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

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​MÉDOC, a district in France adjoining the left bank of the Gironde from Blanquefort (N. of Bordeaux) to the mouth of the Gironde. Its length is about 50 m., its breadth averages between 6 and 7 m. It is formed by a number of low hills, which separate the Landes from the Gironde, and is traversed only by small streams; the Gironde itself is muddy, and often enveloped in fog, and the region as a whole is far from picturesque. Large areas of its soil are occupied by vineyards, the products of which form the finest growths of Bordeaux. (See Wine.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Méline, Félix Jules

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​MÉLINE, FÉLIX JULES (1838–), French statesman, was born at Remiremont on the 20th of May 1838. Having adopted the law as his profession, he was chosen a deputy in 1872, and in 1879 he was for a short time under-secretary to the minister of the interior. In 1880 he came to the front as the leading spokesman of the party which favoured the protection of French industries, and he had a considerable share in fashioning the protectionist legislation of the years 1890–1902. From 1883 to 1885 Méline was minister for agriculture, and in 1888–1889 he was president of the Chamber of Deputies. In 1896 he became premier (président du conseil) and minister for agriculture, offices which he vacated in 1898. At one time he edited la République française, and after his retirement from public life he wrote Le Retour à la terre et la surproduction industrielle, tout en faveur de l’agriculture (1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mélingue, Étienne Marin

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​MÉLINGUE, ÉTIENNE MARIN (1808–1875), French actor and sculptor, was born in Caen, the son of a volunteer of 1792. He early went to Paris and obtained work as a sculptor on the church of the Madeleine, but his passion for the stage soon led him to join a strolling company of comedians. Finally chance gave him an opportunity to show his talents, and at the Porte Saint Martin he became the popular interpreter of romantic ​drama of the Alexandre Dumas type. One of his greatest successes was as Benvenuto Cellini, in which he displayed his ability both as an actor and as a sculptor, really modelling before the eyes of the audience a statue of Hebe. He sent a number of statuettes to the various exhibitions, notably one of Gilbert Louis Duprez as William Tell. Melingue’s wife, Théodorine Thiesset (1813–1886), was the actress selected by Victor Hugo to create the part of Guanhumara in Burgraves at the Comédie Française, where she remained ten years.
See Dumas, Une Vie d’artiste (1854).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mälar

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​MÄLAR, a lake of Sweden, extending 73 m. westward from Stockholm, which lies at its junction with the Saltsjö, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The height of the lake is normally only from 11 in. to 2 ft. above sea-level, and its outflow is sometimes reversed. The area is 449 sq. m. The bottom consists of a series of basins separate by ridges from which rise numerous islands. The deepest sounding is 210 ft. The outline is very irregular, the mean breadth being about 15 m., but an arm extends northward for 30 m. nearly to the city of Upsala with many ramifications. The area of the drainage basin is 8789 sq. m., of which 1124 are occupied by lakes. The navigable connexions with the lake are—(1) with lake Hjelmar to the south-west by the Arboga river and the Hjelmar canal; and by the Eskilstuna river and the Thorshälla canal; (2) with the Baltic southward through the Södertelge canal, the route followed by the Göta canal steamers; (3) with the Baltic by two channels at Stockholm. The more important towns, besides Stockholm, are Vesterås on the north, Södertelge and Eskilstuna near the south shore. The lake offers a field for recreation fully appreciated by the inhabitants of the capital, and many of those whose business lies at Stockholm have their residences on the shores of Mälar. On Drottningholm (Queen’s Island, named from Catherine, wife of John III.) is a palace with a fine park and formal gardens. John III. built a palace at the close of the 16th century, but the existing building, by Nicodemus Tessin and his son Nicodemus, dates from the second half of the 17th century. At Mariefred on the south shore there is the castle of Gripsholm (1537), built by Gustavus Vasa, a picturesque erection with four towers, richly adorned within, and containing a large collection of portraits. Strengnäs, on the same shore, became an episcopal see in 1291, when the fine cathedral, much altered since, was consecrated. In the episcopal palace, a building of the 15th century now used as a school, Gustavus Vasa was elected to the throne of Sweden in 1523. On the northward arm of the lake is the palace of Rosenberg, used as a school of gunnery, in a well-wooded park. On a branch of the same arm is Sigtuna, a village whose ruined churches are a memorial of its rank among the principal towns of Sweden after its foundation in the 11th century. Remains prove that on Björkö, an island in the eastern part of the lake, there was a large settlement of earlier importance than Sigtuna. Here a cross commemorates the preaching of Christianity by St Ansgar in 829. Finally, on the northern arm about 10 m. south of Upsala, there is the château of Skokloster, occupying the site of a monastery, and presented by Gustavus Adolphus to Marshal Herman Wrangel, whose son Charles Gustavus Wrangel stored it with a remarkable collection of trophies from Germany, taken during the Thirty Years’ War; including a library, an armoury, and a great accumulation of curios.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Méhul, Étienne Henri

