literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although
the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to
science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period
the school, which for some time had been gradually breaking up,
seems finally to have succumbed. The later productions in the
field of pure literature bear the stamp of Rome rather than of
Alexandria. But in that city for some time past there had
been various forces secretly working, and these, coming in
contact with great spiritual changes in the world around,
produced a second outburst of intellectual activity, which is
generally known as the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The
doctrines of this school were a fusion of Eastern and Western
thought, and combined in varying proportions the elements of
Hellenistic and Jewish philosophy. Traces of this eclectic
tendency are discoverable as far back as 280 B.C., but for
practical purposes the dates of the school may be given as
from about 30 B.C. to A.D. 529. The city of Alexandria
had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and
Africa. Its population, then as at the present day, was a
heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted
a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the
beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of
the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact
of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great
problem of thought. The Jewish ideas of divine authority
and their transcendental theories of conduct were peculiarly
attractive to the Greek thinkers who found no inspiration
in the dry intellectualism into which they had fallen (see
NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM). At the same time the Jews of the
Dispersion had to some extent shaken off the exclusiveness
of their old political relations and were prepared to compare
and contrast their old territorial theology with cosmopolitan
culture. Further, when the two sides came to consider
the results of their intellectual inheritance they found
that they had sufficient common ground for the initial
compromise. Thus the Hellenistic doctrine of personal
revelation could be combined with the Jewish tradition of a
complete theology revealed to a special people. The result
was the application of a purely philosophical system to the
somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. The
matter was Jewish, the arrangement Greek. According to the
relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism,
the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of
Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism and eclectic Platonism.
The members of the school may be enumerated under three heads.
(1) The beginnings of the eclectic spirit are, according
to some authorities, discernible in the Septuagint (280
B.C.) (see Frankel, Historisch-kritische Studien zur
Septuaginta, 1841), but the first concrete exemplification is
found in Aristobulus (e. 160 B.C.). So far as the Jewish
succession is concerned, the great name is that of Philo in
the first century of our era. He took Greek metaphysical
theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them
in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. He dealt with
(a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man
and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God,
and, (c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of
the relation between God and the material universe. From
these three arguments he developed an elaborate theosophy
which was a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek
metaphysic, and may be regarded as representing the climax
of Jewish philosophy. (2) The first purely philosophical
phenomenon of the Alexandrian school was Neo-Pythagoreanism,
the second and last Neo-Platonism. Leaving all detailed
descriptions of these schools to special articles devoted to
them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a
synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism
with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became
more and more important. The world to which they spoke had
begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human
soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and
evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the
nature of the soul, and taught that its freedom consists in
communion with God, to be achieved by absorption in a sort
of ecstatic trance. This doctrine reaches its height in
Plotinus, after whom it degenerated into magic and theurgy
in its unsuccessful combat with the victorious Christianity.
Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back
to Athens under Plutarch and Proclus, and occupied itself
largely in purely historical work based mainly on the attempt
to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the
system of Plotinus. This school ended under Damascius when
Justinian closed the Athenian schools (A.D. 529). (3)
The eddies of Neo-Platonism had a considerable effect on
certain Christian thinkers about the beginning of the 3rd
century. Among these the most important were Clement of
Alexandria and Origen. Clement, as a scholar and a theologian,
proposed to unite the mysticism of Neo- Platonism with the
practical spirit of Christianity. He combined the principle
of pure living with that of free thinking, and held that
instruction must have regard to the mental capacity of the
hearer. The compatibility of Christian and later Neo-Platonic
ideas is evidenced by the writings of Synesius, bishop of
Ptolemais, and though Neo-Platonism eventually succumbed to
Christianity, it had the effect, through the writings of
Clement and Origen, of modifying the tyrannical fanaticism
and ultra- dogmatism of the early Christian writers.
AUTHORITIES.--Matter, Histoire de l'ecole d'Alexandrie,
2nd ed. (3 vols., 1840-1844); Simon, Histoire de L'ecole
d'Ajexandrie (2 vols., 1844-1845); Vacherot, Histoire critique
de l'ecole d'Ajexandrie (3 vols., 1846-1851); Kingsley,
Alexandria and her Schools (1854); Gfrorer, Philo und
die Alexandrinische Theosophie (1835) Dahne, Geschict.
Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrinischen Religionsphilosophie
(1834); Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Uberweg,
Windelband, &c., and Bibliography of CHURCH HISTORY, &c.
1 A considerable fragment of his epic Hecale
has been discovered in the Rainer papyrus.
ALEXANDRIA TROAS (mod. Eski Stambul), an ancient Greek city
of the Troad, situated on the west coast at nearly its middle
point, a little south of Tenedos. It was built by Antigonus,
perhaps about 310 B.C., and was called by him Antigonia
Troas. Early in the next century the name was changed by
Lysimachus to Alexandria Troas, in honour of Alexander's
memory. As the chief port of north-west Asia Minor, the place
prospered greatly in Roman times, and the existing remains
sufficiently attest its former importance. Thence St Paul
sailed for Europe for the first time, and there occurred
later the episode of the raising of Eutychus (Acts xx.
5-12). The site is now covered with valonia oaks, and has
been much plundered, e.g by Mahommed IV., who took columns
to adorn his new Valideh mosque in Stambul; but the circuit
of the old walls can be traced, and in several places they
are fairly well preserved. They had a circumference of about
six English miles, and were fortified with towers at regular
intervals. Remains of some ancient buildings, including a
bath and gymnasium, can be traced within this area. Trajan
built an aqueduct which can still be traced. The harbour had
two large basins, now almost choked with sand. A Roman colony
was sent to the place, as Strabo mentions, in the reign of
Augustus. The abridged name ``Troas'' (Acts xvi. 8) was
probably the current one in later Roman times. (D. G. H.)
ALEXANDRINE VERSE, a name given to the leading measure in
French poetry. It is the heroic French verse, used in epic
narrative, in tragedy and in the higher comedy. There is
some doubt as to the origin of the name; but most probably
it is derived from a collection of romances, collected in
the 12th century, of which Alexander of Macedon was the
hero, and in which he was represented, somewhat like the
British Arthur, as the pride and crown of chivalry. Before
the publication of this work most of the trouvere romances
appeared in octosyllabic verse. There is also a theory that
the form was invented by a poet named Alexander. The new
work, which was henceforth to set the fashion to French
literature, was written in lines of twelve syllables,
but with a freedom of pause which was afterwards greatly
curtailed. The new fashion, however, was not adopted all at
once. The metre fell into disuse until the reign of Francis
I., when it was revived by Jean Antoine de Baif, one of the
seven poets known as the Pleiades. Jodelle mingled episodical
Alexandrines with the vers communs of his tragedies and so
introduced them into drama. It was Ronsard, however, who made
the verse popular, and gave it vogue in France. From his time
it became the recognized vehicle for all great poetry, and
the regulation of its pauses became more and more strict.
The following is an example of the verse as used by Racine--
Ou suis-je? qu'ai-je fait? || que dois-je faire encore?
Quel transport me saisit? || quel chagrin me devore?
Two inexorable laws came to be established with regard to the
pauses. The first is, that each line should be divided into
two equal parts, the sixth syllable always ending with a
word. In the earlier use of this metre, on the contrary,
it frequently happened that the sixth and seventh syllables
belonged to the same word. The other is that, except under
the most stringent conditions, there should be none of
what the French critics call enjambement, that is, the
overlapping of the sense from one line on to the next.
Ronsard completely ignored this rule, which was after his time
settled by the authority of Malherbe. The latest school of
French prosody has given great attention to the breaking up
of the Alexandrine, which no longer possesses the rigidity
of authoritative form which it held until about 1880, but is
often used with a licence no less than when Ronsard wrote.
Michael Drayton, who was twenty-two years of age when Ronsard
died, seemed to think that the Alexandrine might be as
pleasing to English as it was to French ears, and in this
metre he wrote a long poem in twenty-four books called the
Polyolbion. The metre, however, failed to catch the English
ear. The principal English measure is a line of ten
syllables, and the Alexandrine is used only occasionally to
give it variety and weight. In ordinary English heroic verse
it is but rarely introduced; but in the favourite narrative
metre, known as the Spenserian, it comes in regularly as the
concluding line of each stanza. In English usage, moreover,
it is to be observed that there is no fixed rule as to the
position of the pause, though it is true that most commonly
the pause occurs at the end of the sixth syllable. Spenser
is very free in shifting the pause about; and though the
later poets who have used this stanza are not so free, yet,
with the exception of Shenstone and of Byron, they do not
scruple to obliterate all pause between the sixth and seventh
syllables. Thus Thomson (Castle of Indolenee, i. 42):--
And music lent new gladness to the morning air.
The danger in the use of the Alexandrine is that, in
attempting to give dignity to his line, the poet may
only produce heaviness, incurring the sneer of Pope--
A needless Alexandrine ends the song.
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
The Alexandrine was the dominant metre in Dutch poetry from the
16th to the middle of the 19th century, and about the time of its
introduction to Holland it was accepted in Germany by the school of
Opitz. In the course of the 17th century, after being used
without rhyme by Seckendorf and others, it formed a transitional
station on the route to German blank verse, and has since then
been rarely employed, except occasionally in rhymed comedy.
ALEXANDRISTS, the name given to those philosophers of the
Renaissance, who, in the great controversy on the subject
of personal immortality, adopted the explanation of the De
Anima given by Alexander of Aphrodisias. According to the
orthodox Thomism of the Roman Catholic Church, Aristotle
rightly regarded reason as a facility of the individual
soul. Against this, the Averroists, led by Agostino Nito
(q.v.), introduced the modifying theory that universal
reason in a sense individualizes itself in each soul and
then absorbs the active reason into itself again. These two
theories respectively evolved the doctrine of individual and
universal immortality, or the absorption of the individual
into the eternal One. The Alexandrists, led by Pietro
Pomponazzi, boldly assailed these beliefs and denied that
either was rightly attributed to Aristotle. They held that
Aristotle considered the soul as a material and therefore
a mortal entity which operates during life only under the
authority of universal reason. Hence the Alexandrists denied
the possibillty of immortality in every shape or form.
Since the soul is organically connected with the body, the
dissolution of the latter involves the extinction of the former.
ALEXANDRITE, a variety of chrysoberyl (q.v.) discovered
in the Urals in 1833, on the day set apart for celebrating
the majority of the cesarevich, afterwards the tsar, Alexander
II., in whose honour the stone was named by Nils Gustaf
Nordenskiold, of Helsingfors. It is remarkable for being
strongly dichroic, generally appearing dark green by daylight
and raspberry-red by candle-light, or by daylight transmitted
through the stone. As red and green are the military
colours of Russia, the mineral became highly popular as a
gem-stone. The dark green crystals are usually cloudy and
cracked, and grouped in triplets presenting a pseudo-hexagonal
form. Alexandrite was found originally in the emerald- mine of
Takovaya, east of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, and afterwards
in the gold-bearing sands of the Sanarka in the southern
Urals. Subsequently it was discovered in greater abundance
in the gem-gravels of Ceylon. It has been found also in
Tasmania. Some of the Ceylon alexandrite exhibits,
when suitably cut, the Cat's-eye chatoyance, whence
it has been called alexandrite cat's-eye. (F. W. R.*)
ALEXANDROPOL, or ALEXANDRAPOL. (Turk. Gumri), a
Russian town and fortified camp in Transcaucasia, government
of Erivan, near the junction of the Arpa-chai with the
Aras, 48 m. by rail E.N.E. of Kars. Altitude 5080
ft. It has a trade in silk. Here the Russians defeated
the Turks in 1853. Pop. (1885) 22,670; (1897) 32,735.
ALEXANDROVSK. (1) A town of N. Russia, in the government
of Archangel, on the harbour of Catherine (Ekaterininsk),
on the Murman coast, 5 m. from the mouth of Kola Bay.
It was opened in 1899 and is a naval station, being free
from ice all the year round. It is also called Port
Catherine. Pop. (1901) 300. (2) A town of S. Russia, 83
m. S. of Ekaterinoslav, on the railway to the Crimea, near
the left bank of the Dnieper, below its rapids. Pop. (1897)
16,393. Opposite it is the island of Khortitsa, upon which was
the sich (or syech) or camp of the Zaporozhian cossacks.
