 he commanded at the bombardment of Alexandria and in the subsequent operations on the coast of Egypt, for which service he was raised to the peerage as Baron Alcester of Alcester in the county of Warwick, received a parliamentary grant of £25,000, the freedom of the city of London and a sword of honour. On his return from the Mediterranean he was for a couple of years again at the admiralty, and in 1886 he was placed on the retired list. For the next nine years he lived chiefly in London, but latterly his health was much broken, and he died on the 30th of March 1895. He was unmarried and the peerage became extinct.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alciati, Andrea

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​ALCIATI, ANDREA (1492–1550), Italian jurist, was born at Alzano, near Milan, on the 12th of January 1492. He displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus. His Emblems, a collection of moral sayings in Latin verse, has been greatly admired, and translated into French, Italian and Spanish. Alciati’s history of Milan, under the title Rerum Patriae, seu Historiae Mediolanensis, Libri IV., was published posthumously at Milan in 1625. He died at Pavia in 1550.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, John (Scottish divine 1722-1787)

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​BROWN. JOHN (1722–1787), Scottish divine, was born at Carpow, in Perthshire. He was almost entirely self-educated, having acquired a knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew while employed as a shepherd. His early career was varied, and he was in succession a packman, a soldier in the Edinburgh garrison in 1745, and a school-master. He was, from 1750 till his death, minister of the Burgher branch of the Secession church (see United Presbyterian Church) in Haddington. From 1786 he was professor of divinity for his denomination, and was mainly responsible for the training of its ministry. He gained a just reputation for learning and piety. The best of his many works are his Self-Interpreting Bible and Dictionary of the Bible, works that were long very popular. The former was translated into Welsh. He also wrote an Explication of the Westminster Confession, and a number of biographical and historical sketches.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, John (Scottish divine 1784-1858)

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​BROWN, JOHN (1784–1858), Scottish divine, grandson of the last-named, was born at Whitburn, Linlithgowshire, on the 12th of July 1784. He studied at Glasgow university, and afterwards at the divinity hall of the “Burgher” branch of the “Secession” church at Selkirk, under the celebrated George Lawson. In 1806 he was ordained minister of the Burgher congregation at Biggar, Lanarkshire, where he laboured for sixteen years. While there he had an interesting controversy with Robert Owen the socialist. Transferred in 1822 to the charge of Rose Street church, Edinburgh, he at once took a high rank as a preacher. In 1829 he succeeded James Hall at Broughton Place church, Edinburgh. In 1835 he was appointed one of the professors in the theological hall of the Secession church, and, great as was his ability as a preacher and pastor, it was probably in this sphere that he rendered his most valuable service. He had been the first in Scotland to use in the pulpit the exegetical method of exposition of Scripture, and as a professor he illustrated the method and extended its use. To him chiefly is due the abandonment of the principle of interpretation according to the “analogy of faith,” which practically subordinated the Bible to the creed. Brown’s exegesis was marked by rare critical sagacity, exact and extensive scholarship, unswerving honesty, and a clear, logical style; and his expository works have thus a permanent value. He had a considerable share in the Apocrypha controversy, and he was throughout life a vigorous and consistent upholder of anti-state-church or “voluntary” views. His two sermons on The Law of Christ respecting civil obedience, especially in the payment of tribute, called forth by a local grievance from which he had personally suffered, were afterwards published with extensive additions and notes, and are still regarded as an admirable statement and defence of the voluntary principle. The part he took in the discussion on the Atonement, which agitated all the Scottish churches, led to a formal charge of heresy against him by those who held the doctrine of a limited atonement. In 1845, after a protracted trial, he was acquitted by the synod. From that time he enjoyed the thorough confidence of his denomination (after 1847 merged in “the United Presbyterian church”), of which in his later years he was generally regarded as the leading representative. He died on the 13th of October 1858. His chief works were: Expository Discourses on First Peter (1848); Exposition of the Discourses and Sayings of our Lord (1850); Exposition of our Lord’s Intercessory Prayer (1850); The Resurrection of Life (1851); Expository Discourses on Galatians (1853); and Analytical Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (1857).
See Memoir of John Brown, D.D., by John Cairns (1860).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, John George

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​BROWN, JOHN GEORGE (1831–), American painter, was born in Durham, England, on the 11th of November 1831. He studied at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the Edinburgh Academy, and after removing to New York City in 1853, at the schools of the National Academy of Design of which he afterwards became a member. In 1866 he became one of the charter members of the Water-Colour Society, of which he was president from 1887 to 1904. He generally confined himself to representations of street child life, bootblacks, newsboys, &c.; his “Passing Show” (Paris, Salon, 1877) and “Street Boys at Play” (Paris Exhibition, 1900) are good examples of his popular talent.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brown, Samuel Morison

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​BROWN, SAMUEL MORISON (1817–1856), Scottish chemist, poet and essayist, born at Haddington on the 23rd of February 1817, was the fourth son of Samuel Brown, the founder of ​itinerating libraries, and grandson of John Brown, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible. In 1832 he entered the university of Edinburgh, where, after studying in Berlin and St Petersburg, he graduated as M.D. in 1839. About 1840 he was engaged in experiments by which he sought to prove that “carbon in certain states of combination is susceptible of conversion into silicon,” and his failure to establish this proposition had much to do with his want of success as a candidate for the chair of chemistry at Edinburgh in 1843. He held the doctrine that the chemical elements are compounds of equal and similar atoms, and might therefore possibly be all derived from one generic atom. In 1850 he published a tragedy, Galileo Galilei, and two volumes of his Lectures on the Atomic Theory and Essays Scientific and Literary appeared in 1858, with a preface by his kinsman Dr John Brown, the author of Horae Subsecivae. He died at Edinburgh on the 20th of September 1856.