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

See also Erckmann-Chatrian on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, the joint names of two French writers whose collaboration made their work that of, so to speak, one personality. Émile Erckmann (1822–1899) was born on the 20th of May 1822 at Phalsbourg, and Louis Gratien Charles Alexandre Chatrian (1826–1890) on the 18th of December 1826 at Soldatenthal, Lorraine. In 1847 they began to write together, and continued doing so till 1889. Chatrian died in 1890 at Villemomble near Paris, and Erckmann at Lunéville in 1899. The list of their publications is a long one, ranging from the Histoires et contes fantastiques (1849; reprinted from the Démocrate du Rhin), L’Illustre Docteur Mathéus (1859), Madame Thérèse (1863), L’Ami Fritz (1864), Histoire d’un conscrit de 1813 (1864), Waterloo (1865), Le Blocus (1867), Histoire d’un paysan (4 vols., 1868–1870), L’Histoire du plébiscite (1872), to Le Grand-père Lebigue (1880); besides dramas like Le Juif polonais (1869) and Les Rantzau (1882). Without any special literary claim, their stories are distinguished by simplicity and genuine descriptive power, particularly in the battle scenes and in connexion with Alsatian peasant life. They are marked by a genuine democratic spirit, and by real patriotism, which developed after 1870 into hatred of the Germans. The authors attacked militarism by depicting the horrors of war in the plainest terms.
See also J. Claretie, Erckmann-Chatrian (1883), in the series of “Célébrités contemporaines.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Erdmann, Otto Linné

See also Otto Linné Erdmann on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ERDMANN, OTTO LINNÉ (1804–1869), German chemist, son of Karl Gottfried Erdmann (1774–1835), the physician who introduced vaccination into Saxony, was born at Dresden on the 11th of April 1804. In 1820 he began to attend the medico-chirurgical academy of his native place, and in 1822 he entered the university of Leipzig where in 1827 he became extraordinary professor, and in 1830 ordinary professor of chemistry. This office he held until his death, which happened at Leipzig on the 9th of October 1869. He was particularly successful as a teacher, and the laboratory established at Leipzig under his direction in 1843 was long regarded as a model institution. As an investigator he is best known for his work on nickel and indigo and other dye-stuffs. With R. F. Marchand (1813–1850) he also carried out a number of determinations of atomic weights. In 1828, in conjunction with A. F. G. Werther (1815–1869), he founded the Journal für technische und ökonomische Chemie, which became in 1834 the Journal für praktische Chemie. He was also the author of Über das Nickel (1827), Lehrbuch der Chemie (1828), Grundriss der Waarenkunde (1833), and Über das Studium der Chemie (1861).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Erdélyi, János

See also János Erdélyi on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​ERDÉLYI, JÁNOS (1814–1868), Hungarian poet and author, was born in 1814 at Kapos, in the county of Ungvár, and educated at the Protestant college of Sárospatak. In 1833 he removed to Pest, where he was, in 1839, elected member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His literary fame was made by his collection of Hungarian national poems and folk-tales, Magyar Népköltési Gyüjtemény, Népdalok és Mondák (Pest, 1846–1847). This work, published by the Kisfaludy Society, was supplemented by a dissertation upon Hungarian national poetry, afterwards partially translated into German by Stier (Berlin, 1851). Erdélyi also compiled for the Kisfaludy Society an extensive collection of Hungarian proverbs—Magyar Közmondások könyve (Pest, 1851),—and was for some time editor of the Szépirodalmi Szemle (Review of Polite Literature). In 1848 he was appointed director of the national theatre at Pest; but after 1849 he resided at his native town. He died on the 23rd of January 1868. A collection of folklore was published the year after his death, entitled A Nép Koltészete népdalok, népmesék és közmondások (Pest, 1869). This work contains 300 national songs, 19 folk-tales and 7362 Hungarian proverbs.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gildersleeve, Basil Lanneau