All its neighbouthood is strewn with kurgans (tumuli).
ALEXIS, Greek comic poet of the Middle Comedy, was born
about 394 B.C. at Thurii and taken early to Athens,
where he became a citizen. Plutarch says that he lived to
the age of 106, and that he died on the stage while being
crowned. According to Suidas, who calls him Monander's
uncle, he wrote 245 comedies, of which some 130 titles are
preserved. The fragments (about 1000 lines) attest the wit and
refinement of the author (Koch, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta).
ALEXIS, WILLIBALD, the pseudonym of GEORG WILHELM HEINRICH
HARING (1798--1871), German historical novelist. He was
born on the 29th of June 1798 at Breslau, where his father,
who came of a French refugee family, named Hareng, held a high
position in the war department. He attended the Werdersche
Gymnasium in Berlin, and then, serving as a volunteer in
the campaign of 1815, took part in the siege of the Ardenne
fortresses. On his return he studied law at the universities
of Berlin and Breslau and entered the legal profession, but he
soon abandoned this career and devoted himself to literature.
Settling in Berlin he edited, 1827-1835, the Berliner
Konversationsblatt, in which for the first two years he was
assisted by Friedrich Christoph Forster (1791--1868); and in
1828 was created a doctor of philosophy by the university of
Halle. In 1852 he retired to Arnstadt in Thuringia, where after
many years of broken health he died on the 16th of December 1871.
Haring made his name first known as a writer by an idyll in
hexameters, Die Treibjagd (1820), and several short stories
in which the influence of Tieck is observable; but his
literary reputation was first established by the historical
romance Walladmor (1823), which, published as being ``freely
translated from the English of Sir Walter Scott, with a
preface by Willibald Alexis,'' so closely imitated the style
of the famous Scotsman as really to deceive even Scott's
admirers. The work became immediately popular and was
translated into several languages, including English. It
was followed by Schloss Avalon (1827), with regard to
which the author adopted the same tactics and with equal
success. These historical novels, however, were of considerable
literary merit, and would doubtless have achieved popularity
even without the borrowed plumage. Soon afterwards Haring
published a number of successful short stories (Gesammelte
Novellen, 4 vols., 1830-1831), some books of travel, and in
the novels Das Haus Dusterweg (1835) and Zwolf Nachte
(1838) showed for a while a leaning towards the ``Young German''
school. In Cabanis (1832), however, a story of the time
of Frederick the Great, he entered the field of patriotic-
historical romance, in which he so far excelled as to have
earned the name of ``der Markische Walter Scott'' (Walter
Scott of the Mark). From 1840 onwards he published at
short intervals a series of romances, each dealing with
some epoch in the history of Brandenburg. Among them may
be especially noted Der Roland von Berlin (1840), Der
falsche Woldemar (1842), Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow
(1846-1848), Ruhe ist die erste Burgerpflicht (1852),
Isegrimm (1854) and Dorothe (1856). In all these the
author shows himself as a keen observer of men and things; the
characters, situations and natural surroundings are excellently
delineated, and the patriotic feeling which pervades them is
not overdone. Haring also made a name for himself in the
field of criminology by commencing in 1842, in conjunction
with the publicist, Julius Eduard Hitzig (1780- 1849), the
publication of Der neue Pitaval (continued by A. Vollert, 36
vols., Leipzig, 1842-1865; new edition, 24 vols., Leipzig,
1866-1891), a, collection of criminal anecdotes culled from
all nations and all times. This publication attained great
popularity, and is to-day of psychological interest and value.
His Gesammelte Werke were published in 20 volumes (Berlin,
1874); the Vaterlandische Romane separately in 8 volumes
(Berlin, 1881, 1884), and, since the expiry of the copyright in
1901, in many cheap reprints. Cp. W. Alexis' Erinnerungen,
edited by M. Ewert (1900), and essays by Julian Schmidt (Neue
Bilaer aus dere geistigen Leben unsrer Zeit, 1873), G. Freytag
(Werke, vols. 16 and 23), A. Stern Zur Literatur der Gegenwart,
1880) and T. Fontane (in Bayreuther Blatter, vi., 1883).
ALEXISBAD, a spa of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, lying
under the Harz mountains, 1000 ft. above the sea, on the railway
from Gernrode to Harzgerode. Pop. 1000. It is celebrated for
its medicinal waters, of which the Abexisbrunnen, a ferruginous
spring, is used for drinking, while the Selkebrunnen supplies
the baths, which are of use in feminine disorders. The
place was founded in 1810 by Duke Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg.
ALEXIUS I. (1048-1118), emperor of the East, was the third
son of John Comnenus, nephew of Isaac Comnenus, emperor
1057-1059. His father declined the throne on the abdication
of Isaac, who was accordingly succeeded by four emperors
of other families between that date and 1081. Under one
of these emperors, Romanus Diogenes (1067-1071), he served
with distinction against the Seljuk Turks. Under Michael
Parapinaces (1071-1078) and Nicephorus Botaniates (1078-1081)
he was also employed, along with his elder brother Isaac,
against rebels in Asia Minor, Thrace and in Epirus (1071).
The success of the Comneni roused the jealousy of Botaniates
and his ministers, and the Comneni were almost compelled
to take up arms in self- defence. Botaniates was forced to
abdicate and retire to a monastery, and Isaac declined the
crown in favour of his younger brother Alexius, who then
became emperor in the 33rd year of his age. His long reign of
nearly 37 years was full of difficulties (see ROMAN EMPIRE,
LATER). At the very outset he had to meet the formidable
attack of the Normans (Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund),
who took Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and laid siege to Larissa in
Thessaly. The Norman danger ended for the time with Robert
Guiscard's death (1085) and the conquests were recovered.
He had next to repel the invasions of Patzinaks (Petchenegs)
and Kumans in Thrace, with whom the Manichaean sects of the
Paulicians and Bogomilians made Common cause; and thirdly, he
had to cope with the fast-growing power of the Turks in Asia
Minor. Above all he had to meet the difficulties caused by
the arrival of the warriors of the First Crusade, which had
been in a great degree initiated owing to the representations
of his own ambassadors, though the help which he wanted from
the West was simply mercenary forces and not the immense hosts
which arrived to his consternation and embarrassment. The
first part, under Peter the Hermit, he got rid of by sending
them on to Asia Minor, where they were massacred by the Turks
(1096). The second and much more serious host of warriors,
led by Godfrey of Bouillon, he conducted also into Asia,
promising to supply them with provisions in return for an oath
of homage, and by their victories recovered for the Empire
a number of important cities and islands--Nicaea, Chics,
Rhodes, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis, and in fact
most of Asia Minor (1097-1099). This is ascribed as a credit
to his policy and diplomacy by his daughter, by the Latin
historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness, but
during the last twenty years of his life he lost much of his
popularity. They were marked by persecution of the followers
of the Paulician and Bogomilian heresies (one of his last
acts was to burn Basilius, a Bogomilian leader, with whom
he had engaged in a theological controversy), by renewed
struggles with the Turks (1110-1117), by anxieties as to the
succession, which his wife Irene wished to alter in favour of
her daughter Anne's husband, Nicephorus Bryennius for whose
benefit the special title panhypersebastos (i.e. as it were
dugustissimus si quis ahus) was created. This intrigue
disturbed even his dying hours. He deserves the credit of
having raised the Empire from a condition of anarchy and
decay at a time when it was threatened on all sides by new
dangers. No emperor devoted himself more laboriously
or with a greater sense of duty to the task of ruling.
AUTHORITIES.--Zonaras xviii. 27-29; Anna Comnena's Life;
see also Du Cange, Familiae Byzantinae; Friedrich Wilken,
Rerum ab Alexio I., Joanne, Manuele et Alexio II. Comnenis
Romanorum, Byzantinorum imperatoribus gestarum, tibri iv.
Commentatio (Heidelberg, 1811); Finlay, History of Greece
(vol. iii., Oxford, 1877); Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, edited with notes, &c., by Prof. J. B. Bury (London,
1898), where further authorities are cited; F. Chalandon, Essai
sur le regne d'Alexis Ier, Comnene (1900). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS II. (COMNENUS) (1167-1183), emperor of the
East, was the son of Manuel Comnenus and Maria, daughter of
Kaymund, prince of Antioch, and was born at Constantinople
on the 10th of September 1167. On Manuel's death, Maria,
who hid been immured in a convent under the name of Xene,
had herself proclaimed regent (1179-1180), and handing over
her son to evil counsellors, who encouraged him in every
vice, supported the government of Alexius the protosebastos
(nephew of Manuel), who was supposed to be her lover. The
young Alexius and his friends now tried to form a party
against the empress mother and the protosebastos; and his
sister Maria, wife of Caesar John, stirred up riots in
the streets of the capital. Their party was defeated (May
2, 1182), but Andronicus Comnenus took advantage of these
disorders to aim at the crown, entered Constantinople, where
he was received with almost divine honours, and overthrew the
regents. His arrival was celebrated by a barbarous massacre
of the Latins in Constantinople, which he made no attempt to
stop. He allowed Alexius to be crowned, but forced him to
consent to the death of all his friends, including his mother,
his sister and the Caesar, and refused to allow him the smallest
voice in public affairs. The betrothal in 1180 of Alexius
with Agnes, daughter of Louis VII. of France, a child of
nine, was quashed, and he was married to Irene, daughter of
Andronicus. The latter was now formally proclaimed as
co-emperor, and not long afterwards, on the pretext that
divided rule was injurious to the Empire, he caused Alexius
to be strangled with a bow-string (October 1183). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS III. (ANGELUS), emperor of the East, was the
second son of Andronicus Angelus, nephew of Alexius I. In
1195, while his brother Isaac II. was away hunting in
Thrace, he was proclaimed emperor by the troops; he captured
Isaac at Stagira in Macedonia, put out his eyes, and
kept him henceforth a close prisoner, though he had been
redeemed by him from captivity at Antioch and loaded with
honours. To compensate for this crime and to confirm his
position as emperor, he had to scatter money so lavishly
as to empty his treasury, and to allow such licence to the
officers of the army as to leave the Empire practically
defenceless. He consummated the financial ruin of the
state. The empress Euphrosyne tried in vain to sustain his
credit and his court; Vatatzes, the favourite instrument of
her attempts at reform, was assassinated by the emperor's
orders. Eastward the Empire was overrun by the Turks;
from the north Bulgarians and Vlachs descended unchecked
to ravage the plains of Macedonia and Thrace; while Alexius
squandered the public treasure on his palaces and gardens.
Soon he was threatened by a new and yet more formidable
danger. In 1202 the Western princes assembled at Venice,
bent on a new crusade. To them Alexius, son of the deposed
Isaac, made appeal, promising as a crowning bribe to heal the
schism of East and West if they would help him to depose his
uncle. The crusaders, whose objective had been Egypt, were
persuaded to set their course for Constantinople, before which
they appeared in June 1203, proclaiming the emperor Alexius
IV. and summoning the capital to depose his uncle. Alexius
III., sunk in debauchery, took no efficient measures to
resist. His son-in-law, Lascaris, who was the only one
to do anything, was defeated at Scutari, and the siege of
Constantinople began. On the 17th of July the crusaders,
the aged doge Dandolo at their head, scaled the walls and
took the city by storm. During the fighting and carnage
that followed Alexius hid in the palace, and finally, with
one of his daughters, Irene, and such treasures as he could
collect, got into a boat and escaped to Develton in Thrace,
leaving his wife, his other daughters and his Empire to the
victors. Isaac, drawn from his prison and robed once
more in the imperial purple, received hs son in state.
Shortly afterwards Alexius made an effort in conjunction
with Murtzuphlos (Alexius V.) to recover the throne. The
attempt was unsuccessful and, after wandering about Greece,
he surrendered with Euphrosyne, who had meanwhile joined
him, to Boniface of Montferrat, then master of a great part
of the Balkan peninsula. Leaving his protection he sought
shelter with Michael, despot of Epirus, and then repaired
to Asia Minor,where his son-in-law Lascaris was holding his
own against the Latins. Alexius, joined by the sultan of
Iconium (Konieh), now demanded the crown of Lascaris, and
on his refusal marched against him. Lascaris, however,
defeated and took him prisoner. Alexius was relegated to
a monastery at Nicaea, where he died on some date unknown.
