Mademoiselle Baptistine's ambition had been to be able to purchase a set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan's neck style, with a sofa. But this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?
He furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. He had the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff, which he had by him in the piece, and which he believed to have emanated from Utrecht with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered with velvet auricula blossoms.--"It was with that stuff," said he, "that the bed of the Duchesse d'Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped."--On the chimney-piece, he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a muff against her nude stomach.
"We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more to do with the Rue de l'Homme Arme. We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one is cold, and into which one cannot enter? You are to come and install yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your bed Cosette has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with Utrecht velvet and she has said to it: 'Stretch out your arms to him.' A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite your windows, every spring. In two months more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on your right. By night it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle. Your chamber faces due South. Cosette will arrange your books for you, your Voyages of Captain Cook and the other,--Vancouver's and all your affairs. I believe that there is a little valise to which you are attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you play whist. It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days when I am at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to, in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be happy. And you shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?"
Marius had preserved the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday, when he went to hear mass at Saint-Sulpice, at that same chapel of the Virgin whither his aunt had led him when a small lad, he placed himself behind a pillar, being more absent-minded and thoughtful than usual on that occasion, and knelt down, without paying any special heed, upon a chair of Utrecht velvet, on the back of which was inscribed this name: Monsieur Mabeuf, warden. Mass had hardly begun when an old man presented himself and said to Marius:--
"The abbe, who was in Paris only for a month, inhabited a small two-storied house behind Saint-Sulpice; there were two rooms on each floor and he was the only tenant. The two lower rooms consisted of a dining-room, with a table, chairs, and side-board of walnut,--and a wainscoted parlor, without ornaments, carpet, or timepiece. It was evident that the abbe limited himself to objects of strict necessity. He preferred to use the sitting-room upstairs, which was more library than parlor, and was furnished with theological books and parchments, in which he delighted to bury himself for months at a time, according to his valet de chambre. His valet looked at the visitors through a sort of wicket; and if their faces were unknown to him or displeased him, he replied that the abbe was not in Paris, an answer which satisfied most persons, because the abbe was known to be a great traveller. Besides, whether at home or not, whether in Paris or Cairo, the abbe always left something to give away, which the valet distributed through this wicket in his master's name. The other room near the library was a bedroom. A bed without curtains, four arm-chairs, and a couch, covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, composed, with a prie-Dieu, all its furniture. Lord Wilmore resided in Rue Fontaine-Saint-George. He was one of those English tourists who consume a large fortune in travelling. He hired the apartment in which he lived furnished, passed only a few hours in the day there, and rarely slept there. One of his peculiarities was never to speak a word of French, which he however wrote with great facility."
The coachman humbly represented to "monsieur l'Inspecteur," that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all spotted with the blood of the assassinated man, and with mire from the assassin. That is the way he understood it. He added that an indemnity was due him. At the same time, drawing his certificate book from his pocket, he begged the inspector to have the goodness to write him "a bit of an attestation."
BEAUFORT, LOUIS DE (d. 1795), French historian, of whose life little is known. In 1738 he published at Utrecht a _Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l'histoire romaine_, in which he showed what untrustworthy guides even the historians of highest repute, such as Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were for that period, and pointed out by what methods and by the aid of what documents truly scientific bases might be given to its history. This was an ingenious plea, bold for its time, against traditional history such as Rollin was writing at that very moment. A German, Christopher Saxius, endeavoured to refute it in a series of articles published in vols. i.-iii. of the _Miscellanea Liviensia_. Beaufort replied by some brief and ironical _Remarques_ in the appendix to the second edition of his _Dissertation_ (1750). Beaufort also wrote an _Histoire de César Germanicus_ (Leyden, 1761), and _La République romaine, ou plan général de L'ancien gouvernement de Rome_ (The Hague, 1766, 2 vols. quarto). Though not a scholar of the first rank, Beaufort has at least the merit of having been a pioneer in raising the question, afterwards elaborated by Niebuhr, as to the credibility of early Roman history. Entry: BEAUFORT