See also Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GILDERSLEEVE, BASIL LANNEAU (1831–), American classical scholar, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on the 23rd of October 1831, son of Benjamin Gildersleeve (1791–1875), a Presbyterian evangelist, and editor of the Charleston Christian Observer in 1826–1845, of the Richmond (Va.) Watchman and ​Observer in 1845–1856, and of The Central Presbyterian in 1856–1860. The son graduated at Princeton in 1849, studied under Franz in Berlin, under Friedrich Ritschl at Bonn and under Schneidewin at Göttingen, where he received his doctor’s degree in 1853. From 1856 to 1876 he was professor of Greek in the University of Virginia, holding the chair of Latin also in 1861–1866; and in 1876 he became professor of Greek in the newly founded Johns Hopkins University. In 1880 The American Journal of Philology, a quarterly published by the Johns Hopkins University, was established under his editorial charge, and his strong personality was expressed in the department of the Journal headed “Brief Report” or “Lanx Satura,” and in the earliest years of its publication every petty detail was in his hands. His style in it, as elsewhere, is in striking contrast to that of the typical classical scholar, and accords with his conviction that the true aim of scholarship is “that which is.” He published a Latin Grammar (1867; revised with the co-operation of Gonzalez B. Lodge, 1894 and 1899) and a Latin Series for use in secondary schools (1875), both marked by lucidity of order and mastery of grammatical theory and methods. His edition of Persius (1875) is of great value. But his bent was rather toward Greek than Latin. His special interest in Christian Greek was partly the cause of his editing in 1877 The Apologies of Justin Martyr, “which” (to use his own words) “I used unblushingly as a repository for my syntactical formulae.” Gildersleeve’s studies under Franz had no doubt quickened his interest in Greek syntax, and his logic, untrammelled by previous categories, and his marvellous sympathy with the language were displayed in this most unlikely of places. His Syntax of Classic Greek (Part I., 1900, with C. W. E. Miller) collects these formulae. Gildersleeve edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar, with a brilliant and valuable introduction. His views on the function of grammar were summarized in a paper on The Spiritual Rights of Minute Research delivered at Bryn Mawr on the 16th of June 1895. His collected contributions to literary periodicals appeared in 1890 under the title Essays and Studies Educational and Literary.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Giles, St

See also Saint Giles on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GILES (Gil, Gilles), ST, the name given to an abbot whose festival is celebrated on the 1st of September. According to the legend, he was an Athenian (Λἰγίδιος, Aegidius) of royal descent. After the death of his parents he distributed his possessions among the poor, took ship, and landed at Marseilles. Thence he went to Arles, where he remained for two years with St Caesarius. He then retired into a neighbouring desert, where he lived upon herbs and upon the milk of a hind which came to him at stated hours. He was discovered there one day by Flavius, the king of the Goths, who built a monastery on the place, of which he was the first abbot. Scholars are very much divided as to the date of his life, some holding that he lived in the 6th century, others in the 7th or 8th. It may be regarded as certain that St Giles was buried in the hermitage which he had founded in a spot which was afterwards the town of St-Gilles (diocese of Nîmes, department of Gard). His reputation for sanctity attracted many pilgrims. Important gifts were made to the church which contained his body, and a monastery grew up hard by. It is probable that the Visigothic princes who were in possession of the country protected and enriched this monastery, and that it was destroyed by the Saracens at the time of their invasion in 721. But there are no authentic data before the 9th century concerning his history. In 808 Charlemagne took the abbey of St-Gilles under his protection, and it is mentioned among the monasteries from which only prayers for the prince and the state were due. In the 12th century the pilgrimages to St-Gilles are cited as among the most celebrated of the time. The cult of the saint, who came to be regarded as the special patron of lepers, beggars and cripples, spread very extensively over Europe, especially in England, Scotland, France, Belgium and Germany. The church of St Giles, Cripplegate, London, was built about 1090, while the hospital for lepers at St Giles-in-the-Fields (near New Oxford Street) was ​founded by Queen Matilda in 1117. In England alone there are about 150 churches dedicated to this saint. In Edinburgh the church of St Giles could boast the possession of an arm-bone of its patron. Representations of St Giles are very frequently met with in early French and German art, but are much less common in Italy and Spain.
See Acta Sanctorum (September), i. 284-299; Devic and Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, pp. 514-522 (Toulouse, 1876); E. Rembry, Saint Gilles, sa vie, ses reliques, son culte en Belgique et dans le nord de la France (Bruges, 1881); F. Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications, or England’s Patron Saints, ii. 46-51, iii. 15, 363-365 (1899); A. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 768-770 (1896); A. Bell, Lives and Legends of the English Bishops and Kings, Medieval Monks, and other later Saints, pp. 61, 70, 74-78, 84, 197 (1904). (H. De.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gilfillan, George