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​MÉHUL, ÉTIENNE HENRI (or Étienne Nicolas) (1763–1817), French composer, was born at Givet in Ardennes, on the 24th of June 1763. His father being too poor to give him a regular musical education, his first ideas of art were derived from a poor blind organist of Givet; yet such was his aptitude that, when ten years old, he was appointed organist of the convent of the Récollets. In 1775 an able German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hauser, was engaged for the monastery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet, and Méhul became his occasional pupil. In 1778 he was taken to Paris by a military officer, and placed himself under Edelmann, a good musician and harpsichord player. His first attempts at instrumental composition in 1781 did not succeed, and he therefore turned his attention to sacred and dramatic music. Gluck gave him advice in his studies. After various disappointments during his efforts for six years to obtain, at the Grand Opéra, a representation of his Cora et Alonzo, he offered to the Opéra Comique his Euphrosine et Coradin, which, being accepted and performed in 1790, at once fixed his reputation. His opera of Stratonice was also received with enthusiasm in 1792. After several unsuccessful operas, his Adrien appeared, and added much to his fame, which was further increased by his three best works, Le Jeune Henri, Uthal and Joseph, the finest of the series. Uthal was written for an orchestra without violins. Méhul held a post as one of the four inspectors of the Paris Conservatoire, but this office made him feel continually the insufficiency of his early studies, a want which he endeavoured to remedy by incessant application. Timoléon, Ariodant and Bion followed. Epicure was composed by Méhul and Cherubini jointly; but the superiority of the latter was evident. Méhul’s next opera, L’Irato, failed. After writing forty-two operas, besides a number of songs for the festivals of the republic, cantatas, and orchestral pieces of various kinds, his health gave way, from an affection of the chest, and he died on the 18th of October 1817 in Paris.
See Lives by Pougin (1889), Viellard (1859), and Quatremère de Quincey (1818).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mzabites

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​MZABITES, or Beni-Mzab, a confederation of Berber tribes, now under the direct authority of France. Of all the Berber peoples the Mzabites have remained freest from foreign admixture. Their own country is a region of the Algerian Sahara, about 100 m. south of El-Aghuat. It consists of five oases close together, viz. Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen, El-Ateuf, Melika and Bu Nura, and two isolated oases farther north, Berrian and Guerrara. The total population numbered at the 1906 census 45,996, of whom about 100 were Europeans and a very small proportion Arabs and Jews. The Mzabites are of small and slender figure, with very short necks and under-developed legs. Their faces are flat, with short nose, thick lips and very deep-set eyes, and their complexion pale. Their dress is a shirt of thick wool, usually many-coloured. They are agriculturists, and are also famed as traders. The butchers, fruiterers, bath-house keepers, road-sweepers and carriers of the African littoral from Tangier to Tripoli are nearly all Mzabites. Their industries, too, are highly organized. The Mzabite burnouses and carpets are found throughout North Africa. Their commercial honesty is proverbial. Nearly all read and write Arabic, though in talking among themselves they use the Zenata dialect of the Berber language, for which, in common with other Berber peoples, they have no written form surviving. They are Mahommedans, of the Ibadite sect, and are regarded as heretics by the Sunnites.
According to tradition the Ibadites, after their overthrow at Tiaret by the Fatimites, took refuge during the 10th century in the country to the south-west of Wargla, where they founded an independent state. In 1012, owing to further persecutions, they fled to their present quarters, where they long remained invulnerable. After the capture of El-Aghuat by the French, the Mzabites concluded with the Algerian government, in 1853, a convention by which they engaged to pay an annual contribution of £1800 in return for their independence. In November 1882 the Mzab country was definitely annexed to Algeria. Ghardaia (pop. 7868) is the capital of the confederation, and next in importance is Beni-Isguen (4916), the chief commercial centre. Since the establishment of French control, Beni-Isguen has become the dépot for the sale of European goods. French engineers have rendered the oases much more fertile than they used to be by a system of irrigation works. (See also Algeria.)
See A. Coyne, Le Mzab (Algiers, 1879); Rinn, Occupation du Mzab' (Algiers, 1885); Amat, Le M’Zab et les M’Zabites (Paris, 1888). Also Algeria and Berbers.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mélusine

