OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morton, Thomas (adventurer)

See also Thomas Morton (colonist) on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MORTON, THOMAS (c. 1590–1646), usually called Thomas Morton of Merrymount, English adventurer in America, was a lawyer of Clifford’s Inn, London, and seems to have practised in the west of England. He spent three months in America in 1622; returned in 1625, and settled at Mount Wollaston, in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts; and in 1626, when most of the settlers removed to Virginia, he assumed command of the settlement, and renamed it Merrymount. Morton, a Royalist rake, soon became a thorn in the flesh of the sober colonists at Plymouth. On May-Day in 1627 his companions erected a May-pole, and, assisted by Indians, indulged in all the revelry and licence then customary in England. “The setting up of this May-pole was a lamentable spectacle to the precise Separatists that lived at New Plimmouth,” says Morton. “They termed it an Idoll; yea, they called it the Calf of Horeb, and stood at defiance with the place, . . . threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount.” In disregard of a royal proclamation, Morton sold rum and fire-arms to the natives, not only injuring the trade of Plymouth, but also endangering the safety of the colonists. Morton was therefore arrested and sent to England; and when John Endecott, with a patent from the council for New England, arrived soon afterward he visited Merrymount, which lay within his jurisdiction, rebuked the inhabitants, cut down the May-pole, and renamed the place Mount Dagon. In 1629 Morton returned to America, but was arrested on trivial charges by the Massachusetts authorities, and was confined in the stocks. Later his house was burned and he was sent to England, where he spent a term in the Essex gaol. After his release he wrote his New English Canaan (1637), in which he describes the Indians and the natural features of the country, and heaps ridicule upon the New England colonists. In 1643 Morton returned to America. He was imprisoned in Boston in the following year, and was tried before the general court for complaining against the colony before the Privy Council; he was recommitted to gaol pending the gathering of further evidence, and after a year’s confinement was fined £100 and released. He retired to Agamenticus (now York), Maine, and in 1646 died poverty-stricken.
See the New English Canaan, edited by Charles Francis Adams (Publications of the Prince Society, vol. ix., Boston, 1883); C. F. Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (Boston, 1896); and, for a more favourable view of Morton, A Few Observations on the Prince Society’s Edition of the New English Canaan, revised and reprinted from the Churchman (New York, 1883). Morton’s adventures have furnished material for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, The Maypole of Merrymount, and for John Lothrop Motley’s novels, Morton’s Hope (1839) and Merry Mount (1849).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mortuary

See also Mortuary on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MORTUARY (Med. Lat. mortuarium, from mortuus, dead), of or belonging to the dead, or, in particular, to the burial ​of the dead. The chief modern use of the word is for a building in which dead bodies awaiting burial may be temporarily kept, for the purpose of inquiry, identification, post-mortem examination, &c. But it has also been applied to many subjects connected with death and burial. In monastic institutions it was the duty of the almoner to send round to other monastic houses notice of the death of a member, asking for prayers for the soul of the dead. This notice was often beautifully illuminated. On being returned with the endorsement of the monastery to which it had been sent, it would be copied into the roll. Both the notice and the roll were known as a mortuarium, or mortuary (see Abbot F. H. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life, 1904). In the English Church a “mortuary” was in certain places a customary oblation or offering paid out of the estate of a deceased person to the church to which he belonged. An act of 1529 (21 Hen. VIII. c. 6) limited the amount to be paid in mortuaries, the highest being of the value of 10s. in estates above £40. Mortuaries, where customary, can only be enforced in the ecclesiastical courts. The custom has entirely died out, though claims have been made from time to time.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morvan

See also Morvan on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MORVAN, an elevated region forming the northern continuation of the central plateau of France, and extending over a large part of the department of Nievre, and over portions of those of Yonne, Côte-d’Or and Saône-et-Loire. Its area is a little over 1000 sq. m. The average elevation is about 1600 ft., the culminating point the Bois-du-Roi, attaining 2959 ft. It is traversed by the Yonne, which has its source on Mt Prénelay (2789 ft)., by the Cure and by several affluents of the Arroux. Geologically it consists chiefly of gneiss and granite. It contains much good pasturage and is abundantly wooded, the exploitation of its forests affording employment to large numbers of the inhabitants.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Moréas, Jean