MEAD, RICHARD (1673-1754), English physician, eleventh child of Matthew Mead (1630-1699), Independent divine, was born on the 11th of August 1673 at Stepney, London. He studied at Utrecht for three years under J. G. Graevius; having decided to follow the medical profession, he then went to Leiden and attended the lectures of Paul Hermann and Archibald Pitcairne. In 1695 he graduated in philosophy and physic at Padua, and in 1696 he returned to London, entering at once on a successful practice. His _Mechanical Account of Poisons_ appeared in 1702, and in 1703 he was admitted to the Royal Society, to whose _Transactions_ he contributed in that year a paper on the parasitic nature of scabies. In the same year he was elected physician to St Thomas's Hospital, and appointed to read anatomical lectures at the Surgeons' Hall. On the death of John Radcliffe in 1714 Mead became the recognized head of his profession; he attended Queen Anne on her deathbed, and in 1727 was appointed physician to George II., having previously served him in that capacity when he was prince of Wales. He died in London on the 16th of February 1754. Entry: MEAD
The Habsburgs had now reached the summit of their power. The prestige which belonged to Charles as head of the Holy Roman Empire was backed by the wealth and commerce of the Netherlands and of Spain, and by the riches of the Spanish colonies in America. In Italy he ruled over Sardinia, Naples and Sicily, which had passed to him with Spain, and the duchy of Milan, which he had annexed in 1535; to the Netherlands he had added Friesland, the bishopric of Utrecht, Gröningen and Gelderland, and he still possessed Franche-Comté and the fragments of the Habsburg lands in Alsace and the neighbourhood. Add to this Ferdinand's inheritance, the Austrian archduchies and Tirol, Bohemia with her dependent provinces, and a strip of Hungary, and the two brothers had under their sway a part of Europe the extent of which was great, but the wealth and importance of which were immeasurably greater. Able to scorn the rivalry of the other princely houses of Germany, the Habsburgs saw in the kings of the house of Valois the only foemen worthy of their regard. Entry: HABSBURG
_Institutions_.--In their municipal institutions they kept the old Roman term _respublica_ for the _civitas_ and the territory belonging to it. All municipal officers were elective in some form or other, and there is hardly any mode of election, from universal suffrage to nomination by a single person chosen by lot, that the Basques have not tried. The municipalities sent deputies to the juntas or parliaments of each province. These assemblies took place originally in the open air, as in other parts of the Pyrenees, under trees, the most celebrated of which is the oak of Guernica in Biscay, or under copses, as the Bilzaar in the French Pays Basque. The cortes of Navarre met at Pamplona. Delegates from the juntas met annually to consider the common interests of the three provinces. Besides the separate municipalities and the juntas, there were often associations and assemblies of three or five towns, or of three or four valleys, to preserve the special privilege or for the special needs of each. Hence was formed a habit of self-government, the practice of legislative, judicial and administrative functions, which resulted gradually in a code of written or unwritten laws embodied in the _fueros_ or _fors_ of each province, and the _cartas-pueblos_ of the towns. In form these _fueros_ or charters are often grants from the lord or sovereign; in reality they are only a confirmation or codification of unwritten customary laws in practice among the people, the origin of which is lost in antiquity. The kings of Castile, of Spain and of Navarre were obliged at their accession, either in person, or by deputy, to swear to observe these _fueros_; and this oath was really kept. While the cortes were trampled upon and absolutism reigned both in Spain and in France, the Basque _fueros_ were respected; in Spain to the middle of the 19th century and in France down to the Revolution. The _fueros_ thus observed made the Basque provinces a land apart (_una tierra apartada_), a self-governing republic (_una verdadera autonomia_), under an absolute monarchy, to which, however, they were always loyal. And this independence was acknowledged, not only in local, but also in international and European treaties, as in art. 15 of the treaty of Utrecht 1713. So the act of the 3rd of June 1876, which assimilated the Basque Provinces to the rest of Spain, acknowledged the true self-government which they had enjoyed for centuries. Entry: BASQUES