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​MÉLUSINE, the tutelary fairy of the house of Lusignan, was the eldest daughter of the fairy Pressine, to avenge whose wrongs she shut up her father in a mountain in Northumberland. For this she was condemned to be metamorphosed every Saturday into a woman-serpent—that is, to be a serpent from the hips downwards. She might, however, be eventually saved from this punishment if she could find a husband who would never see her on a Saturday. Such a husband was found in Raymond, nephew of the count of Poitiers, who became rich and powerful through the machinations of his wife. She built the castle of Lusignan and many other of the family fortresses. When at length her husband gave way to his curiosity, and saw her taking the bath of purification on a Saturday she flew from the castle in the form of a serpent. Thenceforward the death of a member of the house of Lusignan was heralded by the cries of the fairy serpent. “Pousser des cris de Mélusine” is still a popular saying.
This history is related at length, with the adventures of Mélusine’s numerous progeny, by Jean d’Arras, in his Chronique de la princesse, written in 1387 at the desire of John, duke of Berry, for the amusement of the duke and of his sister Marie of France, duchess of Bar. It is one of the most charming of the old prose romances in manner and style, and is natural in spite of the free use of the marvellous. An attempt has been made by Jules Baudot in Les Princesses Yolande et les ducs de Bar (Paris, 1900) to make it a roman à clé and to identify the personages. Mélusine, Mellusine or Merlusine is, however, simply the spirit of the fountain of Lusignan, and the local Poitevin myth is attached to the origin of the noble house. The etymology of the word has been variously and fancifully given. Some writers have supposed Merlusine to be a corruption of mère Lucine (mater Lucina), the deity invoked in child-birth. She has been identified with Mélisende, widow of a king of Jerusalem, and with Mervant, wife of Geoffroi de Lusignan.
The Mélusine of Jean d’Arras was printed by Adam Steinschaber at Geneva in 1478, and was reprinted many times in the 15th and 16th centuries. It has been translated into Spanish, English, German and Flemish. Modern editions are by J. C. Brunet (Paris, 1854), and by E. Lecesne for the Academy of Arras (Arras, 1888). The English translation was edited from a unique MS. in the British Museum by A. K. Donald for the E.E.T.S. (1895). The tale was versified in the 14th century by a poet called Couldrette, whose poem was published in 1854 by Francisque Michel. See further J. C. Dunlop, Hist. of Fiction, ii. 491-493 (new ed., 1888); S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 470 seq. (new ed., 1881); and J. C. Brunet, Manuel du libraire (vol. iii., 1862, s.v. Jean d’Arras).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mâcon

