OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lehmann, Peter Martin Orla

See also Orla Lehmann on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LEHMANN, PETER MARTIN ORLA (1810–1870), Danish statesman, was born at Copenhagen on the 15th of May 1810. Although of German extraction his sympathies were with the Danish national party and he contributed to the liberal journal the Kjöbenhavnsposten while he was a student of law at the university of Copenhagen, and from 1839 to 1842 edited, with Christian N. David, the Fädrelandet. In 1842 he was condemned to three months’ imprisonment for a radical speech. He took a considerable part in the demonstrations of 1848, and was regarded as the leader of the “Eiderdänen,” that is, of the party which regarded the Eider as the boundary of Denmark, and the duchy of Schleswig as an integral part of the kingdom. He entered the cabinet of Count A. W. Moltke in March 1848, and was employed on diplomatic missions to London and Berlin in connexion with the Schleswig-Holstein question. He was for some months in 1849 a prisoner of the Schleswig-Holsteiners at Gottorp. A member of the Folkething from 1851 to 1853, of the Landsthing from 1854 to 1870, and from 1856 to 1866 of the Reichsrat, he became minister of the interior in 1861 in the cabinet of K. C. Hall, retiring with him in 1863. He died at Copenhagen on the 13th of September 1870. His book On the Causes of the Misfortunes of Denmark (1864) went through many editions, and his posthumous works were published in 4 vols., 1872–1874.
See Reinhardt, Orla Lehmann og hans samtid (Copenhagen, 1871); J. Clausen, Af O. Lehmanns Papirer (Copenhagen, 1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lehrs, Karl

See also Karl Lehrs on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​LEHRS, KARL (1802–1878), German classical scholar, was born at Königsberg on the 2nd of June 1802. He was of Jewish extraction, but in 1822 he embraced Christianity. In 1845 he was appointed professor of ancient Greek philology in Königsberg University, which post he held till his death on the 9th of June 1878. His most important works are: De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis (1833, 2nd ed. by A. Ludwich, 1882), which laid a new foundation for Homeric exegesis (on the Aristarchean lines of explaining Homer from the text itself) and textual criticism; Quaestiones Epicae (1837); De Asclepiade Myrleano (1845); Herodiani Scripta Tria emendatiora (1848); Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Altertum (1856, 2nd much enlarged ed., 1875), his best-known work; Horatius Flaccus (1869), in which, on aesthetic grounds, he rejected many of the odes as spurious; Die Pindarscholien (1873). Lehrs was a man of very decided opinions, “one of the most masculine of German scholars”; his enthusiasm for everything Greek led him to adhere firmly to the undivided authorship of the Iliad; comparative mythology and the symbolical interpretation of myths he regarded as a species of sacrilege.
See the exhaustive article by L. Friedländer in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xviii.; E. Kammer in C. Bursian’s Jahresbericht (1879); A. Jung, Zur Erinnerung an Karl Lehrs (progr. Meseritz, 1880); A. Ludwich edited Lehrs’ select correspondence (1894) and his Kleine Schriften (1902).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahout

See also Mahout on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MAHOUT (Hind. mahāwat), an elephant-driver. The mahout sits on the elephant’s neck and directs him by voice and by the use of a goad called ankus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahony, Francis Sylvester

See also Francis Sylvester Mahony on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MAHONY, FRANCIS SYLVESTER (1804–1866), known as “Father Prout,” Irish priest and author, son of a woollen manufacturer, was born in Cork in 1804. His classical education was chiefly obtained at a Jesuit college at Amiens, and after studying in Paris he entered the Jesuit college at Rome and was admitted into the Society of Jesus. He served in Switzerland and at Clongoweswood, Ireland, where he was prefect of studies and subsequently master of rhetoric. Here he was involved in scandals that led to his resignation. On going to Italy he was told at Florence that he was expelled from the Society. He succeeded, however, in obtaining priest’s orders at Rome in 1832, and returned to Ireland, but subsequently went to London, officiating for some time in the chapel of the Bavarian Legation. While there he fell in with William Maginn, and about 1834 began to contribute his celebrated “Prout Papers” to Fraser’s Magazine. These consist of episodes in the life of the parish priest “Father Prout,” and dialogues after the model of “Christopher North,” varied by translations of well-known English songs into Latin, Greek, French and Italian verse, which he humorously represents as being the true originals from which the English authors had merely plagiarized them. Mahony’s translations have been universally admired for the extraordinary command which they display of the various languages into which his renderings are made, and for their spirit and freedom both of thought and expression. His original verse tends chiefly to show that with all his sarcastic and cynical wit his genius had also its tender, serious and sentimental side. His “Bells of Shandon” has always been greatly admired. In 1846 Mahony became correspondent at Rome to the Daily News, and his letters from that capital gave very vivid pictures of the first years of the reign of Pius IX. The last twelve or fifteen years of his life were spent in Paris, whence he supplied the Globe with a series of piquant letters on the incidents of the day. He died in Paris on the 18th of May 1866.
The Reliques of Father Prout were collected from Fraser’s Magazine and published in two volumes in 1836; The Final Reliques of Father Prout, chiefly extracted from the Daily News and the Globe, were edited by Blanchard Jerrold in 1876, and an edition of his works, edited by Charles Kent, was published in 1881.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahseer

