OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Collins of Kensington, Richard Henn Collins, Baron

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​COLLINS OF KENSINGTON, RICHARD HENN COLLINS, Baron (1842–1911), English jurist and lord of appeal, was born in Dublin Jan. 1 1842, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Downing College, Cambridge. He was called to the English bar in 1867 and joined the northern circuit. He edited the 7th, 8th and 9th editions of Smith’s Leading Cases, was made a Q.C. in 1883 and a judge in 1891. In 1897 he became a judge of appeal and a privy councillor, in 1901 Master of the Rolls, and in 1907 a lord of appeal (resigning in 1910). In 1899 he represented Great Britain on the tribunal appointed to arbitrate in the boundary dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela; and in 1904 he was chairman of the commission which investigated the case of Adolf Beck (see 14.287) and resulted in his conviction being annulled. Lord Collins died at Hove Jan. 3 1911.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colvin, Sir Sidney

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COLVIN, SIR SIDNEY (1845-), English man of letters (see 6.748), was knighted in 1911, and retired from his position in the British Museum in 1912. In 1911 he published an edition of the Letters of R. L. Stevenson and in 1917 John Keats, His Life and Poetry. His autobiographical Memoirs and Places appeared in Nov. 1921.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Combes, Justin Louis Émile

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COMBES, [JUSTIN LOUIS] ÉMILE (1835-1921), French statesman (see 6.751). The campaign for the separation of Church and State was the last big political action in his life. While still possessed of great influence over extreme Radicals, M. Combes took but little public part in politics after his resignation of the premiership in 1905. He joined the Briand Ministry of Oct. 1915 as one of the five Elder Statesmen, but without portfolio. He died May 26 1921.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Collings, Jesse

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​COLLINGS, JESSE (1831–1920), British politician, was born at Littleham, Exmouth, Devon., Jan. 9 1831. He was partly educated at home, and also at Church House school, Stoke, near Plymouth. In 1866 he settled in Birmingham, where he founded the mercantile firm of Collings & Wallis, and had a highly successful business career. Entering municipal life, he was intimately associated with Joseph Chamberlain, whose devoted henchman he became. In 1878 he was elected mayor of Birmingham, and in 1879 retired from business. In 1880 he was elected as Liberal M.P. for Ipswich, and during this period became prominent as an advocate of the Radical land policy, known as “three acres and a cow.” In Dec. 1885 Lord Salisbury’s Government was defeated on an amendment to the Address concerning this policy, moved by Mr. Collings. In 1886 he entered the Liberal Government as parliamentary secretary to the Local Government Board, but resigned with Chamberlain over Gladstone’s Home Rule policy. The same year he successfully contested the Bordesley division of Birmingham as a Liberal-Unionist. In 1895, on the appointment of Chamberlain to the position of Colonial Secretary in the Unionist Government, Collings became under-secretary to the Home Office, retaining the post until 1902. He resigned his seat in Parliament in 1918. He was always interested in agricultural affairs, and was the founder (1872) of the Rural Labourers’ League and also of the Exminster industrial school. In 1906 he published Land Reform, in 1914 The Colonization of Rural Britain, and his Autobiography, written in conjunction with Sir J. L. Green, appeared in 1920. He died at Edgbaston, Birmingham, Nov. 20 1920.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Collyer, Robert

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​COLLYER, ROBERT (1823–1912), American divine (see 6.694), died in New York City Nov. 30 1912.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Collier, Price

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​COLLIER, PRICE (1860–1913), American writer, was born at Davenport, Iowa, May 25 1860. He lived, while a boy, in Switzerland and England. After studying at Leipzig and at the Harvard Divinity School (B.D. 1882) he became a Unitarian clergyman, but retired from the ministry in 1891. He is best known for his clever sketches of national character in America and the Americans from the French Point of View (1896); England and the English from an American Point of View (1909); The West in the East from an American Point of View (1911) and Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View (1913). He died on the island of Fünen, in the Baltic Sea, Nov. 3 1913.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Columbia University