AUTHORITIES.--Nicetas Acominatus, George Acropolites, Nicephorus Gregoras;
and the sources for the Fourth Crusade (see CRUSADES). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS V., eastern Roman emperor, was proclaimed emperor on
the 5th of February 1204, during the siege of Constantinople
by the Latins (Fourth Crusade). His name was Alexius Ducas
Murtzuphlos, and he was a connexion of the imperial house
of the Angell. His elevation was the result of a revolution
in the city against Isaac II. and Alexius IV. He conducted
the defence with great bravery till it became hopeless
(April 12), whereupon he fled. He would then have made
common cause with Alexius III. against the Latins, but was
blinded by that ex-monarch and fell into the hands of the
crusaders, who put him to death by casting him from the top
of the Pillar of Theodosius as the murderer of Alexius IV.
ALEXIUS MIKHAILOVICH (1624-1676), tsar of Muscovy, the son
of Tsar Michael Romanov and Eudoxia Stryeshnevaya, was born
on the 9th of March 1629. A youth at his father's death
(1645), he was committed to the care of the boyarin Boris
Ivanovich Morozov, a shrewd and sensible guardian, sufficiently
enlightened to recognize the needs of his country, and by no
means inaccessible to Western ideas. Morozov's foreign policy was
pacificatory. He secured the truce with Poland and carefully
avoided complications with the Porte. His domestic policy was
severely equitable, and aimed at relieving the public burdens
by limiting the privileges of foreign traders and abolishing
a great many useless and expensive court offices. On the 17th
of January 1648 he procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria
Miloslavshaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days
later. The Miloslavskis were typical self-seeking 17th century
boyars, whose extortions made them generally detested. In
May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them, and the
young tsar was compelled to dismiss both them and their patron
Morozov. The successful issue of the Moscow riots was the
occasion of disquieting disturbances all over the tsardom
culminating in dangerous rebellions at Pskov and Great Novgorod,
with which the government was so unable to cope that they
surrendered, practically granting the malcontents their own
terms. One man only had displayed equal tact and courage at Great
Novgorod, the metropolitan Nikon (q.v.), who in consequence
became in 1651 the tsar's chief minister. In 1653 the weakness
and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at
every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius
to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian
lands. On the 1st of October 1653 a national assembly met
at Moscow to sanction the war and find the means of carrying
it on, and in April 1654 the army was blessed by Nikon (now
patriarch). The campaign of 1654 was an uninterrupted triumph,
and scores of towns, including the important fortress of
Smolensk, fell into the hands of the Muscovites. In January
1655 the rout of Ochmatov arrested their progress; but in
the summer of the same year, the sudden invasion by Charles
X. of Sweden for the moment swept the Polish state out of
existence; the Muscovites, unopposed, quickly appropriated
nearly everything which was not already occupied by the
Swedes, and when at last the Poles offered to negotiate, the
whole grand-duchy of Lithuania was the least of the demands of
Alexius. Fortunately for Poland, the tsar and the king of
Sweden now quarrelled over the apportionment of the spoil, and
at the end of May 1656 Alexius, stimulated by the emperor and
the other enemies of Sweden, declared war against her. Great
things were expected of the Swedish war, but nothing came of
it. Dorpat was taken, but countless multitudes were lost
in vain before Riga. In the meantime Poland had so far
recovered herself as to become a much more dangerous foe
than Sweden, and, as it was impossible to wage war with both
simultaneously, the tsar resolved to rid himself of the Swedes
first. This he did by the peace of Kardis (July 2, 1661),
whereby Muscovy retroceded all her conquests. The Polish war
dragged on for six years longer and was then concluded by a
truce, nominally for thirteen years, which proved the most
durable of treaties. By the truce of Andrussowo (February
11, 1667) Vitebsk, Polotsk and Polish Livonia were restored
to Poland, but the infinitely more important Smolensk and
Kiev remained in the hands of the Muscovite together with
the whole eastern bank of the Dnieper. This truce was the
achievement of Athanasy Orduin-Nashchokin, the first Russian
chancellor and diplomatist in the modern sense, who after
the disgrace of Nikon became the tsar's first minister till
1670, when he was superseded by the equally able Artamon
Matvyeev, whose beneficent influence prevailed to the end
of the reign. It is the crowning merit of the ever amiable
and courteous tsar Alexius that he discovered so many great
men (like Nikon, Orduin, Matvyeev, the best of Peter's
precursors) and suitably employed them. He was not a man
of superior strength of character, or he would never have
submitted to the dictation of Nikon. But, on the other
hand, he was naturally, if timorously, progressive, or he
would never have encouraged the great reforming boyarin
Matvyeev. His education was necessarily narrow; yet he
was learned in his way, wrote verses, and even began a
history of his own times. His last years, notwithstanding
the terrible rebellion of Stenka Razin, were deservedly
tranquil. By his first consort he had thirteen children,
of whom two sickly sons and eight healthy daughters survived
him. By his second consort, Natalia Naruishkina, he had two
children, the tsarevich Peter and the tsarevna Natalia.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905). (R. N. B.)
ALEXIUS PETROVICH (1600-1718), Russian tsarevich, the sole
surviving son of Peter I. and Eudoxia Lopukhina, was horn on the
19th of February 1690. The young tsar married the boyarinya
Lopukhina at his mother's command. We know nothing of the
bride except that she was beautiful, modest and ``brought up
in the fear of the Lord.'' She would, doubtless, have made a
model tsaritsa of the pre-Petrine period, but, unfortunately,
she was no fit wife for such a vagabond of genius as Peter the
Great. From the first her society bored Peter unspeakably,
and, after the birth of their second short-lived son
Alexander, on the 3rd of October 1691, he practically deserted
her. The young Alexius was ignored by his father till he was
nine years old. Peter was a rare and unwelcome guest in his
own family, and a son who loved his mother could have little
affection for a father who had ever been that mother's worst
persecutor. From his sixth to his ninth year Alexius was
educated by the diffuse and pedantic Vyazemsky, but after the
removal of his mother to the Suzdal Prokovsky Monastery he
was confided to the care of learned foreigners, who taught him
history, geography, mathematics and French. In 1703 Alexius
was ordered to follow the army to the field as a private in a
bombardier regiment. In 1704 he was present at the capture of
Narva. At this period the preceptors of the tsarevich had
the highest opinion of his ability; but, unfortunately, it
was not the sort of ability that his father could make use
of. He was essentially a student, with strong leanings towards
archaeology and ecclesiology. A monastic library was the proper
place for this gentle emotional dreamer, who clung so fondly
to the ancient traditions. To a prince of his temperament the
vehement activity of his abnormally energetic father was very
offensive. He liked neither the labour itself nor its
object. Yet Peter, not unnaturally, wished his heir to
dedicate himself to the service of new Russia, and demanded
from him unceasing labour in order to maintain the brand-new
state at the high level of greatness to which it had been
raised. Painful relations between father and son, quite
apart from the personal antipathies already existing, were
therefore inevitable. It was an additional misfortune
for Alexius that his father should have been too busy to
attend to him just as he was growing up from boyhood to
manhood. He was left in the hands of reactionary boyars
and priests, who encouraged him to hate his father and
wish for the death of the tsar-antichrist. His confessor,
Yakov Ignatiev, whom he promised to obey as ``an angel and
apostle of God,'' was his chief counsellor in these days.
In 1708 Peter sent Alexius to Smolensk to collect provender
and recruits, and thence to Moscow to fortify it against
Charles XII. At the end of 1709 he went to Dresden for twelve
months for finishing lessons in French and German, mathematics
and fortification, and, his education completed, he was
married, greatly against his will, to the princess Charlotte
of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel, whose sister espoused, almost
simultaneously, the heir to the Austrian throne, the archduke
Charles. The wedding was celebrated at Torgau on the 14th of
October 1711, in the house of the queen of Poland, and three
weeks later the bridegroom was hurried away by his father to
Thorn to superintend the provisioning of the Russian troops in
Poland. For the next twelve months Alexius was kept constantly
on the move. His wife joined him at Thorn in December, but
in April 1712 a peremptory ukaz ordered him off to the army in
Pomerania, and in the autumn of the same year he was forced
to accompany his father on a tour of inspection through
Finland. Evidently Peter was determined to tear his son
away from a life of indolent ease. Immediately on his
return from Finland Alexius was despatched by his father
to Staraya Rusya and Ladoga to see to the building of new
ships. This was the last commission entrusted to him.
On his return to the capital Peter, in order to see what
progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics,
asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his
inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal,
resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a
pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended
his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit
who mutilates himself to escape military service. After
this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest in
Alexius. He left him entirely to himself. He employed him no
more. He no longer pressed him to attend public functions.
Alexius rejoiced at this welcome change, but he had cause
rather to fear it. It marked the deepening of a hatred which
might have been overcome. Alexius was evidently consoling
himself with the reflexion that the future belonged to
him. He was well aware that the mass of the Russian nation
was on his side. Nearly all the prelates were devoted to
him. Equally friendly were the great boyar families. All
Alexius had to do was to sit still, keep out of his father's
way as much as possible and await the natural course of
events. But with Peter the present was everything. He could
not afford to leave anything to chance. All his life long
he had been working incessantly with a single object --the
regeneration of Russia. What if his successor refused to tread
in his father's footsteps or, still worse, tried to destroy his
father's work? By some such process of reasoning as this must
the idea of changing the succession to the throne, by setting
aside Alexius, have first occurred to the mind of Peter the
Great. Nevertheless he made one last effort to reclaim his
son. On the 22nd of October 1715 Alexius' consort, the princess
Charlotte, died, after giving birth to a son, the grand-duke
Peter, afterwards Peter II. On the day of the funeral Peter
addressed to Alexius a stern letter of warning and remonstrance,
urging him no longer to resemble the slothful servant in the
parable, and threatening to cut him off, as though he were a
gangrenous swelling, if he did not acquiesce in his father's
plans. But it was now that Alexius showed what a poor
creature he really was. He wrote a pitiful reply to his
father, offering to renounce the succession in favour of his
baby half-brother Peter, who had been born the day after the
princess Charlotte's funeral. As if this were not enough, in
January 1716 he wrote to his father for permission to become a
monk. Still Peter did not despair. On the 26th of August
1716 he wrote to Alexius from abroad urging him, if he
desired to remain tsarevich, to join him and the army without
delay. Rather than face this ordeal Alexius fled to Vienna
and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law,
the emperor Charles VI., who sent him for safety first to the
Tirolean fortress of Ahrenberg, and finally to the castle of
San Elmo at Naples. He was accompanied throughout his journey
by his mistress, the Finnish girl Afrosina. That the emperor
sincerely sympathized with Alexius, and suspected Peter of
harbouring murderous designs against his son, is plain from
his confidential letter to George I. of England, whom he
consulted on this delicate affair. Peter's agitation was
extreme. The flight of the tsarevich to a foreign potentate
was a reproach and a scandal. He must be recovered and
brought back to Russia at all hazards. This difficult task
was accomplished by Count Peter Tolstoi, the most subtle and
unscrupulous of Peter's servants; but terrorized though he
was, Alexius would only consent to return on his father solemnly
swearing, ``before God and His judgment seat,'' that if he
came back he should not be punished in the least, but cherished
as a son and allowed to live quietly on his estates and marry
Afrosina. On the 31st of January 1718 the tsarevich reached
Moscow. Peter had already determined to institute a most searching
inquisition in order to get at the bottom of the mystery of the
flight. On the 18th of February a ``confession'' was extorted
from Alexius which implicated most of his friends, and he
then publicly renounced the succession to the throne in favour
of the baby grand-duke Peter Petrovich. A horrible reign of
terror ensued, in the course of which the ex-tsaritsa Eudoxia
was dragged from her monastery and publicly tried for alleged
adultery, while all who had in any way befriended Alexius were
impaled, broken on the wheel and otherwise lingeringly done to
death. All this was done to terrorize the reactionaries and
isolate the tsarevich. In April 1718 fresh confessions were
extorted from Alexius, now utterly broken and half idiotic with
fright. Yet even now there were no actual facts to go upon.
