OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Musäus, Johann Karl August

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​MUSÄUS, JOHANN KARL AUGUST (1735–1787), German author, was born on the 29th of March 1735 at Jena, studied theology at the university, and would have become the pastor of a parish but for the resistance of some peasants, who objected that he had been known to dance. In 1760 to 1762 he published in three volumes his first work, Grandison der Zweite, afterwards (in 1781–1782) rewritten and issued with a new title, Der deutsche Grandison. The object of this book was to satirize Samuel Richardson’s hero, who had many sentimental admirers in Germany. In 1763 Musäus was made master of the court pages at Weimar, and in 1769 he became professor at the Weimar gymnasium. His second book—Physiognomische Reisen—did not appear until 1778–1779. It was directed against Lavater, and attracted much favourable attention. In 1782 to 1786 he published his best work Volksmärchen der Deutschen. Even in this series of tales, the substance of which Musäus collected among the people, he could not refrain from satire. The stories, therefore, lack the simplicity of genuine folk-lore. In 1785 was issued Freund Heins Erscheinungen in Holbeins Manier by J. R. Schellenberg, with explanations in prose and verse by Musäus. A collection of stories entitled Straussfedern, of which a volume appeared in 1787, Musäus was prevented from completing by his death on the 28th of October 1787.
The Volksmärchen have been frequently reprinted (Düsseldorf, 1903, &c.). They were translated into French in 1844, and three of the stories are included in Carlyle’s German Romance (1827); Musäus’s Nachgelassene Scriften were edited by his relative, A. von Kotzebue (1791). See M. Müller, J. K. A. Musäus (1867), and an essay by A. Stern in Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts (1893).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Muster

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​MUSTER (Mid. Eng. mostre, moustre, adapted from the similar O. Fr. forms; Lat. monstrare), originally an exhibition, show, review, an exhibition of strength, prowess or power. One of the meanings of this common Romanic Word, viz. pattern, sample, is only used in commercial usage in English, (e.g. in the cutlery trade), but it has passed into Teutonic languages, Ger. Muster, Du. mouster. The most general meaning is for the assembling of soldiers and sailors for inspection and review, and more particularly for the ascertainment and verification of the numbers on the roll. This use is seen in the Med. Lat. monstrum and monstratio, “recensio militum” (Du Cange, Gloss. s.v.). In the “enlistment” system of army organization during the 16th and 17th centuries, and later in certain special survivals, each regiment was “enlisted” by its colonel and reviewed by special officers, “muster-masters,” who vouched for the members on the pay roll of the regiment representing its actual strength. This was a necessary precaution in the days when it was in the power of the commander of a unit to fill the muster roll with the names of fictitious men, known in the military slang of France and England as passe-volants and “faggots” respectively. The chief officer at headquarters was the muster-master-general, later commissary general of musters. In the United States the term is still commonly used, and a soldier is “mustered out” when he is officially discharged from military service.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mutiny

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​MUTINY (from an old verb “mutine,” O. Fr. mutin, meutin, a sedition; cf. mod. Fr. émeute; the original is the Late Lat. mota, commotion, from movere, to move), a resistance by force to recognized authority, an insurrection, especially applied to a sedition in any military or naval forces of the state. Such offences are dealt with by courts-martial. (See Military Law and Court Martial.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mutsu, Munemitsu, Count

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​MUTSU, MUNEMITSU, Count (1842–1896), Japanese statesman, was born in 1842 in Wakayama. A vehement opponent of “clan government”—that is, usurpation of administrative posts by men of two or three fiefs, an abuse which threatened to follow the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate—he conspired to assist Saigo’s rebellion and was imprisoned from 1878 until 1883. While in prison he translated Bentham’s Utilitarianism. In 1886, after a visit to Europe, he received a diplomatic appointment, and held the portfolio of foreign affairs during the China-Japan War (1894–95), being associated with Prince (then Count) Ito as peace plenipotentiary. He negotiated the first of the revised treaties (that with Great Britain), and for these various services he received the title of count. He died in Tōkyō in 1896. His statue in bronze stands before the foreign office in Tōkyō.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vollmar, Georg Heinrich von