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (see 6.739). The work of Columbia University during the period 1910-20 was greatly extended. A school of journalism was founded in 1912, a school of business in 1915, and a school of dentistry in 1917. In order to render the largest possible service to the community, courses in university extension were organized for men and women who could give only a portion of their time to study, but who desired to pursue subjects included in a liberal education. These courses, as such, did not lead to degrees, but might be offered as credit toward a degree under one of the faculties. Under university extension there was organized also an institute of arts and sciences which conducted series of lectures and recitals of a popular nature, as well as a system of courses for home study for persons unable to attend classes in the university. These courses also did not lead to academic credit or degrees. In 1920 there were in Columbia University in all departments 1,150 instructors and administrative officers, and in the twelve months ending June 30 1920, 28,314 students were enrolled. Of these, roughly one-third were registered in the 1919 summer session; one-third in the degree-granting schools and faculties during the academic year 1919-20; and one-third in university extension during the academic year 1919-20.
The productive endowment of the university, including the endowments of Teachers College, Barnard College, and the College of Pharmacy, amounted in 1920 to $47,000,000, which, added to the property occupied for educational purposes, made a total capital investment of $72,000,000. To meet the increased costs of education, the fees in the several schools were raised so that they ranged in 1921 from $250 to $350. The alumni of the university were given a definite part in the government of the institution by an agreement under which six of the 24 trustees were elected on alumni nomination. In 1912 the corporate title of the university was changed from the “Trustees of Columbia College in the City of New York” to the “Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.”
The university took an active part in the World War. Immediately upon the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany in Feb. 1917, it placed its resources, both physical and intellectual, at the service of the Government. There were established at the university schools for training men for both the army and the navy, including work in radio, photography, quartermaster's routine, explosives, gas engines, submarine detection, and the Student Army training corps, which prepared men for the various officers' training camps of both armed services. Students, faculty and alumni to the number of 4,125 were enlisted in the army and navy, and 2,175 left their previous occupations and assisted the Government in some one of the civilian branches. Two hundred Columbia men died in the war.
(N. M. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Willughby, Francis

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​WILLUGHBY, FRANCIS (1635-1672), English ornithologist and ichthyologist, son of Sir Francis Willughby, was born at Middleton, Warwickshire, in 1635. He is memorable as the pupil, friend and patron as well as the active and original co-worker of John Ray (q. v.), and hence to be reckoned as one of the most important precursors of Linnaeus. His connexion with Ray dated from his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge (1653-1659); after concluding his academic life by a brief sojourn at Oxford, and acquiring considerable experience of travel in England, he made an extensive Continental tour in his company. The specimens, figures and notes thus accumulated were in great part elaborated on his return into his Ornithologia, which, however, he did not live to publish, having injured a naturally delicate constitution by alternate exposure and over-study. This work was published in 1676, and translated by Ray as the Ornithology of Fr. Willughby; (London, 1678, fol.); the same friend published his Historia Piscium (1686, fol.). Willughby died at Middleton Hall on the 3rd of July 1672.
In Ray's preface to the former work he gives Willughby much of the credit usually assigned to himself, both critic and systematist. Thus, while founding on Gesner and Aldrovanus, he omitted their irrelevancies, being careful to exclude, “hieroglyphics, emblems, morals, fables, presages or ought else pertaining to divinity, ethics, grammar, or any part of humane learning, and present him [the reader] with what properly belongs only to natural history.” Again, he not only devised artificial keys to his species and genera, but, “that he might clear up all these obscurities [of former writers] and render the knowledge and distinction of species facile to all that should come after, he bent his endeavours mainly to find out certain characteristic notes of each kind,” while finally, in apologizing for his engravings, he yet not unjustly claims that “they are best and truest of any hitherto graven in brass.” (See also Ornithology.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, Horace Hayman

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A full list of Wilson’s works may be found in an Annual Report of the Asiatic Society for 1860. A considerable number of Sanskrit MSS. (540 vols.) collected by Wilson in India are now in the Bodleian library.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilmot, David

