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

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PERCEPTION (from Lat. percipere, to perceive), in psychology, the term specially applied to the mental process by which the mind becomes conscious of an external object; it is the mental completion of a sensation, which would otherwise have nothing but a momentary existence coextensive with the duration of the stimulus, and is intermediate between sensation and the "ideal revival," which can reinstate a perceptual consciousness when the object is no longer present. This narrow and precise usage of the term "perception" is due to Thomas Reid, whose view has been generally adopted in principle by modern psychologists. On the other hand some psychologists decline to accept the view that the three processes are delimited by sharp lines of cleavage. It is held on the one hand that sensation is in fact impossible as a purely subjective state without cognition; on the other that sensation and perception differ only in degree, perception being the more complex. The former view admits, which the latter practically denies, the distinction in principle. Among those who adopt the second view are E. B. Titchener and William James. James (Principles of Psychology, ii. 76) compares sensation and perception as "the barer and the richer consciousness," and says that "beyond the first crude sensation all our consciousness is a matter of suggestion, and the various suggestions shade gradually into each other, being one and all products of the same psychological machinery of association." Similarly Wundt and Titchener incline to obliterate the distinction between perception and ideal revival. Prior to Reid, the word perception had a long history in the wider sense of cognition in general. Locke and Hume both use it in this sense, and regard thinking as that special kind of perception which implies deliberate attention. (See Psychology.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Perceval, Spencer

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​PERCEVAL, SPENCER (1762–1812), prime minister of England from 1809 to 1812, second son of John, 2nd earl of Egmont, was born in Audley Square, London, on the 1st of November 1762. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1786. A very able speech in connexion with a famous forgery case having drawn attention to his talents, his success was from that time rapid, he was soon regarded as the leading counsel on the Midland circuit, and in 1796 became a K.C. Entering parliament for Northampton in April of that year, he distinguished himself by his speeches in support of the administration of Pitt. In 1801, on the formation of the Addington administration, he was appointed solicitor-general, and in 1802 he became attorney general. An ardent opponent of Catholic Emancipation, he delivered in 1807 a speech on the subject which helped to give the deathblow to the Grenville administration, upon which he became chancellor of the exchequer under the duke of Portland, whom in 1809 he succeeded in the premiership. Notwithstanding that he had the assistance in the cabinet of no statesman of the first rank, he succeeded in retaining office till he was shot by a man named Bellingham, a bankrupt with a grievance, who had vainly applied to him for redress, in the lobby of the House of Commons on the 11th of May 1812. Bellingham was certainly insane, but the plea was set aside and he was hanged. Perceval was a vigorous debater, specially excelling in replies, in which his thorough mastery of all the details of his subject gave him a great advantage. He married in 1790 and had six sons and six daughters; one of the latter married Spencer Horatio Walpole (d. 1898), home secretary, and their son Sir Spencer Walpole, the well-known historian, published an excellent biography of Perceval in 1874.
See also P. Treherne, Spencer Perceval (1909).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Perch (measure)

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​PERCH (through Fr. perche from Lat. pertica, a pole or rod used for measurement), a bar or rod used for various purposes, as e.g. for a navigation mark in shallow waters, for a support on which a bird may rest, or for a pole which joins the back with the fore part of a wagon or other four-wheeled vehicle. As a term of linear measurement, “perch,” also “rod” or “pole,”＝161/2 ft., 55 yds; of superficial area,＝301/4 sq. yds.; 160 perches＝1 acre. As a stonemason’s measure, a “perch”＝1 linear perch in length by 11/2 ft. in breadth and 1 ft. in thickness.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pequot

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PEQUOT, an Algonquian tribe of North-American Indians, a branch of the Mohicans. They occupied the coast of Connecticut from Niantic river to the Rhode Island boundary. Together with their kinsmen, the Mohegans, they formed a powerful and warlike people, bitterly hostile to the early settlers. In 1637 the Pequots were surprised by the whites at their fort on the Mystic river, and suffered so completely a defeat that the tribe was broken up, and its remnants took refugee with neighbouring tribes. The Pequot country passed under the control of the Mohegans. At the height of their power the Pequots numbered, it is estimated, some 3000.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pepperrell, Sir William