Meanwhile the most ardent Jansenists had followed Quesnel to Holland. Here they met with a warm welcome from the Dutch Catholic body, which had always been in close sympathy with Jansenism, although without regarding itself as formally pledged to the _Augustinus_. But it had broken loose from Rome in 1702, and was now organizing itself into an independent church (see UTRECHT). The Jansenists who remained in France had meanwhile fallen on evil days. Persecution usually begets hysteria in its victims; and the more extravagant members of the party were far advanced on the road which leads to apocalyptic prophecy and "speaking with tongues." About 1728 the "miracles of St Médard" became the talk of Paris. This was the cemetery where was buried François de Pâris, a young Jansenist deacon of singularly holy life, and a perfervid opponent of the _Unigenitus_. All sorts of miraculous cures were believed to have been worked at his tomb, until the government closed the cemetery in 1732. This gave rise to the famous epigram: Entry: JANSENISM
The number of members in the first chamber is 50, South Holland sending 10, North Holland 9, North Brabant and Gelderland each 6, Friesland 4, Overysel, Limburg and Groningen each 3, Zeeland, Utrecht and Drente each 2. According to the fundamental law (_Grondwet_) of 1887, they are chosen by the provincial states, not only from amongst those who bear the greatest burden of direct taxation in each province, but also from amongst great functionaries and persons of high rank. Those deputies who are not resident in the Hague are entitled to receive 16s. 8d. a day during the session. The duration of parliament is nine years, a third of the members retiring every three years. The retiring members are eligible for re-election. The members of the second chamber are chosen in the electoral districts by all capable male citizens not under 23 years of age, who pay one or more direct taxes, ranging from a minimum of one guilder (1s. 8d.) towards the income tax. The number of members is 100, Amsterdam returning 9, Rotterdam 5, the Hague 3, Groningen and Utrecht 2 members each. Members must be at least thirty years old, and receive an annual allowance of £166, besides travelling expenses. They only, and the government, have the right of initiating business, and of proposing amendments. Their term is four years, but they are re-eligible. All communications from the sovereign to the states-general and from the states to the sovereign, as well as all measures relating to internal administration or to foreign possessions, are first submitted to the consideration of the council of state, which consists of 14 members appointed by the sovereign, who is the president. The state council also has the right of making suggestions to the sovereign in regard to subjects of legislation and administration. Entry: HOLLAND
The treaty of Karlowitz, and the settlement of 1713-1714, marked a new starting-point in the history of Austria. The efforts of Turkey to regain her ascendancy in eastern Europe at the expense of the Habsburgs had ended in failure, and henceforward Turkish efforts were confined to resisting the steady development of Austria in the direction of Constantinople. The treaties of Utrecht, Rastadt and Baden had also re-established and strengthened the position of the Austrian monarchy in western Europe. The days of French invasions of Germany had for the time ceased, and revenge for the attacks made by Louis XIV. was found in the establishment of Austrian supremacy in Italy and in the substitution of Austrian for Spanish domination in the Netherlands. Entry: A
ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS (1466-1536), Dutch scholar and theologian, was born on the night of the 27/28th of October, probably in 1466; but his statements about his age are conflicting, and in view of his own uncertainty (_Ep._ x. 29: 466) and the weakness of his memory for dates, the year of his birth cannot be definitely fixed. His father's name seems to have been Rogerius Gerardus. He himself was christened Herasmus; but in 1503, when becoming familiar with Greek, he assimilated the name to a fancied Greek original, which he had a few years before Latinized into Desyderius. A contemporary authority states that he was born at Gouda, his father's native town; but he adopted the style _Rotterdammensis_ or _Roterodamus_, in accordance with a story to which he himself gave credence. His first schooling was at Gouda under Peter Winckel, who was afterwards vice-pastor of the church. In the dull round of instruction in "grammar" he did not distinguish himself, and was surpassed by his early friend and companion, William Herman, who was Winckel's favourite pupil. From Gouda the two boys went to the school attached to St Lebuin's church at Deventer, which was one of the first in northern Europe to feel the influence of the Renaissance. Erasmus was at Deventer from 1475 to 1484, and when he left, had learnt from Johannes Sinthius (Syntheim) and Alexander Hegius, who had come as headmaster in 1483, the love of letters which was the ruling passion of his life. At some period, perhaps in an interval of his time at Deventer, he was a chorister at Utrecht under the famous organist of the cathedral, Jacob Obrecht. Entry: ERASMUS