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​WILMOT, DAVID (1814–1868), American political leader, was born at Bethany, Pennsylvania, on the 20th of January 1814. He was admitted to the bar in 1834 and practised law in Towanda. He entered politics as a Democrat, served in the National House of Representatives from 1845 to 1851, and although he favoured the Walker Tariff, the Mexican War and other party measures, opposed the extension of slavery. On the 8th of August 1846, when a bill was introduced appropriating $2,000,000 to be used by the president in negotiating a treaty of peace with Mexico, Wilmot immediately offered the following amendment: “Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted.” The amendment, famous in American history as the “Wilmot Proviso,” was adopted by the House, but was defeated, with the original bill, by the Senate’s adjournment. A similar measure was brought forward at the next session, the appropriation, however, being increased to $3,000,000, and the amendment being extended to include all territory which might be acquired by the United States; in this form it passed the House by a vote of 115 to 105; but the Senate refused to concur, passed a bill of its own without the amendment; and the House, owing largely to the influence of General Lewis Cass, in March 1847, receded from its position. The amendment was never actually adopted by Congress, and was in fact expressly repudiated in the Compromise of 1850, and its content declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. Although known as the Wilmot Proviso it really originated with Jacob Brinkerhoff (1810–1880) of Ohio, Wilmot being selected to present it only because his party standing was more regular. The extension of the principle to territory other than that to be acquired from Mexico was probably due to Preston King (1806–1865) of New York. Wilmot supported Van Buren in 1848 and entered the Republican party at the time of its formation, and was a delegate to the national conventions of 1856 and 1860. He was president judge of the 13th Judicial District of Pennsylvania in 1853–1861, United States senator in 1861–1863 and Judge of the United States Court of Claims in 1863–1868. He died at Towanda, Pennsylvania, on the 16th of March 1868.
See G. P. Garrison, Westward Extension (New York and London, 1906).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, Henry

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​WILSON, HENRY (1812-1875), vice-president of the United States from 1873 to 1875, was born at Farmington, New Hampshire, on the 16th of February 1812. His name originally was Jeremiah J. Colbaith. His father was a day-labourer and very poor. At ten years of age the son went to work as a farm-labourer. He was fond of reading, and before the end of his apprenticeship had read more than a thousand volumes. At the age of twenty-one, for some unstated reason, he had his name changed by Act of the Legislature to that of Henry Wilson. At Natick, Massachusetts, whither he travelled on foot, he learned the trade of shoemaker, and during his leisure hours studied much and read with avidity. For short periods, also, he studied in the academies of Strafford, N.H., Wolfeborough, N.H., and Concord, N.H. After successfully establishing himself as a shoe manufacturer, he attracted attention as a public speaker in support of William Henry Harrison during the presidential campaign of 1840. He was in the state House of Representatives in 1841-42, 1846 and 1850, and in the Senate in 1844-45 and 1851-52. In 1848 he left the Whig party and became one of the chief leaders of the Free Soil party, serving as presiding officer of that party's national convention in 1852, acting as chairman of the Free Soil national committee and editing from 1848 to 1851 the Boston Republican, which he made the chief Free Soil organ. The Free Soil party nominated him for governor of the state in 1853, but he was defeated. For a short time (1855) he identified himself with the American or Know Nothing party, and afterwards acted with the Republican party. In 1855 he was elected to the United States Senate and remained there by re-elections until 1873. His uncompromising opposition to the institution of slavery furnished the keynote of his earlier senatorial career, and he soon took rank as one of the ablest and most effective anti-slavery orators in the United States. He had been deeply interested from 1840 until 1850 in the militia of his state, and had risen through its grades of service to that of brigadier-general. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he was made chairman of the military committee of the Senate, and in this position performed most laborious and important work for the four years of the war. The Republicans nominated Wilson for the vice-presidency in 1872, and he was elected; but he died on the 22nd of November 1875 before completing his term of office.
He published, besides many orations, a History of the Anti-Slavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses (1865); Military Measures of the United States Congress (1868); a History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses (1868) and a History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 vols., 1872-1875), his most important work.
The best biography is that by Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (Boston, 1876).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wills, William Gorman