Alexius' ``evil designs'' were still in foro conscientiae,
and had not been, perhaps never would be, translated into
practice. The worst that could be brought against him was
that he had wished his father's death. In the eyes of Peter,
his son was now a self-convicted and most dangerous traitor,
whose life was forfeit. But there was no getting over the
fact that his father had sworn ``before the Almighty and His
judgment seat'' to pardon him and let him live in peace if he
returned to Russia. From Peter's point of view the question
was, did the enormity of the tsarevich's crime absolve the
tsar from the oath which he had taken to spare the life of
this prodigal son? This question was solemnly submitted to
a grand council of prelates, senators, ministers and other
dignitaries on the 13th of June 1718. The clergy left the
matter to the tsar's own decision. The temporal dignitaries
declared the evidence to be insufficient and suggested that
Alexius should be examined by torture. Accordingly, on
the 19th of June, the weak and ailing tsarevich received
twenty-five strokes with the knout (as then administered
nobody ever survived thirty), and on the 24th fifteen more.
It was hardly possible that he could survive such treatment;
the natural inference is that he was not intended to survive
it. Anyway, he expired two days later in the guardhouse of
the citadel of St Petersburg, two days after the senate had
condemned him to death for imagining rebellion against his
father, and for hoping for the co-operation of the common
people and the armed intervention of his brother-in-law, the
emperor. This shameful sentence was the outcome of mingled
terror and obsequiousness. Abominable, unnatural as Peter's
conduct to his unhappy and innocent son undoubtedly was,
there is no reason to suppose that he ever regretted it. He
argued that a single worthless life stood in the way of the
regeneration of Russia, and he therefore deliberately removed it.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905). (R. N. B.)
ALFANI, DOMENICO, italian painter, was born at Perugia
towards the close of the 15th century. He was a contemporary
of Raphael, with whom he studied in the school of Perugino.
The two artists lived on terms of intimate friendship, and
the influence of the more distinguished of the two is so
clearly traceable in the works of the other, that these
have frequently been attributed to Raphael. Towards the
close of his life Alfani gradually changed his style and
approximated to that of the later Florentine school. The
date of his death, according to some, was 1540, while others
say he was alive in 1553. Pictures by Alfani may be seen in
collections at Florence and in several churches in Perugia.
ALFELD, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Hanover, 10 m. W. of Hildesheim, on the river Leine and
the Hanover-Cassel main line of railway. Pop. (1900)
4900. It has a handsome church with twin spires, and training
colleges for schoolmasters and theological candidates.
Its industries are flourishing, and embrace paper-making,
agricultural machine- works, iron-founding and flax-spinning.
ALFIERI, VITTORIO, COUNT (1749-1803), Italian dramatist,
was born on the 17th of January 1749 at Asti in Piedmont. He
lost his father in early infancy; but he continued to reside
with his mother, who married a second time, till his tenth
year, when he was placed at the academy of Turin. After
he had passed a twelvemonth at the academy, he went on a
short visit to a relation who dwelt at Coni; and during his
stay there he made his first poetical attempt in a sonnet
chiefly borrowed from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio,
the only poets he had at that time read. When thirteen
years of age he was induced to begin the study of civil and
canonical law; but the attempt only served to disgust him
with every species of application and to increase his relish
for the perusal of French romances. By the death of his
uncle, who had hitherto taken some charge of his education
and conduct, he was left, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy
without control his vast paternal inheritance, augmented by
the recent accession of his uncle's fortune. He now began
to attend the riding-school, where he acquired that rage
for horses and equestrian exercise which continued to be one
of his strongest passions till the close of his existence.
After some time spent in alternate fits of extravagant
dissipation and ill-directed study, he was seized with a desire
of travelling; and having obtained permission from the king,
he departed in 1766, under the care of an English preceptor.
Restless and unquiet, he posted with the utmost rapidity
through the towns of Italy; and his improvement was such as
was to be expected from his mode of travelling and his previous
habits. Hoping to find in foreign countries some relief from the
tedium and ennui with which he was oppressed, and being anxious
to become acquainted with the French theatre, he proceeded to
Paris. But he appears to have been completely dissatisfied
with everything he witnessed in France and contracted a
dislike to its people, which his intercourse in future years
rather contributed to augment than diminish. In Holland he
became deeply enamoured of a married lady, who returned his
attachment, but who was soon obliged to accompany her husband to
Switzerland. Alfieri, whose feelings were of the most impetuous
description, was in despair at this separation, and returned
to his own country in the utmost anguish and despondency of
mind. While under this depression of spirits he was induced
to seek alleviation from works of literature; and the perusal
of Plutarch's Lives, which he read with profound emotion,
inspired him with an enthusiastic passion for freedom and
independence. Under the influence of this rage for liberty
he recommenced his travels; and his only gratification, in
the absence of freedom among the continental states, appears
to have been derived from contemplating the wild and sterile
regions of the north of Sweden, where gloomy forests, lakes
and precipices conspired to excite those sublime and melancholy
ideas which were congenial to his disposition. Everywhere
his soul felt as if confined by the bonds of society; he
panted for something more free in government, more elevated
in sentiment, more devoted in love and more perfect in
friendship. In search of this ideal world he posted through
various countries more with the rapidity of a courier than
of one who travels for amusement or instruction. During a
journey to London he engaged in an intrigue with a married
lady of high rank; and having been detected, the publicity
of a rencounter with the injured husband, and of a divorce
which followed, rendered it expedient and desirable for him
to quit England. He then visited Spain and Portugal, where
he became acquainted with the Abbe Caluso, who remained
through life the most attached and estimable friend he ever
possessed. In 1772 Alfieri returned to Turin. This time he
became enamoured of the Marchesa Turinetti di Prie, whom he
loved with his usual ardour, and who seems to have been as
undeserving of a sincere attachment as those he had hitherto
adored. In the course of a long attendance on his mistress,
during a malady with which she was afflicted, he one day wrote
a dialogue or scene of a drama, which he left at her house. On
a difference taking place between them the piece was returned
to him, and being retouched and extended to five acts, it was
performed at Turin in 1775, under the title of Cleopatra.
From this moment Alfieri was seized with an insatiable
thirst for theatrical fame, and the remainder of his life
was devoted to its attainment. His first two tragedies,
Filippo and Polinice were originally written in French
prose; and when he came to versify them in Italian, he
found that, from his Lombard origin and long intercourse
with foreigners, he expressed himself with feebleness and
inaccuracy. Accordingly, with the view of improving his
Italian style, he went to Tuscany and, during an alternate
residence at Florence and Siena, he completed his Filippo
and Polinice, and conceived the plan of various other
dramas. While thus employed he became acquainted with the
countess of Albany, who then resided with her husband at
Florence. For her he formed an attachment which, if less
violent than his former loves, appears to have been more
permanent. With this motive to remain at Florence, he could
not endure the chains by which his vast possessions bound him to
Piedmont. He therefore resigned his whole property to his
sister, the countess Cumiana, reserving an annuity which
scarcely amounted to a half of his original revenues. At
this period the countess of Albany, urged by the ill-treatment
she received from her husband, sought refuge in Rome, where
she at length received permission from the pope to live
apart from her tormentor. Alfieri followed the countess to
that capital, where he completed fourteen tragedies, four
of which were now for the first time printed at Sienna.
At length, however, it was thought proper that, by leaving
Rome, he should remove the aspersions which had been thrown
on the object of his affections. During the year 1783 he
therefore travelled through different states of Italy, and
published six additional tragedies. The interests of his love
and literary glory had not diminished his rage for horses,
which seems to have been at least the third passion of his
soul. He came to England solely for the purpose of purchasing
a number of these animals, which he carried with him to
Italy. On his return he learned that the countess of Albany
had gone to Colmar in Alsace, where he joined her, and
resided with her under the same roof during the rest of his
life. They chiefly passed their time between Alsace and
Paris, but at length took up their abode entirely in that
metropolis. While here, Alfieri made arrangements with
Didot for an edition of his tragedies, but was soon after
forced to quit Paris by the storms of the Revolution. He
recrossed the Alps with the countess, and finally settled at
Florence. The last ten years of his life, which he spent in
that city, seem to have been the happiest of his existence.
During that long period his tranquillity was only interrupted
by the entrance of the Revolutionary armies into Florence in
1799. Though an enemy of kings, the aristocratic feeling
of Alfieri rendered him also a decided foe to the principles
and leaders of the French Revolution; and he rejected with
the utmost contempt those advances which were made with
a view to bring him over to their cause. The concluding
years of his life were laudably employed in the study
of the Greek literature and in perfecting a series of
comedies. His assiduous labour on this subject, which he
pursued with his characteristic impetuosity, exhausted his
strength, and brought on a malady for which he would not
adopt the prescriptions of his physicians, but obstinately
persisted in employing remedies of his own. His disorder
rapidly increased, and he died on the 8th of October 1803.
The character of Alfieri may be best appreciated from the
portrait which he has drawn of himself in his own Memoirs
of his Life. He was evidently of an irritable, impetuous
and almost ungovernable temper. Pride, which seems to
have been a ruling sentiment, may account for many apparent
inconsistencies of his character. But his less amiable
qualities were greatly softened by the cultivation of
literature. His application to study gradually tranquillized
his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at the same
time in perfect possession of those good qualities which he
had inherited from nature--a warm and disinterested attachment
to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and
elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy to embody
in his dramas the actions and sentiments of Grecian heroes.
It is to his dramas that Alfieri is chiefly indebted for the
high reputation he has attained. Before his time the Italian
language, so harmonious in the Sonnets of Petrarch and so
energetic in the Commedia of Dante, had been invariably
languid and prosaic in dramatic dialogue. The pedantic
and inanimate tragedies of the 16th century were followed,
during the iron age of Italian literature, by dramas of
which extravagance in the sentiments and improbability in
the action were the chief characteristics. The prodigious
success of the Merope of Maffei, which appeared in the
commencement of the 18th century, may be attributed more
to a comparison with such productions than to intrinsic
merit. In this degradation of tragic taste the appearance
of the tragedies of Alfieri was perhaps the most important
literary event that had occurred in Italy during the 18th
century. On these tragedies it is difficult to pronounce a
judgment, as the taste and system of the author underwent
considerable change and modification during the intervals
which elapsed between the three periods of their publication.
An excessive harshness of style, an asperity of sentiment and
total want of Poetical ornament are the characteristics of
his first four tragedies, Filippo, Polinice, Antigone and
Virginia. These faults were in some measure corrected in
the six tragedies which he gave to the world some years after,
and in those which he published along with Saul, the drama
which enjoyed the greatest success of all his productions--a
popularity which may be partly attributed to the severe and
unadorned manner of Alfieri being well adapted to the patriarchal
simplicity of the age in which the scene of the tragedy is
placed. But though there be a considerable difference in his
dramas, there are certain observations applicable to them
all. None of the plots are of his own invention. They are
founded either on mythological fable or history; most of them
had been previously treated by the Greek dramatists or by
Seneca. Rosmunda, the only one which could be supposed of
his own contrivance, and which is certainly the least happy
effusion of his genius, is partly founded on the eighteenth
novel of the third part of Bandello and partly on Prevost's
Memoires d'un homme de qualite. But whatever subject he
chooses, his dramas are always formed on the Grecian model
and breathe a freedom and independence worthy of an Athenian
poet. Indeed, his Agide and Bruto may rather be considered
oratorical declamations and dialogues on liberty than tragedies.
The unities of time and place are not so scrupulously observed
in his as in the ancient dramas; but he has rigidly adhered
to a unity of action and interest. He occupies his scene with
one great action and one ruling passion, and removes from it
every accessory event or feeling. In this excessive zeal for
the observance of unity he seems to have forgotten that its
charm consists in producing a common relation between multiplied
feelings, and not in the bare exhibition of one, divested
of those various accompaniments which give harmony to the
whole. Consistently with that austere and simple manner which
he considered the chief excellence of dramatic composition,
he excluded from his scene all coups de theatre,
all philosophical reflexions, and that highly ornamented
Versification which had been so assiduously cultivated by his
predecessors. In his anxiety, however, to avoid all superfluous
ornament, he has stripped his dramas of the embellishments
of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical
language he has substituted, even in his best performances,
a style which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh,
elaborate and abrupt; often strained into unnatural energy or
condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence
of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of dramatic
character. In his Filippo he has represented, almost with
the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the
dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura
verba, of the modern Tiberius. In Polinice, the characters
of the rival brothers are beautifully contrasted; in Maria
Stuarda, that unfortunate queen is represented unsuspicious,
impatient of contradiction and violent in her attachments.
