- Industry: Library & information science
- Number of terms: 49473
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The ...
The first of the four sections into which the Vedas are divided, and which includes the body of the hymns or verses of invocation and praises; believed to have issued from a narrow circle of priests, and subsequently recast many of them.
Industry:Language
The first of the Marian martyrs, born at Birmingham; prepared a revised edition of the English Bible, preached at Paul's Cross against Romanism the Sunday after Mary's entrance into London, and was after a long imprisonment tried for heresy, and condemned to be burned at Smithfield (1505-1555).
Industry:Language
The first of the three examinations for a degree at Oxford University, or the Little Go.
Industry:Language
The first river of Ireland, and largest in the British Islands, rises in the Cuilcagh Mountains, Co. Cavan; flows in a south-westerly direction through Loughs Allen, Ree, and Derg, besides forming several lough expansions, to Limerick, whence it turns due W., and opens out on the Atlantic in a wide estuary between Kerry (S.) and Clare (N.); has an entire course of 254 m., and is navigable to Lough Allen, a distance of 213 m.
Industry:Language
The former name of a district in Italy which comprised the NE. portion of the Papal States, embracing the modern provinces of Ferrara, Bologna, Ravenna, and Forli.
Industry:Language
The founder of the celebrated banking business, born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, a Jew by birth; began his career as a money-lender and made a large fortune (1743-1812); left five sons, who were all made barons of the Austrian empire—Amselm von R., eldest, head of the house at Frankfort (1773-1855); Solomon von R., the second, head of the Vienna house (1774-1855); Nathan von R., the third, head of the London house (1777-1836); Karl von R., the fourth, head of the house at Naples (1755-1855); and Jacob von R., the fifth, head of the Paris house (1792-1868).
Industry:Language
The German Imperial Legislature, representative of the German nation, and which consists of 397 members, elected by universal suffrage and ballot for a term of five years.
Industry:Language
The great romancer, born in Edinburgh, through both father and mother of Scottish Border blood; his father, a lawyer, a man "who passed from the cradle to the grave without making an enemy or losing a friend," his mother a little kindly woman, full of most vivid memories, awakening an interest in him to which he owed much; was a healthy child, but from teething and other causes lost the use of his right limb when 18 months old, which determined, to a marked extent, the course of his life; spent many of the months of his childhood in the country, where he acquired that affection for all natural objects which never left him, and a kindliness of soul which all the lower animals that approached him were quick to recognise; he was from the first home-bred, and to realise the like around his own person was his fondest dream, and if he failed, as it chanced he did, his vexation was due not to the material loss it involved, but to the blight it shed on his home life and the disaster on his domestic relationships; his school training yielded results of the smallest account to his general education, and a writer of books himself, he owed less to book-knowledge than his own shrewd observation; he proceeded from the school (the High School, it was) at 15 to his father's office and classes at the University, and at both he continued to develop his own bent more than the study of law or learning; at his sixteenth year the bursting of a blood-vessel prostrated him in bed and enforced a period of perfect stillness, but during this time he was able to prosecute sundry quiet studies, and laid up in his memory great stores of knowledge, for his mind was of that healthy quality which assimilated all that was congenial to it and let all that did not concern it slip idly through, achieving thereby his greatest victory, that of becoming an altogether whole man.
Professionally he was a lawyer, and a good lawyer, but the duties of his profession were not his chief interest, and though he received at length a sheriffship worth £300 a year, and a clerkship to the court worth £1500, he early turned his mind to seek promotion elsewhere, and chose a literary career. His first literary efforts were translations in verse from the German, but his first great literary success was the publication, in 1802, of "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and in this he first gave evidence both of the native force and bent of his genius; it gave the keynote of all that subsequently proceeded from his pen. This was followed the same year by "Cadzow Castle," a poem instinct with military ardour, and this by "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in 1805; the first poem which gained him popular favour, by "Marmion" in 1808, and by "The Lord of the Isles" in 1814. Much as the rise of Scott's fame was owing to his poetical works, it is on the ground of his prose writings, as the freest and fullest exhibition of his genius, that it is now mainly founded. The period of his productivity in this line extended over 18 years in all, commencing with the year 1814. This was the year of the publication of "Waverley," which was followed by that of "Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," "Rob Roy," "Old Mortality," and "The Heart of Midlothian" in the year 1819, when he was smitten down by an illness, the effects of which was seen in his after-work. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Ivanhoe," "The Monastery," "The Abbot," "Kenilworth," and "The Pirate" belong to the years that succeeded that illness, and all more or less witness to its sorrowful effects, of which last "The Abbot" and "The Monastery" are reckoned the best, as still illustrating the "essential powers" of Scott, to which may be added "Redgauntlet" and "The Fortunes of Nigel," characterised by Ruskin as "quite noble ones," together with "Quentin Durward" and "Woodstock," as "both of high value." Sir Walter's own life was, in its inner essence, an even-flowing one, for there were in it no crises such as to require a reversal of the poles of it, and a spiritual new birth, with crucifixion of the old nature, and hence it is easily divisible, as it has been divided throughout, into the three natural periods of growth, activity, and death. His active life, which ranges from 1796 to 1826, lay in picturing things and traditions of things as in youth, a 25 years' period of continuous crescent expansiveness, he had learned to view them, and his slow death was the result, not of mere weariness in working, but of the adverse circumstances that thwarted and finally wrecked the one unworthy ambition that had fatally taken possession of his heart. Of Scott Ruskin says, "What good Scott had in him to do, I find no words full enough to express... Scott is beyond comparison the greatest intellectual force manifested in Europe since Shakespeare... All Scott's great writings were the recreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labor, and rich with organic gathering of boundless resource" (1771-1832).
Industry:Language
The greatest of French literary critics, born at Boulogne-sur-Mer; adopted medicine as a profession in deference to the wishes of his widowed mother, and for some years studied at Paris, but even as a student had begun his career as a literary critic by contributions to the Globe newspaper; in 1827 became acquainted with Victor Hugo, whose commanding influence drew him into the Romantic movement, and determined for him a literary career; a critical work on French poetry in the 16th century (1828), two volumes of mediocre poetry (1829-1830), and a psychological novel, "Volupte" (1834), the fruit of spiritual and mental unrest, preceded his lectures at Lausanne on Port-Royal (1837), which, afterwards elaborated and published, contain some of his finest writings; an appointment in the Mazarin Library, Paris (1840), brought him a modest competence, and allowed him during the next 8 years to contribute without strain or stress to the Revue des Deux Mondes; was elected in 1845 to the Academy; three years later lectured for a session at Liège University; during 1849-1869 he contributed a weekly literary article to the Constitutionnel; these form his famous "Causeries du Lundi" and "Nouveaux Lundis," which, for variety of human interest, critical insight, and breadth of sympathy, remain unsurpassed; was appointed professor of Latin in the Collège de France (1854), but his unpopularity with the students, owing to his support of Napoleon III., led to his resignation; as a senator in 1865 his popularity revived by his eloquent advocacy of freedom of thought, and on his decease some 10,000 people attended his funeral (1804-1869).
Industry:Language
The greatest of modern Orientalists, born at Paris; by twenty-three was a master of classic, Oriental, and modern European languages; was appointed in 1795 professor of Arabic in the School of Oriental Languages, and in 1806 of Persian in the College de France, besides which he held various other appointments; founded the Asiatic Society in 1822; was created a baron by Napoleon Bonaparte, and entered the Chamber of Peers in 1832; published "Biographies of Persian Poets," a standard Arabic grammar, etc.; his writings gave a stimulus to Oriental research throughout Europe (1758-1838).
Industry:Language