See also Jean Moréas on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​MORÉAS, JEAN (1856–1910), French poet, born at Athens on the 15th of April 1856, was the grandson of Papadiamantopoulos, one of the heroes of Missolonghi. He was one of the leaders of the symbolist movement in French poetry, advocating a relaxation of the stringent rules governing French verse; but his early volumes of poems, Les Syrtes (1884), Les Cantilènes (1886), and Le Pèlerin passionné (1891) won recognition beyond the limits of this school. In the XIXᵉ siècle (August 11, 1885) he formulated the principles of the symbolists, defending them from the appellation of “decadent,” and in the literary supplement of the Figaro (Sep. 18, 1886) he published a manifesto justifying the innovations of the new school as the natural development of the prosody of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Verlaine. Le Pèlerin passionné was sympathetically reviewed by Anatole France. As time went on he repudiated the licence claimed by the symbolist’s, and became the leader of an offshoot from the main body known as the école romane, the chief members of which are Raymond de la Tailhéde, Maurice du Plessys, Ernest Raynaud, and the critic Charles Maurras. Moréas and his new followers returned to the traditional severity of French versification, and to the classical and antique tradition. His later volumes are Poésies, 1886–1896 (1898), and Stances (6 vols., complete ed. 1905), Histoire de Jean de Paris, roi de France (1902), Voyage en Grèce en 1897 (1902), Contes de la vieille France (1903), and a classic drama in verse, Iphigénie à Aulis (1904), in close imitation of Euripides, which was represented on the 24th of August 1903 in the ancient theatre of Orange, and subsequently at the Odéon in Paris. He died on the 31st of March 1910.
See Anatole France, La Vie littéraire (4th ser., 1892); A. van Bever and P. Léautaud, Poètes d’aujourd’hui, 1880–1900 (11th ed., 1905); P. Berthelot, art. “Symbolisme” in La Grande encyclopédie; and J. de Gourmont, Jean Moréas, biographies critique (1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Stahl, Georg Ernst

See also Georg Ernst Stahl on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​STAHL, GEORG ERNST (1660-1734), German chemist and physician, was born on the 21st of October 1660 at Anspach. Having graduated in medicine at Jena in 1683, he became court physician to the duke of Weimar in 1687. From 1694 to 1 7 16 he held the chair of medicine at Halle, and was then ap- pointed physician to the king of Prussia in Berlin, where he died on the 14th of May 1734. In chemistry he is chiefly known in connexion with his doctrine of phlogiston, the essentials of which, however, he owed to J. J. Becher; and he also propounded a view of fermentation which in some respects resembles that supported by Liebig a century and half later. In medicine he professed an animistic system, in opposition to the material- ism of Hermann Boerhaave and Friedrich Hoffmann.
The most important of his numerous writings are Zymotechnia fundamentals sive fermentationis theoria generalis (1697), which contains the phlogistic hypothesis; Specimen Becherianum (1702); Experimenta, observationes, animadver stones . . . chymicae et physicae (1731); Theoria medica vera (1707); Ars sanandi cum expectatione (173Â°)-
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Staines

See also Staines on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​STAINES, a market town in the Uxbridge parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, on the river Thames at the junction of the Colne, 19 m. W.S.W. of London on the London & South Western and Great Western railways. Pop. of urban district (1901), 6688. Breweries and mustard mills employ many hands. A rifle range for the Metropolitan Volunteers and others was opened in 1892. A British village was situated here at the crossing of the Thames on the main road from London to south-western Britain, and the crossing was certainly one of the earliest bridged. A grant of oaks from Windsor forest for the repair of the bridge is recorded in 1262. The existing bridge, from the designs of George Rennie, was opened in 1831, after three bridges had failed in the previous forty years. The name of Staines appears in the Domesday Survey, and it has been supposed that the town is so called from a stone which marks the limit of the former jurisdiction of the City of London over the lower Thames. This is still considered to be the boundary between the upper and lower Thames. In the immediate neighbourhood, though included in the parish of Egham, Surrey, is Runnimede Island, where King John signed the Magna Carta.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Stainer, Sir John

See also John Stainer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​STAINER, SIR JOHN (1840-1901), English composer and organist, was born at Southwark on the 6th of June 1840. He was the second son of the schoolmaster of the parish school of St Thomas's, Southwark, who was enough of a musician to teach his son the organ and the art of reading music, in which he was already proficient when, in 1847, he entered the choir of St Paul's Cathedral. He remained there till 1856, and often took the organ in emergencies; he held the post of organist of St Benet's and St Paul's, Upper Thames Street, during the last year of his choristership; and in 1856 was given the ap- pointment of organist to St Michael's College, Tenbury, where his musical and general education benefited greatly from the intercourse with Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley. He was appointed to Magdalen College, Oxford, in i860, and became university organist in the following year. While at Oxford he did much to bring the choir of Magdalen to a remarkable state of excellence; he took a keen interest in the foundation of various musical societies; and as a sign of his appreciation of the value of general culture, it is worth recording that he took the degree of B.A. in 1864, that of Mus. D. in 1865, and procured M.A. in 1867, being appointed a university examiner in music in the same year. In 1868 he was engaged frequently as solo organist at the Crystal Palace; and in 1872 was appointed organist of St Paul's, where he raised the standard of choral music to something very like perfection. He was professor of the organ in the National Training School of Music from 1876, and in 1881 succeeded his lifelong friend Sullivan as principal. In 1878 he was a juror at the Paris Exhibition, and was created Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. In 1882 he became inspector of music in training colleges. In 1888 he retired from the organistship of St Paul's owing to failing eyesight, and was knighted. In 1889 he succeeded Ouseley as professor of music in the university of Oxford, holding the post till 1899. Besides these official distinctions he received a great number of honorary degrees: he was vice-president of the Royal College of Organists, and president of the Plain-song and Medieval Music Society, the London Gregorian Association, and the Musical Association. His compositions include four oratorios: Gideon (1865), The Daughter of Jairus (Worcester, 1878), St Mary Magdalen (Gloucester, 1887), Crucifixion (London, 1887); forty-two anthems, some of them very elaborate; many hymn-tunes, organ pieces, madrigals, &c. His professorial lectures were of great value, and he made many contributions to the literature of music. He was a man of wide influence, with a remarkable faculty of organization, and his work in regard to the conditions of the musical profession was of considerable importance. His own music has many of the defects of his qualities, for his breadth of artistic views led him to admire and adopt many styles that are not always compatible with each other. He died while on a holiday at Verona on the 31st of March 1901.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Stag