See also George Gilfillan on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GILFILLAN, GEORGE (1813–1878), Scottish author, was born on the 30th of January 1813, at Comrie, Perthshire, where his father, the Rev. Samuel Gilfillan, the author of some theological works, was for many years minister of a Secession congregation. After an education at Glasgow University, in March 1836 he was ordained pastor of a Secession congregation in Dundee. He published a volume of his discourses in 1839, and shortly afterwards another sermon on “Hades,” which brought him under the scrutiny of his co-presbyters, and was ultimately withdrawn from circulation. Gilfillan next contributed a series of sketches of celebrated contemporary authors to the Dumfries Herald, then edited by Thomas Aird; and these, with several new ones, formed his first Gallery of Literary Portraits, which appeared in 1846, and had a wide circulation. It was quickly followed by a Second and a Third Gallery. In 1851 his most successful work, the Bards of the Bible, appeared. His aim was that it should be “a poem on the Bible”; and it was far more rhapsodical than critical. His Martyrs and Heroes of the Scottish Covenant appeared in 1832, and in 1856 he produced a partly autobiographical, partly fabulous, History of a Man. For thirty years he was engaged upon a long poem, on Night, which was published in 1867, but its theme was too vast, vague and unmanageable, and the result was a failure. He also edited an edition of the British Poets. As a lecturer and as a preacher he drew large crowds, but his literary reputation has not proved permanent. He died on the 13th of August 1878. He had just finished a new life of Burns designed to accompany a new edition of the works of that poet.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gilbert of Sempringham, St

See also Gilbert of Sempringham on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM, ST, founder of the Gilbertines, the only religious order of English origin, was born at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, c. 1083–1089. He was educated in France, and ordained in 1123, being presented by his father to the living of Sempringham. About 1135 he established there a convent for nuns; and to perform the heavy work and cultivate the fields he formed a number of labourers into a society of lay brothers attached to the convent. Similar establishments were founded elsewhere, and in 1147 Gilbert tried to get them incorporated in the Cistercian order. Failing in this, he proceeded to form communities of priests and clerics to perform the spiritual ministrations needed by the nuns. The women lived according to the Benedictine rule as interpreted by the Cistercians; the men according to the rule of St Augustine, and were canons regular. The special constitutions of the order were largely taken from those of the Premonstratensian canons and of the Cistercians. Like Fontevrault (q.v.) it was a double order, the communities of men and women living side by side; but, though the property all belonged to the nuns, the superior of the canons was the head of the whole establishment, and the general superior was a canon, called “Master of Sempringham.” The general chapter was a mixed assembly composed of two canons and two nuns from each house; the nuns had to travel to the chapter in closed carts. The office was celebrated together in the church, a high stone screen separating the two choirs of canons and nuns. The order received papal approbation in 1148. By Gilbert’s death (1189) there were nine double monasteries and four of canons only, containing about 700 canons and 1000 nuns in all. At the dissolution there were some 25 monasteries, whereof 4 ranked among the greater monasteries (see list in F. A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life). The order never spread beyond England. The habit of the Gilbertines was black, with a white cloak.
See Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum (4th of Feb.); William Dugdale, Monasticon (1846); Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1714); ii. c. 29. The best modern account is St Gilbert of Sempringham, and the Gilbertines, by Rose Graham (1901). The art. in Dictionary of National Biography gives abundant information on St Gilbert, but is unsatisfactory on the order, as it might easily convey the impression that the canons and nuns lived together, whereas they were most carefully separated; and altogether undue prominence is given to a single scandal. Miss Graham declares that the reputation of the order was good until the end. (E. C. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gilder, Richard Watson