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VOLLMAR, GEORG HEINRICH VON (1850- ), German Socialist, was born at Munich in 1850. He was educated in a school attached to a Benedictine monastery at Augsburg, and in 1865 entered the Bavarian army as a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment. He served in the campaign of 1866, and then entered the papal army as a volunteer. In 1869 he returned to Germany, and during the war with France served in the army railway department. He was severely wounded at Blois and pensioned. Permanently crippled by his wounds, he devoted himself to political and social studies. In 1872 he was converted to the principles of Social Democracy, and threw himself with great energy into political agitation. In 1877 he became editor of the party organ at Dresden, and under the Socialist law was repeatedly condemned to various terms of imprisonment, and was also expelled from that city. From 1879 to 1882 he lived at Zürich, then the headquarters of Social Democracy, when, besides attending the university, he took part in editing the Social Demokrat. In 1881 he was elected member of the Reichstag, and from 1883 to 1889 was a member of the Saxon diet. After 1885 he resided in Bavaria, and it was to him that was chiefly due the great success of the Socialists in the older Bavarian provinces. He identified himself with the more moderate and opportunist section of the Socialist party, decisively dissociating himself from the doctrine of a sudden and violent overthrow of society, and urging his associates to co-operate in bringing about a gradual development towards the Socialistic state. He refused to identify Social Democracy with the extreme views as to religion and the family advocated by Bebel, and successfully resisted attempts made in 1891 to expel him from
the party in consequence of his opinions. He became a member of the Bavarian Diet in 1893.
In addition to a couple of books on the preservation of forests, he published Der isolierte Soziale Staat (Zürich, 1880).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Volhynia

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​Volhynia, a government of south-western Russia, bounded by the Polish governments of Lublin and Siedlce on the W., Grodno and Minsk on the N., Kiev on the E. and Podolia and Galicia (Austria) on the S., with an area of 27,690 sq. m. A broad, flat spur of the Carpathians—the Avratynsk plateau—which enters from the west and stretches out eastward towards the Dnieper occupies its southern portion, reaching a maximum elevation of 1200 ft.; another branch of the Carpathians in the west of the government ranges between 700 and 900 ft. at its highest points. Both are deeply grooved in places, and the crags give a hilly aspect to the districts in which they occur. The remainder of the government, which is quite flat, with an imperceptible slope towards the marshes of Pinsk, is known as the Polyesie (see Minsk).
The population in 1906 was estimated at 3,547,500. Some three-fourths of the population are Little Russians; the other elements are White and Great Russians, Poles (5.2%), Jews (13.2%) and Germans (5.7%). The government is divided into twelve districts, the chief towns of which are Zhitomir, the capital, Dubno, Kovel, Kremenets, Lutsk, Novograd Volhynskiy, Ostrog, Ovruch, Vladimir Volhynskiy, Rovno, Staro-Konstantinov and Zaslavl. The conditions of peasant ownership differ from those which prevail in other parts of Russia, and of the total area the peasants hold approximately one-half; 42% of the total is in the hands of private owners, a considerable number of Germans having settled and bought land in the government.
Forests cover nearly 50% of the area in the north (that is, in the Polyesie) and 15% elsewhere. Agriculture is well developed in the south, and in 1900 there were 4,222,400 acres (24%) under cereal crops alone. In the Polyesie the principal occupations are connected with the export of timber and firewood, the preparation of pitch, tar, potash and wooden wares, and boat-building. Lignite and coal, some graphite and kaolin, are mined, as also amber, which is often found in big lumps. Manufacturing industries are not very highly developed. The factories are confined to sugar works, distilleries, woollen mills, and candle, tobacco, glass, cloth and agricultural machinery works. Domestic industry in the villages is chiefly limited to the making of wooden goods, including parquetry. The exports of grain and limber, chiefly to Germany and Great Britain, and of wool and cattle, are considerable.
Volhynia has been inhabited by Slavs from a remote antiquity. In Nestor’s Annals its people are mentioned under the name of Dulebs, and later in the 12th century they were known as Velhynians and Buzhans (dwellers on the Bug). From the 9th century the towns of Volhynia-Vladimir, Ovruch, Lutsk and Dubno were ruled by descendants of the Scandinavian or Varangian chief Rurik, and the land of Volhynia remained independent until the 14th century, when it fell under Lithuania. In 1569 it was annexed to Poland, and so remained until 1795, when it was taken possession of by Russia.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vologda (town)