In Mirra, the character of Ciniro is perfect as a father
and king, and Cecri is a model of a wife and mother. In the
representation of that species of mental alienation where
the judgment has perished but traces of character still
remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is
skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing
Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding
that, at the same time, he had inadvertently slain his mother.
Whatever may be the merits or defects of Alfieri, he may be
considered as the founder of a new school in the Italian drama.
His country hailed him as her sole tragic poet; and his successors
in the same path of literature have regarded his bold, austere
and rapid manner as the genuine model of tragic composition.
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life many
sonnets, five odes on American independence and the poem of
Etruria, founded on the assassination of Alexander I., duke of
Florence. Of his prose works the most distinguished for
animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on Trajan, composed
in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of
Pliny's eulogium. The two books entitled La Tirannide and
the Essays on Literature and Government are remarkable for
elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations
of the manner of Machiavel. His Antigallican, which was
written at the same time with his Defence of Louis XVI.,
comprehends an historical and satirical view of the French
Revolution. The posthumous works of Alfieri consist of satires,
six political comedies and the Memoirs of his Life--a work
which will always be read with interest, in spite of the cold
and languid gravity with which he delineates the most interesting
adventures and the strongest passions of his agitated life.
See Mem. di Vit. Alfieri; Sismondi, De la lit. du midi de
l'Europe; Walker's Memoir on Italian Tragedy; Giorn. de Pisa,
tom. lviii.; Life of Alfieri, by Centofanti (Florence, 1842);
Vita, Giornuli, Lettere di Alfieri, by Teza (Florence, 1861);
Vittorio Alfieri, by Antonini and Cognetti (Turin, 1898).
ALFORD, HENRY (1810-1871), English divine and scholar,
was born in London on the 7th of October 1810. He came of
a Somersetshire family, which had given five consecutive
generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's
early years were passed with his widowed father, who was
curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was an extremely
precocious lad, and before he was ten had written several
Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic
outlines. After a peripatetic school course he went up to
Cambridge in 1827 as a scholar of Trinity. In 1832 he was
34th wrangler and 8th classic, and in 1834 was made fellow of
Trinity. He had already taken orders, and in 1835 began
his eighteen years' tenure of the vicarage of Wymeswold in
Leicestershire, from which seclusion the twice-repeated
offer of a colonial bishopric failed to draw him. He was
Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1841-1842, and steadily
built up a reputation as scholar and preacher, which would
have been enhanced but for his discursive ramblings in the
fields of minor poetry and magazine editing. In September
1853 Alford removed to Quebec Chapel, London, where he had
a large and cultured congregation. In March 1857 Viscount
Palmerston advanced him to the deanery of Canterbury, where,
till his death on the 12th of January 1871, he lived the same
strenuous and diversified life that had always characterized
him. The inscription on his tomb, chosen by himself, is
``Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis.''
Alford was a not inconsiderable artist, as his picture-book,
The Riviera (1870), shows, and he had abundant musical and
mechanical talent. Besides editing the works of John Donne,
he published several volumes of his own verse, The School of
the Heart (1835), The Abbot of Muchelnaye (1841), and a
number of hymns, the best-known of which are ``Forward! be our
watch-word,'' ``Come, ye thankful people, come,'' and ``Ten
thousand times ten thousand.'' He translated the Odyssey,
wrote a well-known manual of idiom, A Plea for the Queen's
English (1863), and was the first editor of the Contemporary
Review (1866--1870). His chief fame, however, rests upon his
monumental edition of the New Testament in Greek (4 vols.),
which occupied him from 1841 to 1861. In this work he first
brought before English students a careful collation of the
readings of the chief MSS. and the researches of the ripest
continental scholarship of his day. Philological rather
than theological in character, it marked an epochal change
from the old homiletic commentary, and though more recent
research, patristic and papyral, has largely changed the
method of New Testament exegesis, Alford's work is still a
quarry where the student can dig with a good deal of profit.
His Life, written by his widow, appeared in 1873 (Rivington). (A. J. G.)
ALFRED, or AELFRED, known as THE GREAT (848-? 900), king
of England, was born in 848 at Wantage, and was the fourth
son of King AEthelwulf and his first wife (Osburh). He seems
to have been a child of singular attractiveness and promise,
and stories of his boyhood were remembered. At the age of
five (853) he was sent to Rome, where he was confirmed by Leo
IV., who is also stated to have ``hallowed him as king.''
Later writers interpreted this as an anticipatory crowning
in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of
Wessex. That, however, could not have been foreseen in
853, as Alfred had three elder brothers living. It is
probably to be understood either of investiture with the
consular insignia, or possibly with some titular royalty
such as that of the under-kingdom of Kent. In 855 Alfred
again went to Rome with his father AEthelwulf, returning
towards the end of 856. About two years later his father
died. During the short reigns of his two eldest brothers,
AEthelbald and AEthelberht, nothing is heard of Alfred.
But with the accession of the third brother AEthelred (866)
the public life of Alfred begins, and he enters on his
great work of delivering England from the Danes. It is in
this reign that Asser applies to Alfred the unique title of
secundarius, which seems to indicate a position analogous to
that of the Celtic tanist, a recognized successor, closely
associated with the reigning prince. It is probable that
this arrangement was definitely sanctioned by the witenagemot,
to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should
AEthelred fall in battle. In 868 Alfred married Ealhswith,
daughter of AEthelred Mucill, who is called ealdorman of the
Gaini, an unidentified district. The same year the two
brothers made an unsuccessful attempt to relieve Mercia from
the pressure of the Danes. For nearly two years Wessex had a
respite. But at the end of 870 the storm burst; and the year
which followed has been rightly called ``Alfred's year of
battles.'' Nine general engagements were fought with varying
fortunes, though the place and date of two of them have not
been recorded. A successful skirmish at Englefield, Berks
(December 31, 870), was followed by a severe defeat at Reading
(January 4, 871), and this, four days later, by the brilliant
victory of Ashdown, near Compton Beauchamp in Shrivenham
Hundred. On the 22nd of January the English were again
defeated at Basing, and on the 22nd of March at Marton, Wilts,
the two unidentified battles having perhaps occurred in the
interval. In April AEthelred died, and Alfred succeeded to
the whole burden of the contest. While he was busied with
his brother's exequies, the Danes defeated the English in
his absence at an unnamed spot, and once more in his presence
at Wilton in May. After this peace was made, and for the
next five years the Danes were occupied in other parts of
England, Alfred merely keeping a force of observation on the
frontier. But in 876 part of the Danes managed to slip past
him and occupied Wareham; whence, early in 877, under cover of
treacherous negotiations, they made a dash westwards and seized
Exeter. Here Alfred blockaded them, and a relieving fleet
having been scattered by a storm, the Danes had to submit
and withdrew to Mercia. But in January 878 they made a
sudden swoop on Chippenham, a royal vill in which Alfred had
been keeping his Christmas, ``and most of the people they
reduced, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band
made his way . . . by wood and swamp, and after Easter he . .
. made a fort at Athelney, and from that fort kept fighting
against the foe'' (Chron..) The idea that Alfred, during
his retreat at Athelney, was a helpless fugitive rests upon
the foolish legend of the cakes. In reality he was organizing
victory. By the middle of May his preparations were complete
and he moved out of Athelney, being joined on the way by the
levies of Somerset, Wilts and Hants. The Danes on their side
moved out of Chippenham, and the two armies met at Edington in
Wiltshire. The result was a decisive victory for Alfred. The
Danes submitted. Guthrum, the Danish king, and twenty-nine of
his chief men accepted baptism. By the next year (879) not only
Wessex, but Mercia, west of Watling Street, was cleared of the
invader. This is the arrangement known as the peace of Wedmore
(878), though no document embodying its provisions is in
existence. And though for the present the north-eastern half
of England, including London, remained in the hands of the
Danes, in reality the tide had turned, and western Europe
was saved from the danger of becoming a heathen Scandinavian
power. For the next few years there was peace, the Danes
being kept busy on the continent. A landing in Kent in 884
or 885,1 though successfully repelled, encouraged the East
Anglian Danes to revolt. The measures taken by Alfred to
repress this revolt culminated in the capture of London in 885
or 886, and the treaty known as Alfred and Guthrum's peace,
whereby the boundaries of the treaty of Wedmore (with which
this is often confused) were materially modified in Alfred's
favour. Once more for a time there was a lull; but in
the autumn of 892 (893) the final storm burst. The Danes,
finding their position on the continent becoming more and more
precarious, crossed to England in two divisions, amounting in
the aggregate to 330 sail, and entrenched themselves, the larger
body at Appledore and the lesser under Haesten at Milton in
Kent. The fact that the new invaders brought their wives and
children with them shows that this was no mere raid, but a
deliberate attempt, in concert with the Northumbrian and East
Anglian Danes, to conquer England. Alfred, 893 (894), took up
a position whence he could observe both forces. While he was
negotiating with Haesten the Danes at Appledore broke out and
struck north-westwards, but were overtaken by Alfred's eldest
son, Edward, and defeated in a general engagement at Farnham,
and driven to take refuge in Thorney Island in the Hertfordshire
Colne, where they were blockaded and ultimately compelled to
submit. They then fell back on Essex, and after suffering
another defeat at Benfleet coalesced with Haesten's force at
Shoebury. Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at
Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian
Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed fort on the coast
of North Devon. Alfred at once hurried westwards and raised
the siege of Exeter; the fate of the other place is not
recorded. Meanwhile the force under Haesten set out to march
up the Thames valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their
friends in the west. But they were met by a large force under
the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wilts and Somerset, and
forced to head off to the north-west, being finally overtaken
and blockaded at Buttington, which some identify with Buttington
Tump at the mouth of the Wye, others with Buttington near
Welshpool. An attempt to break through the English lines
was defeated with loss; those who escaped retreated to
Shoebury. Then after collecting reinforcements they made a
sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of
Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade, but
contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the
neighbourhood. And early in 894 (895) want of food obliged
the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of this
year and early in 895 (896) the Danes drew their ships up the
Thames and Lea and fortified themselves twenty miles above
London. A direct attack on the Danish lines failed, but
later in the year Alfred saw a means of obstructing the
river so as to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The
Danes realized that they were out-manoeuvred. They struck
off north-westwards and wintered at Bridgenorth. The next
year, 896 (897), they abandoned the struggle. Some retired to
Northumbria, some to East Anglia; those who had no connexions
in England withdrew to the continent. The long campaign was
over. The result testifies to the confidence inspired by
Alfred's character and generalship, and to the efficacy of the
military reforms initiated by him. These were (1) the division
of the fyrd or national militia into two parts, relieving
each other at fixed intervals, so as to ensure continuity in
military operations; (2) the establishment of fortified posts
(burgs) and garrisons at certain points; (3) the enforcement
of the obligations of thanehood on all owners of five hides
of land, thus giving the king a nucleus of highly equipped
troops. After the final dispersal of the Danish invaders
Alfred turned his attention to the increase of the navy, and
ships were built according to the king's own designs, partly to
repress the ravages of the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes
on the coasts of Wessex, partly to prevent the landing of fresh
hordes. This is not, as often asserted, the beginning of the
English navy. There had been earlier naval operations under
Alfred. One naval engagement was certainly fought under
AEthelwulf (851), and earlier ones, possibly in 833 and 840.
Nor were the new ships a great success, as we hear of them
grounding in action and foundering in a storm. Much, too, was
needed in the way of civil re-organization, especially in the
districts ravaged by the Danes. In the parts of Mercia acquired
by Alfred, the shire system seems now to have been introduced
for the first time. This is the one grain of truth in the
legend that Alfred was the inventor of shires, hundreds and
tithings. The finances also would need careful attention;
but the subject is obscure, and we cannot accept Asser's
description of Alfred's appropriation of his revenue as more
than an ideal sketch. Alfred's care for the administration
of justice is testified both by history and legend; and
the title ``protector of the poor'' was his by unquestioned
right. Of the action of the witenagemot we do not hear very
much under Alfred. That he was anxious to respect its rights
is conclusively proved, but both the circumstances of the
time and the character of the king would tend to throw more
power into his hands. The legislation of Alfred probably
belongs to the later part of the reign, after the pressure of
the Danes had relaxed. The details of it cannot be discussed
here. Asser speaks grandiosely of Alfred's relations with
foreign powers, but little definite information is available.