See also Mahseer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MAHSEER, or Mahaseer (Barbus mosal), a kind of barbel, abundant in the rivers of India, especially in pools of the upper and more rapid streams where they issue from the mountainous part of the country. It is one of the largest species of the Cyprinid family, attaining to a length of 3 to 5 ft., and sometimes exceeding a weight of 70 ℔. Its body is well-proportioned, rather elongate, and somewhat like that of the European barbel, but covered with very large scales, of which there are only twenty-five or twenty-seven placed along the lateral line; the dorsal fin is armed with a long and strong spine, and the mouth provided with four slender and short barbels. The lips are sometimes produced into fleshy lobes. To the fisherman in India the mahseer affords the same kind of sport as the salmon in the British Isles, and it rivals that fish as regards size, strength and activity. Its flesh is likewise much esteemed.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahé

See also Mahe, India on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MAHÉ, a French settlement in the Malabar district of Madras, India, situated in 11° 43′ N. and 75° 33′ E., at the mouth of a river of the same name. Area, 26 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 10,298. It is the only French possession on the west coast of India, and is in charge of a chef de service, subordinate to the governor-general at Pondicherry. It is now a decaying place.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mahāvaṃsa

See also Mahāvaṃsa on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MAHĀVAṂSA, the Great Chronicle, a history of Ceylon from the 5th century B.C. to the middle of the 5th century A.D., written in Pali verse by Mahānāma of the Dīghasanda Hermitage, shortly after the close of the period with which it deals. In point of historical value it compares well with early European chronicles. In India proper the decipherment of early Indian inscriptions was facilitated to a very great extent by the data found only in the Mahāvaṃsa. It was composed on the basis of earlier works written in Sinhalese, which are now lost, having been supplanted by the chronicles and commentaries in which their contents were restated in Pali in the course of the 5th century. The particular one on which our Mahāvaṃsa was mainly based was also called the Mahāvaṃsa, and was written in Sinhalese prose with Pali memorial verse interspersed. The extant Pali work gives legends of the Buddha and the genealogy of his family; a sketch of the history of India down to Asoka; an account of Buddhism in India down to the same date; a description of the sending out of missionaries after Asoka’s council, and especially of the mission of Mahinda to Ceylon; a sketch of the previous history of Ceylon; a long account of the reign of Devānam-piya Tissa, the king of Ceylon who received Mahinda, and established Buddhism in the island; short accounts of the kings succeeding him down to Duṭṭha Gāmīin (Dadagamana or Dutegemunu); then a long account, amounting to an epic poem, of the adventures and reign of that prince, a popular hero, born in adversity, who roused the people, and drove the Tamil invaders out of the island. Finally we have short notices of the subsequent kings down to the author’s time. The Mahāvaṃsa was the first Pali book made known to Europe. It was edited in 1837, with English translation and an elaborate introduction, by George Turnour, then colonial secretary in Ceylon. Its vocabulary was an important part of the material utilized in Childer’s Pali Dictionary. Its relation to the sources from which it drew has been carefully discussed by various scholars and in especial detail by Geiger. It is agreed that it gives a reasonably fair and correct presentation of the tradition preserved in the lost Sinhalese Mahāvaṃsa; that, except in the earliest period, its list of kings, with the years of each reign, is complete and trustworthy; and that it gives throughout the view, as to events in Ceylon, of a resident in the Great Minster at Anurādhapura.
See The Mahāvaṃsa, ed. by Geo. Turnour (Colombo, 1837); ed. by W. Geiger (London, 1908); H. Oldenberg, in the introduction to his edition of the Dīpavamsa (London, 1879); O. Franke, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (1907); W. Geiger, Dīpavamsa und Mahāvamsa (Leipzig, 1905, trans. by Ethel M. Coomaraswamy, Colombo, 1908). (T. W. R. D.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mai, Angelo