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​VOLOGDA, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, situated in its south-western corner on the river Vologda, above its confluence with the navigable Sukhona, 127 m. by rail N. of Yaroslavl. Pop. (1881) 17,025; (1897) 27,822. It is an old town, having many ancient churches, including one which dates from the 12th century, and the cathedral, founded in 1568. Vologda is a considerable commercial centre—flax, linseed, oats, hemp, butter and eggs being exported to both St Petersburg and Archangel. It has distilleries, tanneries, and oil, soap, tobacco, candle and fur-dressing works.
Vologda existed as a trading town as early as the 12th century. It was a colony of Novgorod, and was founded in 1147, and carried on a brisk trade in flax, tallow, furs, corn, leather and manufactured goods. In 1273 it was plundered by the prince of Tver in alliance with the Tatars, but soon recovered. Moscow disputed its possession with Novgorod until the 15th century; the Moscow princes intrigued to find support amidst the poorer inhabitants against the richer Novgorod merchants, and four successive times Vologda had to fight against its metropolis. It was definitely annexed to Moscow in 1447. When Archangel was founded, and opened for foreign trade in 1553, Vologda became the chief depot for goods exported through that channel. Polish bands plundered it in 1613, and the plague of 1648 devastated it, but it maintained its commercial importance until the foundation of St Petersburg, when Russian foreign trade took another channel.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Volney, Constantin François Chassebœuf, Comte de

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​VOLNEY, CONSTANTIN FRANÇOIS CHASSEBŒUF, Comte de (1757-1820), French savant, was born at Craon (Maine-et-Loire) on the 3rd of February 1757, of good family; he was at first surnamed Boisgirais from his father's estate, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney. He spent some four years in Egypt and Syria, and published his Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie in 1787, and Considérations sur la guerre des Turcs et de la Russie in 1788. He was a member both of the States-General and of the Constituent Assembly. In 1791 appeared Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires, an essay on the philosophy of history, containing a vision which predicts the final union of all religions by the recognition of the common truth underlying them all. Volney tried to put his politico-economic theories into practice in Corsica, where in 1792 he bought an estate and made an attempt to cultivate colonial produce. He was thrown into prison during the Jacobin triumph, but escaped the guillotine. He was some time professor of history at the newly founded École Normale. In 1795 he undertook a journey to the United States, where he was accused in 1797 of being a French spy sent to prepare for the reoccupation of Louisiana by France. He was obliged to return to France in 1798. The results of his travels took form in his Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (1803). He was not a partisan of Napoleon, but, being a moderate man, a savant and a Liberal, was impressed into service by the emperor, who made him a count and put him into the senate. At the restoration he was made a peer of France. He became a member of the Institute in 1795. He died in Paris on the 25th of April 1820.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Volo