He certainly corresponded with Elias III., the patriarch of
Jerusalem, and probably sent a mission to India. Embassies
to Rome conveying the English alms to the pope were fairly
frequent; while Alfred's interest in foreign countries is
shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of
Orosius. His relations to the Celtic princes in the southern
half of the island are clearer. Comparatively early in
his reign the South Welsh princes, owing to the pressure
on them of North Wales and Mercia, commended themselves to
Alfred. Later in the reign the North Welsh followed their
example, and the latter co-operated with the English in the
campaign of 893 (894). The Celtic principality in Cornwall,
which seems to have survived at least till 926, must long
have been practically dependent on Wessex. That Alfred
sent alms to Irish as well as to continental monasteries
may be accepted on Asser's authority; the visit of the
three pilgrim ``Scots'' (i.e. Irish) to Alfred in 891
is undoubtedly authentic; the story that he himself in his
childhood was sent to Ireland to be healed by St Modwenna,
though mythical, may point to Alfred's interest in that
island. The history of the church under Alfred is most
obscure. The Danish inroads had told heavily upon it; the
monasteries had been special points of attack, and though
Alfred founded two or three monasteries and imported foreign
monks, there was no general revival of monasticism under
him. To the ruin of learning and education wrought by
the Danes, and the practical extinction of the knowledge
of Latin even among the clergy, the preface to Alfred's
translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care bears eloquent
testimony. It was to remedy these evils that he established
a court school, after the example of Charles the Great; for
this he imported scholars like Grimbald and John the Saxon
from the continent and Asser from South Wales; for this,
above all, he put himself to school, and made the series of
translations for the instruction of his clergy and people,
most of which still survive. These belong unquestionably
to the later part of his reign, not improbably to the last
four years of it, during which the chronicles are almost
silent. Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridion,
which seems to have been merely a commonplace-book kept by the
king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues
of Gregory, a book enormously popular in the middle
ages. In this case the translation was made by Alfred's
great friend Werferth, bishop of Worcester, the king merely
furnishing a preface. The next work to be undertaken was
Gregory's Pastoral Care, especially for the benefit of the
clergy. In this Alfred keeps very close to his original;
but the introduction which he prefixed to it is one of the
most interesting documents of the reign, or indeed of English
history. The next two works taken in hand were historical,
the Universal History of Orosius and Bede's Ecclesiastical
History of the English People. The priority should probably
be assigned to the Orosius, but the point has been much
debated. In the Orosius, by omissions and additions, Alfred
so remodels his original as to produce an almost new work;
in the Bede the author's text is closely adhered to, no
additions being made, though most of the documents and some
other less interesting matters are omitted. Of late years
doubts have been raised as to Alfred's authorship of the Bede
translation. But the sceptics cannot be regarded as having
proved their point. We come now to what is in many ways
the most interesting of Alfred's works, his translation of
Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, the most popular
philosophical manual of the middle ages. Here again Alfred
deals very freely with his original and though the late Dr
G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are
to be traced not to Alfred himself, but to the glosses and
commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work
which is solely Alfred's and highly characteristic of his
genius. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence
occurs: ``My will was to live worthily as long as I lived,
and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my
memory in good works.'' The book has come down to us in two MSS.
only. In one of these the poems with which the original
is interspersed are rendered into prose, in the other into
alliterating verse. The authorship of the latter has been
much disputed; but probably they also are by Alfred. Of the
authenticity of the work as a whole there has never been any
doubt. The last of Alfred's works is one to which he gave the
title Blostman, i. e. ``Blooms'' or Anthology. The first
half is based mainly on the Soliloquies of St Augustine,
the remainder is drawn from various sources, and contains
much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of
him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting
epitaph for the noblest of English kings. ``Therefore he
seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will
not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and
ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall
be made clear.'' Besides these works of Alfred's, the Saxon
Chronicle almost certainly, and a Saxon Martyrology, of
which fragments only exist, probably owe their inspiration to
him. A prose version of the first fifty Psalms has been
attributed to him; and the attribution, though not proved,
is perfectly possible. How Alfred passed to ``the life where
all things are made clear'' we do not know. The very year is
uncertain. The arguments on the whole are in favour of
900. The day was the 26th of October. Alike for what he
did and for what he was, there is none to equal Alfred
in the whole line of English sovereigns; and no monarch
in history ever deserved more truly the epithet of Great.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The chief original authorities for the reign
of Alfred are the so-called Life by Asser (best edition
by W. H. Stevenson, Clarendon Press, 1904); and the Saxon
Chronicles (text and notes by Earle and Plummer, 2 vols.,
Clar. Press, 1892-1899; parallel texts and translation,
Thorpe, 2 vols., 1861, Rolls Series; translation alone,
Joseph Stevenson in Church Historians of England, vol. ii.,
1853). The above sketch is based mainly on C. Plummer's Life
and Times of Alfred the Great (Clar. Press, 1902). Of earlier
biographies that by Pauli is still of great value: Konig
AElfred (Berlin, 1851); Eng. trans. by Thorpe (Bohn, 1853). Of
recent works mention may be made of Alfred the Great, Chapters
on his Life and Times, by various authors, edited by Alfred
Bowker (1899); Earle, The Alfred Jewel (Clar. Press, 1901).
For the bioliography of Alfred's works in general see Wulker,
Grundriss zur Gesch. der angelsachsischen Litteratur, pp.
386-451 (Leipzig, 1885). Only the more recent and accessible
editions are mentioned here. Laws: The Legal Code ofAElfred
the Great (M. H. Turk, Halle, 1893). (For the Anglo-Saxon laws
as a whole see Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Halle,
1898-1903. Earlier editions, Schmid, 1858; Thorpe, 1840.)
Gregory's Dialogues: Hans Hecht, in Grein's Bibliothek der
angels. Prosa (1900). Gregory's Pastoral Care: H. Sweet,
for Early Eng. Text Society (1871--1872). (Dissertations by
Wack and DeWitz, 1889.) Orosius: Thorpe (in his translation of
Pauli, U. S. 1853); Bosworth (1859); Sweet, E.E.T.S. (1883).
(Dissertation Schelling, Konig AElfred's . . . Orosius,
Halle, 1886.) Bede: T. Miller, for E.E.T.S. (1890); Prof.
Schipper, in Grein's Bibliothek (U.S. 1899). Boethius:
W. J. Sedgfield (Clar. Press, 1899); translation by the same
(1900). (Dissertation: G. Schepss, Archiv fur's Studium
der neueren Sprachen, xciv. 14-160.) Blostman: First printed
by Cockayne in the Shrine (1868-1869); reprinted, Englische
Studien, xviii.; new edition by Hararove, Yale Studies in
English, xiii. (1902); translation by the same, ib. xxii.
(1904). (Dissertation: F. G. Hubbard, Modern Language Notes,
ix. 522 ff.) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: see above. Mortyrology:
Cockayne, in the Shrine, v.s. Psalter: Thorpe (Clar.
Press, 1855). (Dissertations: for Alfred's authorship, Wichmann,
Anglia, xi. 19 ff.; against, J. D. Bruce, The Anglo-Saxon
Version of the Book of Psalms, Baltimore, 1894.) (C. PL.)
1 Where alternative dates are given the later date is that
of the Saxon Chronicle. But the evidence of the Continental
Chronicles makes it probable that the Saxon Chronicle
is a year in advance of the true chronology in this part.
ALFRED ERNEST ALBERT, duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and duke
of Edinburgh (1844-1900), second son and fourth child of Queen
Victoria, was born at Windsor Castle on the 6th of August
1844. In 1856 it was decided that the prince, in accordance
with his own wishes, should enter the navy, and a separate
establishment was accordingly assigned to him, with Lieutenant
Sowell, R. E., as governor. He passed a most creditable
examination for midshipman in August 1858, and being appointed
to the ``Euryalus,'' at once began to work hard at the
practical part of his profession. In July 1860, while on this
ship, he paid an official visit to the Cape, and made a very
favourable impression both on the colonials and on the native
chiefs. On the abdication of Otto, king of Greece, in 1862,
Prince Alfred was chosen by the whole people to succeed
him, but political conventions of long standing rendered
it impossible for the British government to accede to their
wishes. The prince therefore remained in the navy, and was
promoted lieutenant on the 24th of February 1863 and captain
on the 23rd of February 1866, being then appointed to the
command of the ``Galatea.'' On attaining his majority in 1865
the prince was created duke of Edinburgh and earl of Ulster,
with an annuity of L. 15,000 granted by parliament. While
still in command of the ``Galatea'' the duke started from
Plymouth on the 24th of January 1867 for his voyage round the
world. On the 11th of June 1867 he left Gibraltar and reached
the Cape on the 24th of July, and landed at Glenelg, South
Australia, on the 31st of October. Being the first English
prince to visit Australia, the duke was received with the greatest
enthusiasm. During his stay of nearly five months he visited
Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Tasmania; and
it was on his second visit to Sydney that, while attending
a public picnic at Clonfert in aid of the Sailors' Home,
an Irishman named O'Farrell shot him in the back with a
revolver. The wound was fortunately not dangerous, and
within a month the duke was able to resume command of his
ship and return home. He reached Spithead on the 26th of
June 1868, after an absence of seventeen months. The duke's
next voyage was to India, where he arrived in December
1869. Both there and at Hong Kong, which he visited on the
way, he was the first British prince to set foot in the
country. The native rulers of India vied with one another
in the magnificence of their entertainments during the duke's
stay of three months. On the 23rd of January 1874 the marriage
of the duke to the grand-duchess Marie Alexandrovna, only
daughter of Alexander II., emperor of Russia, was celebrated
at St Petersburg, and the bride and bridegroom made their
public entry into London on the 12th of March. The duke
still devoted himself to his profession, showing complete
mastery of his duties and unusual skill in naval tactics.
He was promoted rear-admiral on the 30th of December 1878;
vice-admiral, 10th of November 1882; admiral, 18th of October
1887; and received his baton as admiral of the Fleet, 3rd of
June 1893. He commanded the Channel fleet, 1883-1884; the
Mediterranean fleet, 1886-1889; and was commander-in-chief at
Davenport, 1890- 1893. He always paid the greatest attention
to his offiicial duties and was most efficient as an admiral.
On the death of his uncle, Ernest II., duke of Saxe-Coburg and
Gotha, on the 22nd of August 1893, the vacant duchy fell to
the duke of Edinburgh, for the prince of Wales had renounced
his right to the succession. At first regarded with some
coldness as a ``foreigner,'' he gradually gained popularity,
and by the time of his death, on the 30th of July 1900, he
had completely won the good opinion of his subjects. The duke
was exceedingly fond of music and an excellent violinist, and
took a prominent part in establishing the Royal College of
music. He was also a keen collector of glass and ceramic
ware, and his collection, valued at half a million of marks,
was presented by his widow to the ``Veste Coburg,'' near
Coburg. When he became duke of Saxe-Coburg he surrendered his
English allowance of L. 15,000 a year, but the L. 10,000 granted
in addition by parliament on his marriage he retained in
order to keep up Clarence House. The duke had one son,
who died unmarried on the 6th of February 1899, and four
daughters. The third daughter, Princess Alexandra Louisa
Olga Victoria, married the hereditary prince Ernest of
Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who became regent of the duchy of
Coburg during the minority of the deceased duke's nephew, the
young duke of Albany, to whom the succession fell. (G. F. B.)
ALFRED, a village in the township of Alfred, Allegany county,
New York, U.S.A., about 75 m. S.W. of Buffalo. Pop. of the
township, including the village (1900), 1615; (1910 U. S. census)
1590. Pop. of the village (1900) 756; (1910 U. S. census) 759.
The township is served, at Alfred station, by the Erie railway.