See also Angelo Mai on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MAI, ANGELO (1782–1854), Italian cardinal and philologist, was born of humble parents at Schilpario in the province of Bergamo, Lombardy, on the 7th of March 1782. In 1799 he entered the Society of Jesus, and in 1804 he became a teacher of classics in the college of Naples. After completing his studies at the Collegium Romanum, he lived for some time at Orvieto, where he was engaged in teaching and palaeographical studies. The political events of 1808 necessitated his withdrawal from Rome (to which he had meanwhile returned) to Milan, where in 1813 he was made custodian of the Ambrosian library. He now threw himself with characteristic energy and zeal into the task of examining the numerous MSS. committed to his charge, and in the course of the next six years was able to restore to the world a considerable number of long-lost works. Having withdrawn from the Society of Jesus, he was invited to Rome in 1819 as chief keeper of the Vatican library. In 1833 he was transferred to the office of secretary of the congregation of the Propaganda; on the 12th of February 1838 he was raised to the dignity of cardinal. He died at Castelgandolfo, near Albano, on the 8th of September 1854.
It is on his skill as a reader of palimpsests that Mai’s fame chiefly rests. To the period of his residence at Milan belong: Fragments of Cicero’s Pro Scauro, Pro Tullio, Pro Flacco, In Clodium et Curionem, De aere alieno Milonis, De rege (Alexandrino (1814); M. Corn. Frontonis opera inedita, cum epistolis item ineditis, Antonini Pii, Marci Aurelii, Lucii Veri et Appiani (1815; new ed., 1823, with more than 100 additional letters found in the Vatican library); portions of eight speeches of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus; fragments of Plautus; the oration of Isaeus De hereditate Cleonymi; the last nine books of the Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and a number of other works. M. Tullii Ciceronis de republica quae supersunt appeared at Rome in 1822; Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, e vaticanis codicibus edita in 1825–1838; Classici scriptores e vaticanis codicibus editi in 1828–1838; Spicilegium romanum in 1839–1844; and Patrum nova bibliotheca in 1845–1853. His edition of the celebrated Codex vaticanus, completed in 1838, but not published (ostensibly on the ground of inaccuracies) till four years after his death (1858), is the least satisfactory of his labours and was superseded by the edition of Vercellone and Cozza (1868), which itself leaves much to be desired. Although Mai was not as successful in textual criticism as in the decipherment of manuscripts, he will always be remembered as a laborious and persevering pioneer, by whose efforts many ancient writings have been rescued from oblivion.
See B. Prina, Biografia del cardinale Angelo Mai (Bergamo, 1882), a scientific work, which gives a full and, at the same time, a just appreciation of his work; Cozza-Luzi, Epistolario del card. Angelo Mai (Bergamo, 1883); life by G. Poletto (Siena, 1887).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colonel

See also Colonel on Wikipedia; colonel on Wiktionary; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLONEL (derived either from Lat. columna, Fr. colonne, column, or Lat. corona, a crown), the superior officer of a regiment of infantry or cavalry; also an officer of corresponding rank in the general army list. The colonelcy of a regiment formerly implied a proprietary right in it. Whether the colonel commanded it directly in the field or not, he always superintended its finance and interior economy, and the emoluments of the office, in the 18th century, were often the only form of pay drawn by general officers. The general officers of the 17th and 18th centuries were invariably colonels of regiments, and in this case the active command was exercised by the lieutenant-colonels. At the present day, British general officers are often, though not always, given the colonelcy of a regiment, which has become almost purely an honorary office. The sovereign, foreign sovereigns, royal princes and others, hold honorary colonelcies, as colonels-in-chief or honorary colonels of many regiments. In other armies, the regiment being a fighting unit, the colonel is its active commander; in Great Britain the lieutenant-colonel commands in the field the battalion of infantry and the regiment of cavalry. Colonels are actively employed in the army at large in staff appointments, brigade commands, &c. extra-regimentally. Colonel-general, a rank formerly used in many armies, still survives in the German service, a colonel-general (General-Oberst) ranking between a general of infantry, cavalry or artillery, and a general field marshal (General-Feldmarschall). Colonels-general are usually given the honorary rank of general field marshal.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colonial Office