See also Deer on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​STAG (O. Eng. stagga, a Norse word, cf. Icel. steggr, steggi, a male animal, cf. Steggander, a drake; it is usually referred to stigan, to climb, to mount, but this is doubtful), the common name of the male of many species of the deer tribe, but usually confined to the male of the red deer (Cervus elaphus), “buck” being used in other cases, as of the fallow-deer (see Deer and Pecora). In Stock Exchange slang the term is used of an operator who applies for a portion of a new security being issued, not with a view to holding it, but with the intention of immediate realization, at a profit if possible.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Stage

See also Floor on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​STAGE (Fr. étage; from Lat. stare, to stand), in architecture, an elevated floor, particularly the various storeys of a bell-tower, &c. The term is also applied to the plain parts of buttresses between cap and cap where they set back, or where they are divided by horizontal strings and panelling. It is used, too, by William of Worcester to describe the compartments of windows between transom and transom, in contradistinction to the word bay, which signifies a division between mullion and mullion (see Storey). From the sense of the floor or platform on which plays were acted the term came to signify both the theatre (q.v.) and the drama (q.v.). And from its etymological meaning of a station comes the sense of a place for rest on a journey, the distance between such places, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Stahl, Friedrich Julius

See also Friedrich Julius Stahl on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​STAHL, FRIEDRICH JULIUS (1802—1861), German ecclesiastical lawyer and politician, was born at Munich on the 16th of January 1802, of Jewish parentage. Although brought up strictly in the Jewish religion, he was allowed to attend the ​gymnasium, and, as a result of its influence, was at the age of nineteen baptized into the Lutheran Church. To this faith he clung with earnest devotion and persistence until his death. Having studied law at Wiirzburg, Heidelberg and Erlangen, Stahl, on taking the degree of doctor juris, established himself as privatdozent in Munich, was appointed (1832) ordinary pro- fessor of law at Wiirzburg, and in 1840 received the chair of ecclesiastical law and polity at Berlin. Here he immediately made his mark as an ecclesiastical lawyer, and was appointed a member of the first chamber of the synod. Elected in 1850 a member of the short-lived Erfurt parliament, he bitterly opposed the idea of German federation. Stahl early fell under the influence of Schelling, and at the latter's insistence, began in 1827 his great work: Die Philosophic des Rechls nach geschichtlicher Ansicht (an historical view of the philosophy of law), in which he bases all law and political science upon Christian revelation, denies rationalistic doctrines, and, as a deduction from this principle, maintains that a state church must be strictly confessional. This position he further eluci- dated in his Der christliche Staat und sein Verhdltniss zum Deismus und Judenthum (The Christian State and its relation to Deism and Judaism; 1874). As Oberkirchenrath (synodal councillor) Stahl used all his influence to weaken the Evan- gelical Union {i.e. that compromise between the Calvinist and Lutheran doctrines which is the essence of the Prussian Evan- gelical Church) and to strengthen the influence of the Lutheran Church (cf. Die Lutherische Kirche und die Union, 1859). The Prussian* minister von Bunsen attacked, while King Frederick William IV. supported, Stahl in his ecclesiastical policy, and the Prussian Evangelical Church would probably have been dissolved had not the regency of Prince William (afterwards the emperor William I.) supervened in 1858. Stahl's influence fell under the new regime, and, resigning his seat on the synod, he retired into private life and died at Briickenau on the 10th of August 1 86 1.
See " Biographie von Stahl," in Unsere Zeit, vi. 419-447 (anony- mous, but probably by Gneist) ; Pernice, Savigny, Stahl (anonymous; Berlin, 1862).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vade-mecum