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​VOLO, a town and seaport of Greece, on the east coast of Thessaly, at the head, of the gulf to which it gives its name. Pop. (1907) 23,319. It is the chief seaport and second industrial town of Thessaly, connected by rail with the town of Larissa. The anchorage is safe, vessels loading and discharging by means of lighters. The port has a depth of 23 to 25 ft.
The Kastro, or citadel, of Volo stands on or close to the site of Pagasae, whence the gulf took the name of Sinus Pagasaeus or Pagasicus, and which was one of the oldest places of which mention occurs in the legendary history of Greece. From this port the Argonautic expedition was said to have sailed, and it was already a flourishing place under the tyrant Jason, who from the neighbouring Pherae ruled over all Thessaly. Two miles farther south stand the ruins of Demetrias, founded (290 B.C.) by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and for some time a favourite residence of the Macedonian kings. On the opposite side of the little inlet at the head of the gulf rises the hill of Episcopi, on which stood the ancient city of Iolcus. At Dimini, about 3 m. W. of Volo, several tombs have been found which yielded remains of the later Mycenean Age.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vollendam

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​Vollendam, a small fishing village of Holland in the province of North Holland, adjoining Edam on the shores of the Zuider Zee. It is remarkable for the quaintness of the buildings and the picturesque costume of the villagers, who are of a singularly dark and robust type. Many artists have been attracted to settle here. Vollendam has its origin in the building of the great sea-dam for the new waterway to Edam in the middle of the 14th century. On the seaward side of the dike are some houses built on piles in the style of lake dwellings.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Volksrust

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​Volksrust, a town of the Transvaal, 175 m. S.E. of Johannesburg and 308 m. N.N.W. of Durban. Pop. (1904) 2382, of whom 1342 were whites. The town lies at an elevation of 5429 ft. just within the Transvaal frontier and 4 m. N. of the pass through the Drakensberg known as Laing’s Nek. It is the centre of a rich agricultural district. It was founded by the Boer government in 1888. As a customs port of entry it was of some importance, and it maintains its position as a distributing depot. It was created a municipality in 1903. Sandstone is quarried in the district.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Volk, Leonard Wells

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​Volk, Leonard Wells (1828–1895), American sculptor, was born at Wellstown (now Wells), Hamilton county, New York, on the 7th of November 1828. He first followed the trade of a marble cutter with his father at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1848 he opened a studio at St Louis, Missouri, and in 1855 was sent by his wife’s cousin, Stephen A. Douglas, to Rome to study. Returning to America in 1857, he settled in Chicago, where he helped to establish an Academy of Design and was for eight years its head. Among his principal works are the Douglas monument at Chicago and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument at Rochester, New York, and statues of President Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas (in the Illinois State Capitol at Springfield, Ill.), and of General James Shields (in Statuary Hall, Capitol, Washington), Elihu B. Washburn, Zachariah Chandler and David Davis. In 1860 he made a life-mask (now in the National Museum, Washington) of Lincoln, of whom only one other, by Clark Mills in 1865, was ever made. His son, Douglas Volk (b. 1856), figure and portrait painter, who studied under J. L. Gérôme in Paris, became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1880 and of the National Academy of Design in 1899.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Radical

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​RADICAL (Lat. radix, a root), in English politics, a term applied to politicians who desire to make thorough, or radical, changes in the constitution and in the social order generally. Although it had been used in a somewhat similar way during the reign of Charles II., the term Radical, in its political sense, originated about the end of the 18th century, probably owing its existence to Charles James Fox, who, in 1797, declared that “ radical reform ” was necessary. The ideas of the first Radicals were borrowed largely from the authors of the French Revolution. The word was more generally employed during the disturbed period between the close of the Napoleonic wars and the passing of the great Reform Bill of 1832, and was applied to agitators like Henry Hunt and William Cobbett. After the Reform Bill had become law, the advocates of violent change were drawn into the Chartist movement, and the Radicals became less revolutionary both in speech and object. Thus in 1842 an observer writes:—“The term Radical, once employed as a name of low reproach, has found its way into high places, and is gone forth as the title of a class who glory in their designation.” About this time many members of Parliament were known as Radicals, among these men being George Grote and Joseph Hume. The Radicals never formed a distinct party in the House of Commons, and subsequently they formed simply the advanced section of the Liberal party. For a few years in the 19th century the wearing of a white hat was looked upon as the distinguishing mark of a Radical, a hat of this colour having been worn by Hunt when addressing meetings.
See W. Harris, History of the Radical Party in Parliament (1885); S. Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (new ed., 1893); C. B. Roylance Kent, The English Radicals: an Historical Sketch (1899).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Radius