The medieval constitution of Groningen, unlike that of Utrecht, was aristocratic. Merchant gild there was none; and the craft gilds were without direct influence on the city government, which held them in subjection. Membership of the governing council, which selected from its own body the four _rationales_ or burgomasters, was confined to men of approved "wisdom," and wisdom was measured in terms of money. This _Raad_ of wealthy burghers gradually monopolized all power. The bishop's bailiff (_schout_), with his nominated assessors (_scabini_), continued to exercise jurisdiction, but members of the Raad sat on the bench with him, and an appeal lay from his court to the Raad itself. The council was, in fact, supreme in the city, and not in the city only. In 1439 it decreed that no one might trade in all the district between the Ems and the Lauwers Zee except burghers, and those who had purchased the _burwal_ (right of residence in the city) and the freedom of the gilds. Maximilian I. assigned Groningen to Albert of Saxony, hereditary podestat of Friesland, but the citizens preferred to accept the protection of the bishop of Utrecht; and when Albert's son George attempted in 1505 to seize the town, they recognized the lordship of Edzart of East Frisia. On George's renewal of hostilities they transferred their allegiance to Duke Charles of Gelderland, in 1515. In 1536 the city passed into the hands of Charles V., and in the great wars of the 16th century suffered all the miseries of siege and military occupation. From 1581 onwards, Groningen still held by the Spaniards, was constantly at war with the "Ommelanden" which had declared against the king of Spain. This feud continued, in spite of the capture of the city in 1594 by Maurice of Nassau, and of a decree of the States in 1597 which was intended to set them at rest. In 1672 the town was besieged by the bishop of Münster, but it was successfully defended, and in 1698 its fortifications were improved under Coehoorn's direction. The French Republicans planted their tree of liberty in the Great Market on the 14th of February 1795, and they continued in authority till the 16th of November 1814. The fortifications of the city were doomed to destruction by the law of the 18th of April 1874. Entry: GRONINGEN
GRIFFENFELDT, PEDER, COUNT (_Peder Schumacher_) (1635-1699), Danish statesman, was born at Copenhagen on the 24th of August 1635, of a wealthy trading family connected with the leading civic, clerical and learned circles in the Danish capital. His tutor, Jens Vorde, who prepared him in his eleventh year for the university, praises his extraordinary gifts, his mastery of the classical languages and his almost disquieting diligence. The brilliant way in which he sustained his preliminary examination won him the friendship of the examiner, Bishop Jasper Brokman, at whose palace he first met Frederick III. The king was struck with the lad's bright grey eyes and pleasant humorous face; and Brokman, proud of his pupil, made him translate a chapter from a Hebrew Bible first into Latin and then into Danish, for the entertainment of the scholarly monarch. In 1654 young Schumacher went abroad for eight years, to complete his education. From Germany he proceeded to the Netherlands, staying at Leiden, Utrecht and Amsterdam, and passing in 1657 to Queen's College, Oxford, where he lived three years. The epoch-making events which occurred in England, while he was at Oxford, profoundly interested him, and coinciding with the Revolution in Denmark, which threw open a career to the middle classes, convinced him that his proper sphere was politics. In the autumn of 1660 Schumacher visited Paris, shortly after Mazarin's death, when the young Louis XIV. first seized the reins of power. Schumacher seems to have been profoundly impressed by the administrative superiority of a strong centralised monarchy in the hands of an energetic monarch who knew his own mind; and, in politics, as in manners, France ever afterwards was his model. The last year of his travels was spent in Spain, where he obtained a thorough knowledge of the Castilian language and literature. His travels, however, if they enriched his mind, relaxed his character, and he brought home easy morals as well as exquisite manners. Entry: GRIFFENFELDT
After Frontenac the Iroquois, though still hostile to France, are formidable no more, and the struggle for the continent is frankly between the English and the French. The peace of Ryswick proved but a truce, and when in 1701, on the death of the exiled James II., Louis XIV. flouted the claims of William III. to the throne of England by proclaiming as king James's son, renewed war was inevitable. In Europe it saw the brilliant victories of Marlborough; in America it was less decisive, but France lost heavily. Though the English, led by Sir Hovenden Walker, made in 1711 an effort to take Quebec which proved abortive, they seized Nova Scotia; and when the treaty of Utrecht was made in 1713, France admitted defeat in America by yielding to Britain her claims to Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. But she