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​WILLS, WILLIAM GORMAN (1828–1891), Irish dramatist, was born at Kilmurry, Ireland, on the 28th of January 1828, the son of James Wills (1790–1868), author of Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen (1839-1847). The son was educated at Waterford Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin. After several years of journalistic and literary work in Dublin, he settled in London, where he wrote stories for the magazines. In 1868 he determined that he could make a better living at portrait-painting, for which, though his art education had been meagre, he had always had talent. He soon made a fair income, though in the long run his excessive Bohemianism, coupled with persistent absent-mindedness, lost him many sitters. Meanwhile he had begun to write for the stage. His first original work was the Man o'Airlie, produced at the Princess's theatre, London, in 1867. Early in 1872 he was engaged by Colonel Bateman as “dramatist to the Lyceum” at an annual salary. Under the terms of his agreement he wrote Medea in Corinth, Charles I. and Eugene Aram, all of which were produced at the Lyceum in 1872–1873. With Charles I., in which Mr (afterwards Sir Henry) Irving confirmed the reputation he had earned by his performance in The Bells, Wills made a popular success, which he repeated in Olivia (adapted from Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield) in 1873. From this date onwards Wills wrote continuously, and till 1887 his name was practically never absent from the bill of some London theatre. His work never, however, quite came up to the expectations which were based on his genuine ability, ​and much of it is of an inferior quality. In Claudian (Princess's Theatre, 1883) and Faust (Lyceum Theatre, 1885) he merely supplied the text to a variety of dramatic situations. In 1887 his mother, whom he had supported for many years, died, and after her death he seemed to have less incentive for work. Wills was a painter by choice, and never put his whole heart into his dramatic work. He had some skill in ballad-writing, shown in the well-known "I'll sing thee songs of Araby." He died on the 13th of December 1891.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, Alexander

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​WILSON, ALEXANDER (1766–1813), American ornithologist, was born in Paisley, Scotland, on the 6th of July 1766. His father, a handloom weaver, soon removed to the country, and there combined weaving with agriculture, distilling and smuggling — conditions which no doubt helped to develop in the boy that love of rural pursuits and adventure which was to determine his career. At first he was placed with a tutor and destined for the church, but afterwards he was apprenticed as a weaver. Then he became a peddler and spent a year or two in travelling through Scotland, recording in his journal every matter of natural history or antiquarian interest. Having incurred a short imprisonment for lampooning the master-weavers in a trade dispute, he emigrated to America in 1794. After a few years of weaving, peddling and desultory observation, he became a village schoolmaster, and in 1802 obtained an appointment near Philadelphia, where he formed the acquaintance of William Bartram the naturalist. Under his influence Wilson began to draw birds, having conceived the idea of illustrating the ornithology of the United States; and thenceforward he steadily accumulated materials and made many expeditions. In 1806 he obtained the assistant-editorship of the American edition of Rees’s Encyclopaedia, and thus acquired more means and leisure for his great work, American Ornithology, the first volume of which appeared in the autumn of 1808, after which he spent the winter in a journey “in search of birds and subscribers.” By the spring of 1813 seven volumes had appeared; but the arduous expedition of that summer, in search of the marine waterfowl to which the remaining volume was to be devoted, gave a shock to his already impaired health, and he succumbed to dysentery at Philadelphia on the 23rd of August 1813.
Of his poems, not excepting the Foresters (Philadelphia, 1805), nothing need now be said, save that they no doubt served to develop his descriptive powers. The eighth and ninth volumes of the American Ornithology were edited after his decease by his friend George Ord, and the work was continued by Lucien Bonaparte (4 vols., Philadelphia, 1825–1833). The complete work was republished several times, and his Miscellaneous Prose Works and Poems was edited with a memoir by the Rev. A. B. Grosart (Paisley, 1876). A statue was erected to him at Paisley in 1876.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, James (administrator)

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​WILSON, JAMES (1835– ), American administrator, was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 16th of August 1835. In 1851 he was taken by his parents to America, where they originally settled in Connecticut, but in 1855 removed to Tama county Iowa. He studied at Iowa College, and in 1861 became a farmer. He was a Republican member of the state House of Representatives in 1868–1873, and was its speaker in 1872–1873, and he was a member of the National House of Representatives from 1873 to 1877 and again in 1883–1885. From 1870 to 1874 he was a regent of the State University of Iowa; in 1877–1883 was a member of the Iowa State Railway Commission, and from 1890 to 1897 was professor of agriculture at the Iowa Agricultural College, at Ames, and director of the State Agricultural Experiment Station. In March 1897 he became Secretary of Agriculture in President McKinley’s Cabinet and served into President Taft’s administration, holding office longer than any other cabinet officer since the organization of the government.