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​MÂCON, a town of east-central France, capital of the department of Saône-et-Loire, 45 m. N. of Lyons on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906), 16,151. Mâcon is situated on the right bank of the Saône facing the plain of the Bresse; a bridge of twelve arches connects it with the suburb of St Laurent on the opposite bank. The most prominent building is the modern Romanesque church of St Pierre, a large three-naved basilica, with two fine spires. Of the old cathedral of St Vincent (12th and 13th centuries), destroyed at the Revolution, nothing remains but the Romanesque narthex, now used as a chapel, the façade and its two flanking towers. The hôtel de ville contains a library, a theatre and picture-gallery. Opposite to it stands a statue of the poet Alphonse Lamartine, a native of the town. Mâcon is the seat of a prefecture, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, and a chamber of commerce. There are ​lycées and training colleges. Copper-founding is an important industry; manufactures include casks, mats, rope and utensils for the wine-trade. The town has a large trade in wine of the district, known as Mâcon. It is a railway centre of considerable importance, being the point at which the line from Paris to Marseilles is joined by that from Mont Cenis and Geneva, as well as by a branch from Moulins.
Mâcon (Matisco) was an important town of the Aedui, but under the Romans it was supplanted by Autun and Lyons. It suffered a succession of disasters at the hands of the Germans, Burgundians, Vandals, Huns, Hungarians and even of the Carolingian kings. In the feudal period it was an important countship which in 1228 was sold to the king of France, but more than once afterwards passed into the possession of the dukes of Burgundy, until the ownership of the French crown was established in the time of Louis XI. In the 16th century Mâcon became a stronghold of the Huguenots, but afterwards fell into the hands of the League, and did not yield to Henry IV. until 1594. The bishopric, created by King Childebert, was suppressed in 1790.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ménage, Gilles

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​MÉNAGE, GILLES (1613–1692), French scholar, son of Guillaume Ménage, king’s advocate at Angers, was born in that city on the 15th of August 1613. A tenacious memory and an early enthusiasm for learning carried him speedily through his literary and professional studies, and he practised at the bar at Angers as early as 1632. In the same year he pleaded several causes before the parlement of Paris, but illness induced him to abandon the legal profession for the church. He became prior of Montdidier without taking holy orders, and lived for some years in the household of Cardinal de Retz (then coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris), where he had leisure for literary pursuits. Some time after 1648 he quarrelled with his patron and withdrew to a house in the cloister of Notre-Dame, where he gathered round him on Wednesday evenings those literary assemblies which he called “Mercuriales.” Chapelain, Pellisson, Conrart, Sarrazin and Du Bos were among the habitués. He was admitted to the Della Cruscan Academy of Florence, but his caustic sarcasm led to his exclusion from the French Academy. Ménage made many enemies and suffered under the satire of Boileau and of Molière. Molière immortalized him as the pedant Vadius in Les Femmes savantes, a portrait Ménage pretended to ignore. He died in Paris on the 23rd of July 1692.
Of his works the following may be mentioned: Poemata latina, gallica, graeca, et italica (1656); Origini della lingua italiana (1669); Dictionnaire étymologique (1650 and 1670); Observations sur la langue française (1672–1676), and Anti-Baillet (1690).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Norton, Charles Eliot