The village, which is connected by stage with the station, is
situated at the junction of two valleys and commands delightful
views of mountain scenery. On the west slope of pine Hill is
Alfred University (co-educational), which embraces a College
(non-sectarian), an academy (non-sectarian) and a theological
seminary (Seventh-Day Baptist). Closely associated with it
also, and under the management of the university trustees,
is the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics
(1900), one of the most efficient schools of the kind in the
country. In 1908 the legislature of New York appropriated
$80,000 for the establishment of a state school of agriculture
in connexion with the university. The institution had its
beginning in 1836 in a private school. This developed into
an academy, which in 1843 was incorporated as Alfred Academy
and Teachers' Seminary; in 1857 the university was chartered
under its present name. The principal industry of the village
is the manufacture of roofing tiles. The township of Alfred
lies within the territory purchased by Robert Morris in 1791.
He sold it in the same year to a company resident in London,
England. Their agent sold most of it to settlers and, it is
said, named the township, when it was organized in 1806, in
honour of Alfred the Great. The first settlement within its
present limits was made in 1807. For several years most of the
settlers were Seventh-Day Baptists, and in 1812 they organized
a church here. The village of Alfred was chartered in 1887.
J. S. Minard, Allegany County and its People (Alfred, 1896).
ALFRETON, a market town in the mid-parliamentary division of
Derbyshire, England, 14 m N. by E. of Derby, on the Midland
railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 17,505. It lies at a
considerable elevation above the valley of a small stream tributary
to the Derwent. The church of St Martin is Early English and
later. The neighbourhood abounds in ironworks, collieries,
quarries and potteries, and is thickly populated. To the
north-east of Alfreton are South Normanton (pop. 5170), Blackwell
(4144) and Tibshelf (3432); to the north Shirland (3929), to
the south Ironville and other busy industrial villages. The
foundation of Alfreton is traditionally ascribed to King Alfred.
ALFUROS (ALFURES, HORAFORAS), a term of no ethnological value
applied by the Malays to all the uncivilized non- Mahommedan
peoples in the eastern portion of the Malay Archipelago. Its
origin is uncertain, but its meaning is ``wild'' or ``uncivilized.''
The term is not restricted to the aborigines, but is far
more frequently used to describe the tribes of Malayan blood.
ALGAE. The Latin word alga seems to have been the equivalent
of the English word ``seaweed'' and probably stood for any or all
of the species of plants which form the ``wrack'' of a seashore.
Classification.
When the word ``Algae'' came to be employed in botanical
classification as the name of a class, an arbitrary limitation
had to be set to its signification, and this was not always in
keeping with its original meaning. The absence of differentiation
into root, stem and leaf which prevails among seaweeds,
seems, for example, to have led Linnaeus to employ the term
in the Genera Plantarum for a sub-class of Cryptogamia, the
members of which presented this character in a greater or less
degree. Of the fifteen genera included by Linnaeus among
algae, not more than six--viz. Chara, Fucus, Diva and
Conferva, and in part Tremella and Byssus--would to-day,
in any sense in which the term is employed, be regarded as
algae. The excluded genera are distributed among the
liverworts, lichens and fungi; but notwithstanding the
great advance in knowledge since the time of Linnaeus, the
difficulty of deciding what limits to assign to the group
to be designated Algae still remains. It arises from the
fact that algae, as generally understood, do not constitute
a homogeneous group, suggesting a descent from a common
stock. Among them there exist, as will be seen hereafter, many
well-marked but isolated natural groups, and their inclusion
in the larger group is generally felt to be a matter of
convenience rather than the expression of a belief in their
close inter-relationship. Efforts are therefore continually
being made by successive writers to exclude certain outlying
sub-groups, and to reserve the term Algae for a central group
reconstituted on a more natural basis within narrower limits.
It is perhaps desirable, in an article like this, to treat
of algae in the widest possible sense in which the term
may be used, an indication being at the same time given
of the narrower senses in which it has been proposed to
employ it. Interpreted in this way, the place of algae
in the vegetable kingdom may be shown by means of a
_
_ _ | Myxomycetes
| | Thallophyta | Fungi
| Cryptogamia | |_ Algae
The Vegetable | | Bryophyta
Kingdom | |_ Pteridophyta
| _
| | Gymnosperms
| Phanerogamia |_ Angiosperms
|_
Algae in this wide sense may be briefly described as the
aggregate of those simpler forms of plant life usually devoid,
like the rest of the Thallophyta, of differentiation into
root, stem and leaf; but, unlike other Thallophyta, possessed
of a colouring matter; by means of which they are enabled,
in the presence of sunlight, to make use of the carbonic
acid gas of the atmosphere as a source of carbon. It is
true that certain Bryophyta (Marchantiaceae, Anthoceroteae)
possess a thalloid structure similar to that of Thallophyta,
and are at the same time possessed of the colouring matter
of the Green Algae. Their life-cycle, however, the structure
of the reproductive organs and their whole organization
proclaim them to be Bryophyta (q.v..) On the other hand,
certain undoubted animals (Stentor, Hydra, Bonellia) are
provided with a green colouring matter by means of which
they make use of atmospheric carbonic acid. A more important
consideration is the occasional absence of this colour in
species, or groups of species, with, in other respects, algal
affinities. Such aberrant forms are to be regarded in the
same light as Cuscuta and Orobanchaceae, for example, among
Phanerogams. As these non-green plants do not cease to
be classed with other Phanerogams, so must the forms in
question be retained among algae. In all cases the loss
of the colouring matter is associated with an incapacity to
take up carbon from so simple a compound as carbonic acid
It might be mentioned here that the whole group of the
Fungi (q.v.),with its many thousands of species, is now
generally regarded as having been derived from algae, and
the system of classification of fungi devised by Brefeld is
based upon this belief. The similarity of the morphological
characters of one group of fungi to those of certain algae
has earned for it the name Phycomycetes or alga-fungi.
Further discussion of the general characters of algae will be
deferred in order to take a brief survey of the subdivisions
of the group. For this purpose there will be adopted the
classification of algae into four sub-groups, founded on
the nature of the colouring matters present in the plant:--
I. CYANOPHYCEAE, or Blue-green Algae.
II. CHLOROPHYCEAE, or Green Algae.
III. PHAEOPHYCEAE, or Brown Algae.
IV. RHODOPHYCEAE, or Red Algae.
The merits and demerits of this system will appear during the
description of the characters of the members of the several subdivisions.
I. CYANOPHYCEAE.--This group derives its name from the
circumstance that the cells contain in addition to the
green colouring matter, chlorophyll, a blue-green colouring
matter to which the term phycocyanin has been applied.
Sub-divisions.
To the eye, however, members of this group present a greater
variety of colour than those of any other--yellow, brown,
olive, red, purple, violet and variations of all these being
known. They undoubtedly represent the lowest grade of
algal life, and their distribution rivals that of the Green
Algae. They occur in the sea, in fresh water, on moist
earth, on damp rocks and on the bark of trees. Certain
species are regularly found in the intercellular spaces of
higher plants; such are species of Nostoc in the thallus of
Anthoceros, the leaves of Azolla and the roots of Cycads.
Many of them enter into the structure of the lichen-thallus,
as the so-called gonidia. It is remarkable that species
belonging to the Oscillatoriaceae are known to flourish in hot
springs, the temperature of which rises as high as 85 deg. C.
The thallus may be unicellular or multicellular. When unicellular,
it may consist of isolated cells, but more commonly the cells
are held together in a common jelly (Chroococcaceae) derived
from the outer layers of the cell-wall. The multicellular
species consist of filaments, branched or unbranched, which
arise by the repeated divisions of the cells in parallel
planes, no formation of mucilage occurring in the dividing
walls. Such filaments may not give rise to mucilage on the
lateral surface either, in which case they are said to be free;
when mucilage does occur on the lateral wall, it appears as
the sheath surrounding either the single filament, or a sheaf
of filaments of common origin. The mucilage may also form an
embedding substance similar to that of Chroococcaceae, in which
the filaments lie parallel or radiate from a common centre
(Rivulariaceae). The cells of the filament may be all alike,
and growth may occur equally in all parts (Oscillatoriaceae);
or certain cells (heterocysts) may become marked off by
their larger size and the transparency of their contents;
in which case growth may still be distributed equally
throughout (Nostoc), or the filament may be attached
where the heterocyst arises, and grow out at the opposite
extremity into a fine hair (Rivulariaceae). An African form
(Camptothrix), devoid of heterocysts and hair-like at both
extremities, has recently been described. Branching has been
described as ``false'' and ``true.'' The former arises when
a filament in a sheath, either in consequence of growth in
length beyond the capacity of the sheath to accommodate it,
FIG, 1.--Cyanophyceae, variously magnified.
A. Gloeocapsa sp.,colony in mucilage.
B. Phormidium sp., single filament with hormogonium.
C. Microcoleus sp., several filaments in common sheath.
D. Nostoc sp., young colony-filament with heterocysts.
E. Scytonema sp., false branching.
F. Rivularia sp.
G. Stigonema sp., with hormogonium and true branching.
H. Spirulina sp.
(From Engler and Prantl, Pflanzenfamilien,
by permission of Wilhelm Engelmann.)
or because of the decay of a cell, becomes interrupted by
breaking, and the free ends slip past one another. ``True''
branching arises only by the longitudinal division of a
cell of a filament and the lateral outgrowth of one of
the cells resulting from the division (Sirosiohonaceae).
The nature of the contents of the cells of Cyanophyceae has
given rise to considerable controversy. The cells are for
the most part exceedingly minute, and are not easy to free
from their colouring matters, so that investigation has been
attended with great difficulty. Occupying as these algae
do perhaps the lowest grade of plant life, it is a matter of
interest to ascertain whether a nucleus or chromatophore is
differentiated in their cells, or whether the functions and
properties of these bodies are diffused through the whole
protoplast. It is certain that the centre of the cell, which is
usually non-vacuolated, is occupied by protoplasm of different
properties from the peripheral region; and A. Fischer has
further established the fact that the peripheral mass, which
is a hollow sphere in spherical cells, and either a hollow
cylinder or barrel-shaped body in filamentous forms, must
be regarded as the single chromatophore of the Cyanophyceous
cell. But what precisely is the nature of the central
mass is still uncertain. Some investigators, such as R.
Hegler, F. G. Kohl and E. W. Olive, claim that this body is
a true nucleus comparable with that of the higher plants.
It is said to undergo division by a mitosis essentially of
the same character, with the formation of a spindle and the
differentiation of chromosomes. It is further stated by Olive
that the chromosomes undergo longitudinal fission, and that for
the same species the same number of chromosomes appear at each
division. H. Wager speaks with greater reserve, acknowledging,
however, the central body to be a nucleus of a rudimentary
type, but devoid of nuclear membrane and nucleolus. He
thinks it may possibly originate in the vacuolization of the
central region, and the accumulation of chromatin granules
therein. He finds no spindle fibres or true chromosomes, and
considers the division direct, not indirect. With reference
to the existence of a chromatophore, he with others finds
the colouring matter localized in granules in the peripheral
region, but does not consider these individually or in the
aggregate as chromatophores. Among other contents of the cell,
fatty substances and tannin are known. A curious adaptation
seems to occur in certain floating forms, in the presence of a
gas-vacuole, which may be made to vary its volume with varying
pressure. There is evidence that the dividing wall of filamentous
forms is deeply pitted, as is found to be the case in red
algae. Reproduction is chiefly effected by the vegetative
method. Asexual reproductive cells are not infrequent, but
sexual reproduction even in its initial stages is unknown.
Nor is motility by means of cilia known in the group. In the
unicellular forms, cell-division involves multiplication of the
plant. In all the multicellular plants of this group which
have been adequately investigated, vegetative multiplication
by means of what are known as hormogonia has been found to
occur. These are short segments of filaments consisting of a
few cells which disengage themselves from the ambient jelly,
if it be present, in virtue of a peculiar creeping movement
which they possess at this stage. After a time they come
to rest and give rise to new colonies. True reproduction
of the asexual kind occurs, however, in the formation of
sporangia, particularly in the Chamaesiohonaceae. Here
the contents of certain cells break up endogenously into
a great number of spores, which are distributed as a fine
dust. Resting spores are also known. In these cases, certain
cells of a colony of unicellular plants or of the filaments
of multicellular plants enlarge greatly and thicken their
wall. When unfavourable external conditions supervene and
the ordinary cells become atrophied, these cells persist
and reproduce the plant with the return of more favourable
conditions. The Oscillatoriaceae are capable of a peculiar
oscillatory movement, which has earned for them their
name, and which enables them to move through considerable
distances. It is not clear how the movement is effected, though
it has frequently been the subject of careful investigation.