still held the shores of the St Lawrence, and she retained, too, the island of Cape Breton to command its mouth. There she built speedily the fortress of Louisbourg, and prepared once more to challenge British supremacy in America. With a sound instinct that looked to future greatness, France still aimed, more and more, at the control of the interior of the Continent. The danger from the Iroquois on Lake Ontario had long cut her off from the most direct access to the West, and from the occupation of the Ohio valley leading to the Mississippi, but now free from this savage scourge she could go where she would. In 1701 she founded Detroit, commanding the route from Lake Erie to Lake Huron. Her missionaries and leaders were already at Sault Ste Marie commanding the approach to Lake Superior, and at Michilimackinac commanding that to Lake Michigan. They had also penetrated to what is now the Canadian West, and it was a French Canadian, La Vérendrye, who, by the route leading past the point where now stands the city of Winnipeg, pressed on into the far West until in 1743, first recorded of white men, he came in sight of the Rocky Mountains. In the south of the continent France also crowned La Salle's work by founding early in the 18th century New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. It was a far cry from New Orleans to Quebec. If France could link them by a chain of settlements and shut in the English to their narrow strip of Atlantic seaboard there was good promise that North America would be hers. Entry: HISTORY
_History._--Of the origin of the early inhabitants of the Balearic Islands nothing is certainly known, though Greek and Roman writers refer to the Boeotian and Rhodian settlements. There are numerous sepulchral and other monuments, which are generally believed to be of prehistoric origin. According to general tradition the natives, from whatever quarter derived, were a strange and savage people till they received some tincture of civilization from the Carthaginians, who early took possession of the islands and built themselves cities on their coasts. Of these cities, Port Mahon, the most important, still retains the name which is derived from the family of Mago. About twenty-three years after the destruction of Carthage the Romans accused the islanders of piracy, and sent against them Q. Caecilius Metellus, who soon reduced them to obedience, settled amongst them 3000 Roman and Spanish colonists, founded the cities of Palma and Pollentia (Pollensa), and introduced the cultivation of the olive. Besides valuable contingents of the celebrated Balearic slingers, the Romans derived from their new conquest mules (from Minorca), edible snails, sinope and pitch. Of their occupation numerous traces still exist,--the most remarkable being the aqueduct at Pollensa. In A.D. 423 the islands were seized by the Vandals and in 798 by the Moors. They became a separate Moorish kingdom in 1009, which, becoming extremely obnoxious for piracy, was the object of a crusade directed against it by Pope Paschal II., in which the Catalans took the lead. This expedition was frustrated at the time, but was resumed by James I. of Aragon, and the Moors were expelled in 1232. During their occupation the island was populous and productive, and an active commerce was carried on with Spain and Africa. King James conferred the sovereignty of the isles on his third son, under whom and his successor they formed an independent kingdom up to 1349, from which time their history merges in that of Spain. In 1521 an insurrection of the peasantry against the nobility, whom they massacred, took place in Majorca, and was not suppressed without much bloodshed. In the War of the Spanish Succession all the islands declared for Charles; the duke of Anjou had no footing anywhere save in the citadel of Mahon. Minorca was reduced by Count Villars in 1707; but it was not till June 1715 that Majorca was subjugated, and meanwhile Port Mahon was captured by the English under General Stanhope in 1708. In 1713 the island was secured to them by the peace of Utrecht; but in 1756 it was invaded by a force of 12,000 French, who, after defeating the British under Admiral Byng, captured Port Mahon. Restored to England in [v.03 p.0250] 1763, the island remained in possession of the British till 1782, when it was retaken by the Spaniards. Again seized by the British in 1798, it was finally ceded to Spain by the peace of Amiens in 1803. When the French invaded Spain in 1808, the Mallorquins did not remain indifferent; the governor, D. Juan Miguel de Vives, announced, amid universal acclamation, his resolution to support Ferdinand VII. At first the Junta would take no active part in the war, retaining the corps of volunteers that was formed for the defence of the island; but finding it quite secure, they transferred a succession of them to the Peninsula to reinforce the allies. Such was the animosity excited against the French when their excesses were known to the Mallorquins, that some of the French prisoners, conducted thither in 1810, had to be transferred with all speed to the island of Cabrera, a transference which was not effected before some of them had been killed. Entry: BALEARIC