See also Richard Watson Gilder on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​GILDER, RICHARD WATSON (1844–1909), American editor and poet, was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, on the 8th of February 1844, a brother of William Henry Gilder (1838–1900), the Arctic explorer. He was educated at Bellevue Seminary, an institution conducted by his father, the Rev. William Henry Gilder (1812–1864), in Flushing, Long Island. After three years (1865–1868) on the Newark, New Jersey, Daily Advertiser, he founded, with Newton Crane, the Newark Morning Register. In 1869 he became editor of Hours at Home, and in 1870 assistant editor of Scribner’s Monthly (eleven years later re-named The Century Magazine), of which he became editor in 1881. He was one of the founders of the Free Art League, of the International Copyright League, and of the Authors’ Club; was chairman of the New York Tenement House Commission in 1894; and was a prominent member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, of the Council of the National Civil Service Reform League, and of the executive committee of the Citizens’ Union of New York City. His poems, which are essentially lyrical, have been collected in various volumes, including Five Books of Song (1894), In Palestine and other Poems (1898), Poems and Inscriptions (1901), and In the Heights (1905). A complete edition of his poems was published in 1908. He also edited ”Sonnets from the Portuguese” and other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; ”One Word More” and other Poems by Robert Browning (1905). He died in New York on the 18th of November 1909. His wife, Helena de Kay, a grand-daughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, assisted, with Saint Gaudens and others, in founding the Society of American Artists, now merged in the National Academy, and the Art Students’ League of New York. She translated Sensier’s biography of Millet, and painted, before her marriage in 1874, studies in flowers and ideal heads, much admired for their feeling and delicate colouring.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Federici, Camillo

See also Camillo Federici on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​FEDERICI, CAMILLO (1749–1802), Italian dramatist and actor, was born at Garessio, a small town in Piedmont, on the 9th of April 1749. His real name was Giovanni Battista Viassolo, and that by which he is now known and which he transmitted to his children was taken from the title of one of his first pieces, Camillo e Federico. He was educated at Turin, and showed at an early age a great fondness for literature and especially for the theatre. The praises bestowed on his early attempts determined his choice of a career, and he obtained engagements with several companies both as writer and actor. He made a happy marriage in 1777, and soon after left the stage and devoted himself entirely to composition. He settled at Padua, and the reputation of his numerous comedies rapidly spread in Italy, and for a time seemed to eclipse that of his predecessors. Most of his pieces were of the melodramatic class, and he too often resorted to the same means of exciting interest and curiosity. He caught, however, something of the new spirit which was manifesting itself in German dramatic literature in the works of Schiller, Iffland and Kotzebue, and the moral tone of his plays is generally healthy. Fortune did not smile upon him; but he found a helpful friend in a wealthy merchant of Padua, Francis Barisan, for whose private theatre he wrote many pieces. He was attacked in 1791 with a dangerous malady which disabled him for several years; and he had the misfortune to see his works, in the absence of any copyright law, published by others without his permission. At length, in 1802, he undertook to prepare a collected edition; but of this four volumes only were completed when he was again attacked with illness, and died at Padua (December 23).
The publication of his works was completed in 14 volumes in 1816. Another edition in 26 volumes was published at Florence in 1826–1827. A biographical memoir of Federici by Neymar appeared at Venice in 1838.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fehling, Hermann von