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​NORTON, CHARLES ELIOT (1827–1908), American scholar and man of letters, was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 16th of November 1827. His father, Andrews Norton (1786–1853) was a Unitarian theologian, and Dexter professor of sacred literature at Harvard; his mother was Catherine Eliot, Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard, being his cousin. Charles Eliot Norton graduated from Harvard in 1846, and started in business with an East Indian trading firm in ​Boston, for which he travelled to India in 1849. After a tour in Europe, he returned to America in 1851, and thenceforward devoted himself to literature and art.
In 1881 Norton inaugurated the Dante Society, whose first presidents were Longfellow, Lowell and Norton. He translated the Vita Nuova (1860 and 1867) and the Divina Commedia (1891–1892, 2 vols.). After work as secretary to the Loyal Publication Society during the Civil War, he edited from 1864–1868 the North American Review, in association with James Russell Lowell. In 1861 he and Lowell helped Longfellow in his translation of Dante and in the starting of the informal Dante Club. In 1875 he was appointed professor of the history of art at Harvard, a chair which was created for him and which he held until he became emeritus in 1898. The Archaeological Institute of America chose him to be the first president (1879–1890). From 1856 until 1874 Norton spent much time in travel and residence on the continent of Europe and in England, and it was during this period that his friendships began with Carlyle, Ruskin, Edward FitzGerald and Leslie Stephen, an intimacy which did much to bring American and English men of letters into close personal relation. Norton, indeed, had a peculiar genius for friendship, and it is on his personal influence rather than on his literary productions that his claim to remembrance mainly rests. From 1882 onward he confined himself to the study of Dante, his professorial duties, and the editing and publication of the literary memorials of many of his friends. In 1883 came the Letters of Carlyle and Emerson; in 1886, 1887 and 1888, Carlyle’s Letters and Reminiscences; in 1894, the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis and the Letters of Lowell. Norton was also made Ruskin’s literary executor, and he wrote various introductions for the American “Brantwood” edition of Ruskin’s works. His other publications include Notes of Travel and Study in Italy (1859), and an Historical Study of Church-building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (1880). He organized exhibitions of the drawings of Turner (1874) and of Ruskin (1879), for which he compiled the catalogues.
He died on the 21st of October 1908 at “Shady-hill,” the house where he was born. He bequeathed the more valuable portion of his library to Harvard. In 1862 he had married Miss Susan Sedgwick. He had the degrees of Litt.D. (Cambridge) and D.C.L. (Oxford), as well as the L.H.D. of Columbia and the LL.D. of Harvard and of Yale.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Northwich

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​NORTHWICH, a market town in the Northwich parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, 171 1/2 m. N.W. of London, on the London and North-Western railway and the Cheshire lines. Pop. of urban district, 17,611. It lies in a low open valley at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane, and is the centre of the principal salt-producing district in the United Kingdom. In its narrow and irregular streets many of the houses are strongly bolted to keep them secure from the subsidences which result not infrequently from the pumping of brine. Despite these precautions many accidents have occurred; some of the houses have sunk or stand at fantastic angles, and in 1892 a portion of the High Street, which had subsided below the level of the Weaver, had to be raised 6 ft. Both rock salt and white salt obtained by evaporation from brine are exported. The amount supplied by the whole district, which includes the neighbouring town of Winsford 6 m. south, is about 1,500,000 tons annually. The white salt is shipped chiefly to America. The principal buildings are the church of St Helen, Witton, noted for its finely carved roof of the 17th century, a museum and free library and market house. The Verdin Park was presented to the town by Robert Verdin, M.P. for Northwich, in 1887. There is a considerable industry in the building of flat boats to convey salt to Liverpool, the river Weaver being navigable, and connected by a hydraulic lift, 1 m. from the town, with the Trent and Mersey Canal on a higher level. Rope- and brick-making, iron and brass-founding, chemical manufactures, brewing and tanning, are also carried on.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Norton, Charles Bowyer Adderley, 1st Baron

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​NORTON, CHARLES BOWYER ADDERLEY, 1st Baron (1814–1905), English politician, eldest son of Charles Clement Adderley (d. 1818), one of an old Staffordshire family, was born on the 2nd of August 1814, and inherited Hams Hall, Warwickshire and the valuable estates of his great-uncle, Charles Bowyer Adderley, in 1826. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1841 he became one of the members of parliament for Staffordshire, retaining his seat until 1878, when he was created Baron Norton. Adderley’s official career began in 1858, when he served as president of the board of health and vice-president of the committee of the council on education in Lord Derby’s short ministry. Again under Lord Derby he was under-secretary for the colonies from 1866 to 1868, being in charge of the act which called the Dominion of Canada into being, and from 1874 to 1878 he was president of the board of trade. He died on the 28th of March 1905. Norton was a strong churchman and especially interested in education and the colonies. In 1842 he married Julia (1820–1887) daughter of Chandos, 1st Lord Leigh, by whom he had several sons. His eldest son Charles Leigh (b. 1846) became 2nd Baron Norton. Another son, James Granville Adderley (b. 1861), vicar of Saltley, Birmingham, became well known as an advocate of Christian socialism.
See W. S. Childe-Pemberton, The Life of Lord Norton (1909).