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​PEPPERRELL, SIR WILLIAM (1696–1759), American soldier, was born in Kittery, Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, on the 27th of June 1696. He studied surveying and navigation, and joined his father in his ship-building, fishing and general trading business, quickly becoming one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the province. He was commissioned captain (1717), major, lieutenant-colonel, and in 1726 colonel of militia. Pepperrell served in the Massachusetts general court (1726–1727), and in the governor's council (1727–1759), of which for eighteen years he was president. Although not a trained lawyer, he was chief justice of the court of common pleas from 1730 until his death. In 1745 he was commander-in-chief of the New England force of about 4000, which, with the assistance of a British squadron under Commodore Peter Warren, besieged and captured the French fortress of Louisburg, the garrison surrendering on the 16th of June and Pepperrell and Warren taking possession on the following day. For his services Pepperrell, in November 1746, was created a baronet—the only New Englander so honoured. He was active in raising troops ​during the "French and Indian War," and received the rank of lieutenant-general in February 1759. He died in Kittery, Maine, on the 6th of July in the same year.
See Usher Parsons, Life of Sir William Pepperrell, Bart. (Cambridge, Mass., 1855), based on the family papers.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mercy

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​MERCY (adapted from Fr. merci, Lat. merces, reward), compassion, pardon, pity or forgiveness. The Latin Word was used in the early Christian ages for the reward that is given in heaven to those who have shown kindness without hope of return. The French word, except in such phrases as Dieu merci sans merci, is principally used in the sense of “thanks,” and is seen in the old English expression “gramercy,” i.e. grant merci, great, many thanks, which Johnson took for “grant me mercy.” In the medieval Church there were seven “corporal” and seven “spiritual works of mercy” (opera misericordiae); these were (a) the giving of food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, the clothing of the naked, the visitation of the sick and of prisoners, the receiving of strangers, and the burial of the dead; (b) the conversion of sinners, teaching of the ignorant, giving of counsel to the doubtful, forgiveness of injuries, patience under wrong, prayer for the living and for the dead. The order of the Sisters of Mercy is a religious sisterhood of the Roman Church. It is found chiefly in England and Ireland, but there are branches in the United States of America, in South America and in Australia and New Zealand. It was founded in 1827 in Dublin by Miss Catherine McAuley (1787–1841). The object was to perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mere

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​MERE. 1. (From Lat. merus, pure, unmixed; O. Fr. mier), an adjective primarily indicating something pure and unmixed; thus “mere wine” implied pure and unadulterated wine, as “mere folly” expressed folly pure and simple. Modern usage has, however, given both to the adjective “mere” and the adverb “merely” a deprecatory and disparaging idea, so that expressions like “the mere truth,” a “mere statement of fact,” &c., often convey the impression that they are far from being “mere” in the sense of “entire” or “absolute,” but are, on the contrary, fragmentary and incomplete. The earlier idea of the word is retained in some legal phrases, especially in the phrase “mere motion,” that is, of one’s own initiative without help or suggestion from the outside. Another legal phrase is “mere right” (law Latin jus merum), i.e. right without possession.
2. A word which appears in various forms in several Teutonic and other languages; cf. Dutch and Ger. Meer. From the cognate Lat. mare are derived the Romanic forms, e.g. Fr. mer, Span. mar, &c.; the word appears also in the derivative “marsh” for “marish”; the ultimate origin has been taken to be an Indo-European root, meaning “to die,” i.e. to lie waste; cf. Sansk. maru, desert), an arm of the sea or estuary; also the name given to lakes, pools and shallow stretches of water inland. In the Fen countries a mere signifies a marsh or a district nearly always under water.
3. (Derived from an O. Eng. source, maere, a wall or boundary; cognate with Lat. murus, a wall), a landmark or boundary, also an object indicating the extent of a property without actually enclosing it. A special meaning is that of a road, which forms a dividing line between two places. A “meresman” is an official appointed by parochial authorities to ascertain the exact boundaries of a parish and to report upon the condition of the roads, bridges, waterways, &c., within them. In the mining districts of Derbyshire a mere is a certain measurement of land in which lead-ore is found.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Meres, Francis

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​MERES, FRANCIS (1565–1647), English divine and author, was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1587, and M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford. His kinsman, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career. In 1602 he became rector of Wing in Rutland, where he had a school. He died on the 29th of January 1647. Meres rendered immense service to the history of Elizabethan literature by the publication of his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). It was one of a series of volumes of short pithy sayings, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. The Palladis Tamia contained moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and embraced sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, and a famous “Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets.” This chapter enumerates the English poets from Chaucer to Meres’s own day, and in each case a comparison with some classical author is instituted. The book was issued in 1634 as a school book, and has been partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811–1815) of Joseph Haslewood, Professor E. Arber’s English Garner, and Gregory Smith’s Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904). A sermon entitled God’s Arithmeticke (1597), and two translations from the Spanish of Luis de Granada entitled Granados Devotion and the Sinners Guide (1598) complete the list of his works.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mercœur, Philippe Emmanuel de Lorraine