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​RADIUS, properly a straight rod, bar or staff, the original meaning of the Latin word, to which also many of the various meanings seen in English were attached; it was thus applied to the spokes of a wheel, to the semi-diameter of a circle or sphere and to a ray or beam of light, “ray” itself coming through the Fr. raie from radius. From this last sense comes “ radiant, ” “ radiation, ” and allied words. In mathematics, a radius is a straight line drawn from the centre to the circumference of a circle or to the surface of a sphere; in anatomy the name is applied to the outer one of the two bones of the fore-arm in man or to the corresponding bone in the fore-leg of animals. It is also used in various other anatomical senses in botany, ichthyology, entomology, &c. A further application of the term is to an area the extent of which is marked by the length of the radius from the point which is taken as the centre; thus, in London, for the purpose of reckoning the fare of hackney carriages, the radius is taken as extending four miles in any direction from Charing Cross.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Radom (government)

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​RADOM, a government of Russian Poland, occupying a triangular space between the Vistula and Pilica, and bounded N. by the governments of Warsaw and Siedlce, E. by Lublin, S. by the crown land of Austrian Galicia and the Polish government of Kielce, and W. by that of Piotrków. The area is 4768 sq. m. Its southern part stretches over the well-wooded Sandomir heights, a series of short ranges of hills, 800 to 1000 ft. in altitude, intersected by deep valleys, which, running west and east and drained by tributaries of the Vistula, are excellently adapted for agriculture. In its central parts, the government is level, the soil fertile, and the surface, which is diversified here and there with wood, is broken up by occasional spurs (800 ft.) of the Lysa Góra Mountains. The northern districts consist of low, flat tracts with undefined valleys, exposed to frequent floods and covered over large areas with marshes; the basin of the Pilica, notorious for its unhealthiness, is throughout a low marshy plain. Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian and Triassic deposits appear in the south, Cretaceous and Jurassic in the middle, and Tertiary in the north. Extensive tracts are covered with Glacial deposits,—the Scandinavian erratics reaching as far south as Ilza; these last in their turn are overlain by widespread post-Glacial lacustrine deposits. The climate is cold and moist, the mean temperature for the year being 47°·5 Fahr., for January -5°·8, and for July 77°. The Vistula skirts the government on the south and east, and is an important means of communication, steamers plying as far up as Sandomir (Sedomierz). The Sandomir district suffers occasionally from disastrous inundations of the river. The tributaries of the Vistula are short and small, those of the Pilica are sluggish streams meandering amidst marshes. The estimated population in 1906 was 932,800 The government is divided into seven districts, the chief towns of which are Radom, Ilza, Konskie, Kozienice, Opatów, Opoczno and Sandomir. Out of the total area about 50% is under cultivation and 28% under forests. The principal crops are wheat, rye, barley, oats, buck-wheat, hemp, flax and potatoes, these last chiefly cultivated for distilleries. Grain is exported. Live stock is kept in large numbers. Manufactures have considerably developed of late years, the government being rich in iron ore, while coal and zinc occur, as also marble, gypsum, alabaster, potters’ clay and red sandstone. The iron industry occupies more than 60,000 workmen, and turns out annually some 100,000 tons of pig iron, 25,000 tons of iron, and 550,000 tons of steel. There are several sugar works, tanneries, flour-mills, machinery works, distilleries, breweries and brick works. Trade is not very extensive, the only channel of commerce being the Vistula.  (P.A.K.; J.T.Be.)