See also Hermann von Fehling on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​FEHLING, HERMANN VON (1812–1885), German chemist, was born at Lübeck on the 9th of June 1812. With the intention of taking up pharmacy he entered Heidelberg University about 1835, and after graduating went to Giessen as préparateur to Liebig, with whom he elucidated the composition of paraldehyde and metaldehyde. In 1839 on Liebig’s recommendation he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the polytechnic at Stuttgart, and held it till within three years of his death, which happened at Stuttgart on the 1st of July 1885. His earlier work included an investigation of succinic acid, and the preparation of phenyl cyanide (benzonitrile), the simplest nitrile of the aromatic series; but later his time was mainly occupied with questions of technology and public health rather than with pure chemistry. Among the analytical methods worked up by him the best known is that for the estimation of sugars by “Fehling’s solution,” which consists of a solution of cupric sulphate mixed with alkali and potassium-sodium tartrate (Rochelle salt). He was a contributor to the Handwörterbuch of Liebig, Wöhler and Poggendorff, and to the Graham-Otto Textbook of Chemistry, and for many years was a member of the committee of revision of the Pharmacopoeia Germanica.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fee

See also Fee on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​FEE, an estate in land held of a superior lord on condition of the performance of homage or service (see Feudalism). In English law “fee” signifies an estate of inheritance (i.e. an estate descendable to the heirs of the grantee so long as there are any in existence) as opposed to an estate for life. It is divisible into three species: (1) fee simple; (2) conditional fee; (3) fee tail. (See Estate.) A fee farm rent is the rent reserved on granting a fee farm, i.e. land in fee simple, to be held by the tenant and his heirs at a yearly rent. It is generally at least one-fourth of the value of the land at the time of its reservation. (See Rent.)
The word “fee” has also the sense of remuneration for services, especially the honorarium paid to a doctor, lawyer or member of any other profession. It is also used of a fixed sum paid for the right to enter for an examination, or on admission to membership of a university or other society. This sense of the word is taken by the New English Dictionary to be due to a use of “fee” in its feudal sense, and to represent a sum paid to the holder of an office “in fee.”
The etymology of the Med. Lat. feudum, feodum or feum, of its French equivalent fief, and English “fee,” in Scots law “feu” (q.v.), is extremely obscure. (See the New English Dictionary, s.v. “Fee.”) There is a common Teutonic word represented in Old English as feoh or féo, in Old High German as fehu, meaning property in the shape of cattle (cf. modern Ger. Vieh, Dutch vee). The old Aryan péku gives Sanskrit paçu, Lat. pecus, cattle, whence pecunia, money. The O. Eng. feoh, in the sense of money, possibly survives in “fee,” honorarium, though this is not the view of the New English Dictionary. The common explanation of the Med. Lat. feudum or feodum, of which Ducange (Glossarium, s.v.) gives an example from a constitution of the emperor Charles the Fat of the year 884, is that it is formed from the Teutonic fehu, property, and ôd, wealth (cf. Allodium and Udal). This would apparently restrict the original meaning to movable property, while the early applications of feudum are to the enjoyment of something granted in return for service (beneficium). Another theory takes the origin to be fehu alone, in a particular sense of wages, payment for services. This leaves the d- of feudum unexplained. Some have taken the origin to be a verbal form feudare = feum dare. Another theory finds the source in the O. High Ger. fehôn, to eat, feed upon, “take for one’s enjoyment.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Febvre, Alexandre Frédéric

See also Frédéric Febvre on Wikipedia; the 1922 update; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​FEBVRE, ALEXANDRE FRÉDÉRIC (1835– ), French actor, was born in Paris, and after the usual apprenticeship in the provinces and in several Parisian theatres in small parts, was called to the Comédie Française in 1866, where he made his début as Philip II. in Don Juan d’Autriche. He soon became the most popular leading man in Paris, not only in the classical répertoire, but in contemporary novelties. In 1894 he toured the principal cities of Europe, and, in 1895, of America. He was also a composer of light music for the piano, and published several books of varying merit. He married Mdlle Harville, daughter of one of his predecessors at the Comédie Française, herself a well-known actress.