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​MERCŒUR, PHILIPPE EMMANUEL DE LORRAINE, Duc de (1558–1602), French soldier, was born on the 9th of September 1558, and married Marie de Luxemburg, duchesse de Penthièvre. In 1582 he was made governor of Brittany by Henry III., who had married his sister. Mercœur put himself at the head of the League in Brittany, and had himself proclaimed protector of the Roman Catholic Church in the province in 1588. Invoking the hereditary rights of his wife, who was a descendant of the dukes of Brittany, he endeavoured to make himself independent in that province, and organized a government at Nantes, calling his son “prince and duke of Brittany.” With the aid of the Spaniards he defeated the duc de Montpensier, whom Henry IV. had sent against him, at Craon in 1592, but the royal troops, reinforced by English contingents, soon recovered the advantage. The king marched against Mercœur in person, and received his submission at Angers on the 20th of March 1598. Mercœur subsequently went to Hungary, where he entered the service of the emperor Rudolph II., and fought against the Turks, taking Stuhlweissenburg (Székes-Fehérvár) in 1599. Mercœur died on the 19th of February 1602.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mercœur, Seigneurs and Dukes of

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​MERCŒUR, SEIGNEURS AND DUKES OF. The estate of Mercœur in Auvergne, France, gave its name to a line of powerful lords, which became extinct in the 14th century, and passed by inheritance to the dauphins of Auvergne, counts of Clermont. In 1426 it passed to the Bourbons by the marriage of Jeanne de Clermont, dauphine of Auvergne, with Louis de Bourbon, count of Montpensier. It formed part of the confiscated estates of the Constable de Bourbon, and was given by Francis I. and Louise of Savoy to Antoine, duke of Lorraine, and his wife, Renée de Bourbon. Nicolas of Lorraine, son of Duke Antoine, was created duke of Mercœur and a peer of France in 1569. His son Philippe Emmanuel (see below) left a daughter, who married the duc de Vendôme in 1609.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mercy-Argenteau, Florimond Claude, Comte de

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​MERCY-ARGENTEAU, FLORIMOND CLAUDE, Comte de (1727–1794), Austrian diplomatist, son of Antoine, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, entered the diplomatic service of Austria, going to Paris in the train of Prince Kaunitz. He became ​Austrian minister at Turin, at St Petersburg, and in 1766 at Paris, where his first work was to strengthen the alliance between France and Austria, which was cemented in 1770 by the marriage of the dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., with Marie Antoinette, daughter of the empress Maria Theresa. When four years later Louis and Marie Antoinette ascended the throne, Mercy-Argenteau became one of the most powerful personages at the French court. He was in Paris during the turbulent years which heralded the Revolution, and his powerful aid was given first to Loménie de Brienne, and then to Necker. In 1792 he became governor-general of the Belgian provinces, which had just been reduced to obedience by Austria, and here his ability and experience made him a very successful ruler. Although at first in favour of moderate courses, Mercy-Argenteau supported the action of Austria in making war upon his former ally after the outbreak of the Revolution, and in July 1794 he was appointed Austrian ambassador to Great Britain, but he died a few days after his arrival in London.
See T. Juste, Le Comte de Mercy-Argenteau (Brussels 1863); A. von Arneth and A. Geoffroy, Correspondances secrètes de Marie Thérèse avec le comte de Mercy (Paris 1874); and A. von Arneth and J. Flammermont, Correspondance secrète de Mercy avec Joseph II. et Kaunitz (Paris 1889–1891). Mercy-Argenteau’s Correspondances secrètes de Marie Thérèse has been condensed and translated into English by Lilian Smythe under the title of A Guardian of Marie Antoinette (2 vols., London 1902).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merejkovsky, Dmitri Sergyeevich

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​MEREJKOVSKY (or Merezhkovskiy), DMITRI SERGYEEVICH (1865–), Russian novelist and critic, was born at St Petersburg in 1865. His trilogy of historical romances, collectively entitled Christ and Antichrist, has been translated into many European languages, notably English and French. It comprises Smert Bogov (Eng. trans. “The Death of the Gods,” London, 1901), the central figure in which is Julian the Apostate; Voskresenie Bogi (“The Forerunner,” London, 1902), which describes the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci; and Antikhrist: Pëtr i Aleksyey (“Peter and Alexis,” London, 1905), which is based on the tragic story of the relations between Peter the Great and his son. The influence of Sienkiewicz can be traced in many of Merejkovsky’s writings, which include critical studies of Pliny the Younger, Calderon, Montaigne, Ibsen, Tolstoy (Tolstoy as Man and Artist, London, 1902), and of Gorki and other Russian Writers. Merejkovsky married Zinaida Nikolaevna, known in Russia for her poems, essays and short stories written under the pseudonym of Zinaida Hippius (or Gippius); her collected poems (1889–1903) were published in Moscow in 1904.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Puisne