See also Colonial Office on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLONIAL OFFICE, the department of the administration of the United Kingdom which deals with questions affecting the various colonial possessions of the British crown. The department as it now exists is of comparatively modern creation, dating only from 1854. The affairs of the English colonies began to assume importance at the Restoration, and were at first entrusted to a committee of the privy council, but afterwards transferred to a commission created by letters patent. From 1672 to 1675 the council for trade was combined with this commission, but in the latter year the colonies were again placed under the control of the privy council. This arrangement continued until 1695, when a Board of Trade and Plantations was created; its duty, however, was confined to collecting information and giving advice when required. The actual executive work was performed by the secretary of state for the southern department, who was assisted, from 1768 to 1782, by a secretary of state for the colonies. Both the Board of Trade and Plantations and the additional secretary were abolished in 1782, and the executive business wholly given over to the home office. In 1794 a third secretary of state was reappointed, and in 1801 this secretary was designated as secretary of state for war and the colonies. In 1854 the two offices were separated, and a distinct office of secretary of state for the colonies created.
The secretary of state for the colonies is the official medium of communication with colonial governments; he has certain administrative duties respecting crown colonies, and has a right of advising the veto of an act of a colonial legislature—this veto, however, is never exercised in the case of purely local statutes. He is assisted by a permanent and a parliamentary under-secretary and a considerable clerical staff.
As reorganized in 1907 the colonial office consists of three chief departments: (1) the Dominions Department, dealing with the affairs of the self-governing over-sea dominions of the British crown, and of certain other possessions geographically connected with those dominions; (2) the Colonial Department, dealing with the affairs of crown colonies and protectorates; (3) the General Department, dealing with legal, financial and other general business. In addition to these three departments, ​standing committees exist to take a collective view of such matters as contracts, concessions, mineral and other leases, and patronage.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colombey

See also Battle of Borny–Colombey on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLOMBEY, a village of Lorraine, 4 m. E. of Metz, famous as the scene of a battle between the Germans and the French fought on the 14th of August 1870. It is often called the battle of Borny, from another village 21/2 m. E. of Metz. (See Metz and Franco-German War.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colon (Cuba)

See also Colón, Cuba on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLON, a town of Matanzas province, Cuba, on the railway between Matanzas and Santa Clara, and the centre of a rich sugar-planting country. Pop. (1907) 7124.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colombier, Pierre Bertrand de

See also Pierre Bertrand de Colombier on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLOMBIER, PIERRE BERTRAND DE (1299–1361), French cardinal and diplomatist, was born at Colombier in Ardèche. He was nephew and namesake of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand of Annonay. After a careful juristic education he was successively advocate at the parlement of Paris, intendant of the council of the count of Nevers (1321), and counsellor-clerk to the parlement (1329). Having taken holy orders, he became dean of St Quentin in 1330, and was employed to negotiate the marriage of the duke of Normandy, the future king John the Good of France, with the daughter of the king of Bohemia. In 1335 he became bishop of Nevers, in 1339 of Arras, and contributed to bring the county of Flanders into the kingdom of France. Created cardinal priest of St Susanna in 1344, he was employed by the pope on important missions, notably to negotiate peace or an armistice between France and England. Having become bishop of Ostia in 1353, he was sent next year to Charles IV. of Germany, and induced him to come to Italy to be crowned emperor at Rome, 1355. In 1356 he went to France to try to arrange a peace with England, and died in 1361 at the priory of Montaud near Avignon.
See A. Mazon, Essai historique sur l’état du Vivarais pendant la guerre de cent ans (Paris, 1889), with references there.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colon (anatomy)

See also Large intestine and Colon (punctuation) on Wikipedia; colon on Wiktionary; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLON, (1) (Gr. κόλον, miswritten and mispronounced as κῶλον, the term being taken from κόλος, curtailed), in anatomy, that part of the greater intestine which extends from the caecum to the rectum (see Alimentary Canal). (2.) (Gr. κῶλον, a member or part), originally in Greek rhetoric a short clause longer than the “comma,” hence a mark (:), in punctuation, used to show a break in construction greater than that marked by the semicolon (;), and less than that marked by the period or full stop. The sign is also used in psalters and the like to mark off periods for chanting. The word is applied in palaeography to a unit of measure in MSS., amounting in length to a hexameter line.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Colonna, Giovanni Paolo

See also Giovanni Paolo Colonna on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​COLONNA, GIOVANNI PAOLO (circa 1637–1695), Italian musician, was born in Bologna about 1637 and died in the same city on the 28th of November 1695. He was a pupil of Filippuzzi in Bologna, and of Abbatini and Benevoli in Rome, where for a time he held the post of organist at S. Apollinare. A dated poem in praise of his music shows that he began to distinguish himself as a composer in 1659. In that year he was chosen organist at S. Petronio in Bologna, where on the 1st of November 1674 he was made chapel-master. He also became president of the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna. Most of Colonna’s works are for the church, including settings of the psalms for three, four, five and eight voices, and several masses and motets. He also composed an opera, under the title Amilcare, and an oratorio, La Profezia d’ Eliseo. The emperor Leopold I. received a copy of every composition of Colonna, so that the imperial library in Vienna possesses upwards of 83 church compositions by him. Colonna’s style is for the most part dignified, but is not free from the inequalities of style and taste almost unavoidable at a period when church music was in a state of transition, and had hardly learnt to combine the gravity of the old style with the brilliance of the new.