See also Vade mecum on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VADE-MECUM, a Latin phrase meaning literally “come with me” (vade, imperative of vadere, to go or come; cum, with; me, abl. of ego, I), and used in French, Spanish and English for something that a person is in the habit of constantly taking about with him, especially a book of the nature of a handy guide or work of reference.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Valdepeñas

See also Valdepeñas on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VALDEPEÑAS, a town of Spain, in the province of Ciudad Real; near the right bank of the river Jabalon, a tributary of the Guadiana, and on the Madrid-Cordova and Valdepeñas-La Calzada railways. Pop. (1900) 21,015. Valdepeñas is the largest town in the Campo de Calatrava, an extensive plain north of the Sierra Morena. Its commerce developed rapidly in the last quarter of the 19th century, largely as a result of improvements in its communications by road and rail; the population in the same period increased by more than one-third. Valdepeñas contains large distilleries, tanneries, flour mills, cooperages, and other factories; but its trade is chiefly in the red wines for which the district is famous throughout Spain. There are hot mineral springs near the town.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vacuum-cleaner

See also Vacuum cleaner on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VACUUM-CLEANER, an appliance for removing dust from carpets, curtains, &c., by suction, and consisting essentially of some form of air-pump drawing air through a nozzle which is passed over the material that has to be cleaned. The dust is carried away with the air-stream and is separated by filtration through screens of muslin or other suitable fabric, sometimes with the aid of a series of baffle-plates which cause the heavier particles to fall to the bottom of the collecting receptacle by gravity. In the last decade of the 19th century compressed air came into use for the purpose of removing dust from railway carriages, but it was found difficult to arrange for the collection of the dust that was blown out by the jets of air, and in consequence recourse was had to working by suction. From this beginning several types of vacuum cleaner have developed.
In the first instance the plants were portable, consisting of a pump driven by a petrol engine or electric motor, and were periodically taken round to houses, offices &c., when cleaning was required. The second stage was represented by the permanent installation of central plants in large buildings, with a system of pipes running to all floors, like gas or water pipes, and provided at convenient points with valves to which could be attached flexible hose terminating in the actual cleaning tools. The vacuum thus rendered available is in some cases utilized for washing the floors in combination with another system of piping connected to a tank containing soap and water, which having been sprayed over the floor by compressed air is removed with the dirt it contains and discharged into the sowers; or in a simpler arrangement the soap and water is contained in a portable tank from which it is distributed, tobesucked up by means of the vacuum as before. In their third stage vacuum cleaners have become ordinary household implements, in substitution for, or in addition to the broom and duster, and small machines are now made in a variety of forms, driven by hand, by foot, or by an electric motor attached to the lighting circuit. In addition to their domestic uses, other applications have been found for them, as for instance in removing dust from printers' type-cases.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vaison

See also Vaison on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VAISON, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Vaucluse, 26 m. N.N.E. of Avignon by road. Pop. (1906) 2148. The Ouvèze, a tributary of the Rhone, divides Vaison into two quarters—the Roman and early medieval town on the right bank, and the town of the later middle ages on the left bank,—the two communicating by an ancient Roman bridge consisting of a single arch. On the right bank is the church (once the cathedral) of Ste Marie, the choir of which is thought to date in parts from the oth century, while the nave belongs to the 12th century. A Romanesque cloister containing a collection of old sculpture flanks the church on the north. Remains of a Roman amphitheatre and the chapel of St Quenin (dedicated to a bishop of the 6th century), with a curious apse of the end of the 11th century, are also to be seen in the old town. On the left bank are the parish church (15th and 16th centuries), remains of the medieval fortifications, and the keep of a castle of the counts of Toulouse. The industries of the town include the manufacture of wooden shoes, bellows and agricultural implements. Vaison, under the name of Vasio, was one of the principal towns of the Vocontii, and was a place of great importance under ​the Romans, as is shown by an abundance of objects unearthed by excavation, amongst which may be mentioned a fine statue of an athlete (the Diadumenos) in the British Museum. The bishopric established in the 3rd century was suppressed in 1791. Its holders, towards the end of the 12th century, were despoiled of the temporal power in the town by the counts of Toulouse. Subsequently Vaison came, together with the rest of Comtat-Venaissin, under the power of the popes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Valkyries

See also Valkyrie on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VALKYRIES (Old Norse valkyriur, “choosers of the slain”), figures of Norse mythology, generally represented as divine (less frequently human) maidens who ride through the air on Odin’s service. Clad in full armour they are sent forth ​to determine the course of battles and to select brave warriors for Valhalla (q.v.). Beings with the same name (waelcyrgean) were known also in England, where we find them associated with witches. The name is used in Anglo-Saxon glossaries to translate various Latin terms for “War-goddess” or “Fury” (Bellona, Erinys, &c.). See Teutonic Peoples, ad fin.  (H. M. C.)