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​PUISNE (from O. Fr. puisné, modern puîné, later born, inferior; Lat. postea, afterwards, and natus, born), a term in law meaning “ inferior in rank.” It is pronounced “ puny,” and the word, so spelt, has become an ordinary adjective meaning weak or undersized. The judges and barons of the common law courts at Westminster, other than those having a distinct title, were called puisne. By the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1877, a “ puisne judge ” is defined as a judge of the High Court other than the lord chancellor, the lord chief justice of England, the master of the rolls, the lord chief justice of the common pleas, and the lord chief baron, and their successors respectively.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Puff-bird

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PUFF-BIRD, the name first given, according to W. Swainson (Zool. Illustrations, 1st series, vol. ii.. text to pl. 99), by English residents in Brazil to a group of birds now placed in the sub-family Bucconinae, which with the Galbulinae or jacamars form
the family Galbulidae of Coraciiform birds standing between the trogons (q.v.) and barbets, for a long time confounded, under the general name of barbets, with the Capitonidae of modern systematists. Each group has formed the subject of an elaborate monograph — the Capitonidae being treated by C. H. T. and G. F. L. Marshall (London, 1870-1871), and the Bucconidae by P. L. Sclater (London, 1879-1882). The Bucconinae are zygodactylous birds confined to the neotropical region, in the middle parts of which, and especially in its sub-Andean subregion, they are, as regards species, abundant; while only two seem to reach Guatemala and but one Paraguay. As with most South American birds, the habits and natural history of the Bucconidae have been but little studied, and of only one species, which happens to belong to a rather abnormal genus, has the nidification been described. This is the Chelidoptera tenebrosa, which is said to breed in holes in banks, and to lay white eggs much like those of the kingfisher and consequently those of the jacamars. From his own observation Swainson writes (loc. cit.) that puff-birds are very grotesque in appearance. They will sit nearly motionless for hours on the dead bough of a tree, and while so sitting “the disproportionate size of the head is rendered more conspicuous by the bird raising its feathers so as to appear not unlike a puff-ball. . . . When frightened their form is suddenly changed by the feathers lying quite flat.” They are very confiding birds and will often station themselves a few yards only from a window. The Bucconidae almost without exception are very plainly-coloured, and the majority have a spotted or mottled plumage suggestive of immaturity. The first puff-bird known to Europeans seems to have been that described by G. de L. Marcgrav, under the name of “tamatia,” by which it is said to have been called in Brazil, and there is good reason to think that his description and figure — the last, comic as it is in outline and expression, having been copied by F. Willughby and many of the older authors — apply to the Bucco maculatus of modern ornithology a bird placed by M. J. Brisson (Ornithologie, iv. 524) among the kingfishers. But if so, Marcgrav described and figured the same species twice, since his “Matuitui” is also Brisson's “Martin-pescheur tacheté du Brésil.”
P. L. Sclater divides the family into 7 genera, of which Bucco is the largest and contains 20 species. The others are Malacoptila and Monacha, each with 7, Nonnula with 5, Chelidoptera with 2, and Micromonacha and Hapaloptila with 1 species each. The most showy puff-birds are those of the genus Monacha, with an inky-black plumage, usually diversified by white about the head, and a red or yellow bill.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Puerto de Santa Maria

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​PUERTO DE SANTA MARIA, a seaport of southern Spain, in the province of Cadiz, on the right bank of the river Guadalete, with a station on the railway from Cadiz to Seville. Pop. (1900), 20,120. Puerto de Santa Maria, commonly called “ El Puerto,” is probably the Menesthei Portus of Ptolemy. Its most important industry is the wine trade; there are also glass, liqueur, alcohol, starch and soap manufactures. The principal buildings are a Moorish citadel, a Gothic church founded in the 13th century, a Jesuit college, and a bull-ring which accommodates 12,000 spectators. The town is noted for its bull-fights, that given here in honour of Wellington being the subject of the considerably idealized description in Byron's Childe Harold.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Puff-ball

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PUFF-BALL, in botany, the common name for a genus of fungi (known botanically as Lycoperdon), and so called because of the cloud of brown dust-like spores which are emitted when the mature plant bursts. They are common in meadows and woods and on heaths or lawns, and when young resemble white balls, sometimes with a short stalk, and are fleshy in texture. If cut across in this state, they show a compact rind enclosing a loose tissue, in the interspaces of which the spores are developed; as the fungus matures it changes to yellowish-brown and brown and when ripe the rind tears at the apex and the spores escape through the aperture when any pressure is applied to the ball. When white and fleshy the fungus is edible. The fibrous mass which remains after the spores have escaped has been used for tinder or as a styptic for wounds. The giant puff-ball, Lycoperdon giganteum, reaches a foot or more in diameter.