With the Cyanophyceae must be included, as their nearest allies,
the Bacteriaceae (see BACTERIOLOGY.) Notwithstanding the absence
of chlorophyll, and the consequent parasitic or saprophytic
habit, Bacteriaceae agree in so many morphological features
with Cyanophyceae that the affinity can hardly be doubted.
A census of the Cyanophyceae with their two main groups is given below:--
1. Coccogoneae--2 families, 29 genera, 253 species.
2. Hormogoneae--6 families, 59 genera, 701 species.
(Engler and Prantl's Pflanzenfamilien, 1900)
II. CHLOROPHYCEAE.--This group includes those algae in which
the green colouring matter, chlorophyll, is not accompanied
by a second colouring matter, as it is in other groups. It
consists of three subdivisions--Conjugatae, Euchlorophyceae and
Characeae. Of these the first and last are relatively small
and sharply defined families, distinguished from the second
family, which forms the bulk of the group, by characters
so diverse that their inclusion with them in one larger
group can only be justified on the ground of convenience.
Chlorophyceae include both marine and freshwater plants.
Euchlorophyceae in their turn have been until recently regarded
as made up of the three series of families--Protococcales,
Confervales and Siphonales. As the result of recent
investigations by two Swedish algologists, Bohlin and Luther, it
has been proposed to make a re-classification of a far-reaching
nature. Algae are withdrawn from each of the three series
enumerated above and consolidated into an entirely new
group. In these algae, the colouring matter is said to
be yellowish-green, not strictly green, and contained in
numerous small discoid chromatophores which are devoid of
pyrenoids. The products of assimilation are stored up in
the form of a fatty substance and not starch. A certain
inequality in the character of the two cilia of the zoospores
of some of the members of the group has earned for it the title
Heterokontae, from the Greek kontos, a punting-pole. In
consonance with this name, its authors propose to re-name
the Conjugatae; Akontae and Oedogoniaceae with a chaplet
of cilia become Stephanokontae, and the algae remaining
over in the three series from which the Heterokontae and
Stephanokontae are withdrawn become Isokontae. Conjugatae,
Protococcales and Characeae are exclusively freshwater;
Confervales and Siphonales are both freshwater and marine,
but the latter group attains its greatest development in the
sea. Some Chlorophyceae are terrestrial in habit, usually
growing on a damp substratum, however. Trentepohlia
grows on rocks and can survive considerable desiccation.
Phycopeltis grows on the surface of leaves, Phyllobium
and Phyllosiphon in their tissues. Gomontia is a
shell-boring alga, FIG. 2.--Chlorophyceae, variously magnified.
A. Chlamydomonas sp., unicellular; chr., chromatophore; p.,
pyrenoid; n., nucleus; p.v., pulsating vacuoles; e.s., eyespot.
B1. Volvox sp., with a, antheridia, and o, oogonia.
B2. Volvox sp., surface view of a single cell showing connexions.
C. Pandorina sp., a 16-celled colony.
D. Hydrodictyon, a single mesh surrounded by 6 cells.
E. Microspora sp., showing H-pieces in the wall.
F. Entoderma sp., endophytic in Ectocarpus.
G. Coleochaete sp., growing as a plate.
H. Oedogonium sp., intercalated growth by
insertion of new piece (a) leaving caps.
K. Struvea sp., showing branches forming a net-work.
L. Caulerpa sp., showing portion of axis
with leaf-like and root- like appendages.
M1. Chara sp., axis with leaf-like appendages and a branch.
M2. Chara sp., apical region.
N. Botrydium, a simple siphonaceous alga with root-like attachment.
O. Acetabularia Mediterranea, mushroom-like calcareous siphonaceous alga.
(A, C, E, F, G, H, K, M1, M2, from from Engler and Prantl,
Pflanzenfamilien, by permission of Wilhelm Engelmann; B1,
N, from Vines, Student's Text Book of Botany, by permission of
Swan Sonnenschein and Co.; B2, D, O from Oltmanns, Morphologie
u. Biologie der Algen, by permission of Gustav Fischer.)
Dermatophyton grows on the carapace of the tortoise and
Trichophilus in the hairs of the sloth. Certain Protococcales
and Confervales exist as the gonidia of the lichenthallus.
The thallus is of more varied structure in this group than in any
other. In the simplest case it may consist of a single cell,
which may remain free during the whole of the greater part
of its existence, or be loosely aggregated together within a
common mucilage, or be held together by the adhesion of the
cell-walls at the surface of contact. These aggregations or
colonies, as they are termed, may assume the form of a plate, a
ring, a solid sphere, a hollow sphere, a perforate sphere, a
closed net, or a simple or branched filament. It is not easy
in all cases to draw a distinction between a colony of planes
and a multicellular individual. in a Volvox sphere, for
example, there is a marked protoplasmic continuity between
all the cells of the colony. The Ulvaceae, the thallus of
which consists of laminae, one or more cells thick, or hollow
tubes, probably represent a still more advanced stage in the
passaae of a colony into a multicellelar plant. Here there
is some amount of localization of growth and distinction of
parts. It is only in such cases as Volvox and Ulvaceae
that there is any pretension to the formation of a true
parenchyma within the limits of the Chlorophyceae. In the
whole series of the Confervales, the thallus consists of
filaments branched or unbranched, attached at one extremity,
and growing almost wholly at the free end. The branches
end in fine hairs in Chaetophoraceae. In Coleochaetaceae
the branches are often welded into a plate, simulating a
parenchyma. In all Conjugatae and most Protococcales, and
in the bulk of the Confervales, the thallus consists of a
cell or cells, the Protoplast of which contains a single
nucleus. In Hydrodictyaceae, Cladophoraceae, Sphaeropleaceae
and Gomontiaceae this is no longer the case. Instead of a
single relatively large nucleus, each cell is found to contain
many small nuclei, and is spoken of as a coenocyte. This
character becomes still more pronounced in the large group of
the Siphonales. Valoniaceae and Dasycladaceae are partially
septate, but elsewhere no cellulose partitions occur, and the
thallus is more or less the continuous tube from which the
group is named. Yet the siphonaceous algae may assume great
variety of form and reach a high degree of differentiation.
Protosiphon and Botrydium, on the one hand, are minute
vesicles attached to muddy surfaces by rhizoids; Caulerpa, on
the other, presents a remarkable instance of the way in which
much the same external morphology as that of cormophytes has
been reached by a totally different internal structure. Many
Siphonales are encrusted with lime like Corallina among Red
Algae. Penicillus is brush-like, Hallimeda and Cymopolia
are jointed, Acetabularia has much the same external form
as an expanded Coprinus, Neomeris simulates the fertile
shoot of Equisetum with its densely packed whorled branches,
and in Microdictyon, Anadyomene, Struvea and Boodlea the
branches, spreading in one plane, become bound together in
a more or less close network. Characeae are separated from
other Chloroohlceae by a long interval, and present the
highest degree of differentiation of parts known among Green
Algae. Attached to the bottom of pools by means of rhizoids,
the thallus of Characeae grows upwards by means of an apical
cell, giving off whorled appendages at regular intervals.
The appendages have a limited growth; but in connexion with
each whorl there arise, singly or in pairs, branches which
have the same unlimited growth as the main axis. There is
thus a close approach to the external morphology of the higher
plants. The streaming of the protoplasm, known elsewhere among
Chlorophyceae, is a conspicuous feature of the cells of Characeae.
The Chlorophyceae excel all other groups of algae in the
magnitude and variety of form of the chlorophyll-bodies. In
Ulva and Mesocarpus the chromatophore is a single plate,
which in the latter genus places its edge towards the incident
light; in Spirogyra they are spiral bands embedded in the
primordial utricle; in Zygnema they are a pair of stellate
masses, the rays of which branch peripherally; in Oedogonium
they are longitudinally-disposed anastomosing bands; in Desmids
plates with irregular margins; in Cladophora polyhedral
plates: in Vaucheria minute elliptical bodies occurring in
immense numbers. Embedded in the chromatophore, much in the
same way as the nucleus is embedded in the cytoplasm, are the
pyrenoids. Unknown in Cyanophyceae and Phoeophyeeae, known
only in Bangiaceae and Nemalion among Rhodophyceae, they
are of frequent occurrence among Chlorophyceae, excepting
Characeae. Sometimes several pyrenoids occur in each
chloroplast, as in Mesocarpus and Spirogyra; sometimes
only an occasional chloroplast contains pyrenoid at all,
as in Cadophora. The pyrenoid seems to be of proteid
nature and gelatinous consistency, and to arise as a new
formation or by division of pre-existing pyrenoids. When
carbon-assimilation is active, starch-granules crowd upon the
surface of the pyrenoid and completely obscure it from view.
Special provision for vegetative multiplication is not common
among Chlorophyceae. Valonia and Caulerpa among Siphonales
detach portions of their thallus, which are capable of independent
growth. In Caulerpa no other means of multiplication is as yet
known. In Characeae no fewer than four methods of vegetative
reproduction have been described, and the facility with which
buds and branches are in these cases detached has been adduced
as an evidence of affinity with Bryophyta, which, as a class, are
distinguished by their ready resort to vegetative reproduction.
With regard to true reproduction, which is characterized by
the formation of special cells, the group Euchlorophyceae
is characterized by the production of zoospores (Gr. zoon,
animal, spora, seed); that is to say, cells capable of
motility through the agency of cilia. Such ciliary motion
is known in the adult condition of the cells of Volvocaceae,
but where this is not the case the reproductive cells are
endowed with motility for a brief period. The zoospore
is usually a pyriform mass of naked protoplasm, the beaked
end of which where the cilia arise is devoid of colouring
matter. A reddish-brown body, known as the eyespot, is
usually situated near the limits of the hyaline portion, and
in the protoolasm contractile vacuoles similar to those of
lower animals have been occasionally detected. The movement
of the zoospore is effected by the lashing of the cilia and
is in the direction of the beak, while the zoospore slowly
rotates on Botrydium and Hydrodictyon only one is present;
in certain species of Cladophora four; in Dasycladus a
chaplet, and in Oedogonium a ring of many cilia. The
so-called zoospore of Vaucheria is a coenocyte covered over
with paired cilia corresponding in position to nuclei lying
below. In all other cases, zoospores are uninucleate bodies.
Zoospores arise in cells of ordinary size and form termed
zoosporangia. In unicellular forms (Sphaerella) the thallus
becomes transformed into a zoosporangium at the reproductive
stage. In the zoosporangia of Oedogonium, Tetraspora and
Coleochaete the contents become transformed into a single
zoospore. In most cases repeated division seems to take
place, and the final number is represented by some power of
two. In coenocytic forms the zoospores would seem to arise
simultaneously, probably because many nuclei are already
present. The escape of zoospores is effected by the
degeneration of the sporangial wall (Chaetophora), or by
a pore (Cladophora), a slit (Pediastrum ), or a circular
fracture (Oedogonium). Zoospores are of two kinds: (1) Those
which come to rest and germinate to form a new plant; these are
asexual and are zoospores proper. (2) Those which are unable
to germinate of themselves, but fuse with another cell, the
product giving rise to a new individual; these are sexual and
are zoogametes (Gr. zoon, animal, and gametes, gamete,
husband, wife). When two similar zoogametes fuse, the process
is conjugation, and the product a zygospore (Gr. zugon,
yoke). Usually, however, only one of the fusing cells is a
zoogamete, the other gamete being a much larger resting
cell. In such a case the zoogamete is male, is called an
antherozoid or spermatozoid, and arises in an antheridium; the
larger gamete is an oosphere and arises in an oogonium. The
fusion is now known as fertilization, and the product is an
oospore. Reproduction by conjugation is also known as isogamy,
by fertilization as oogamy. When zoospores come to rest,
a new cell is formed and germination ensues at once. When
zygospores and oospores are produced a new cell-wall is also
formed, but a long period of rest ensues. All investigation
goes to show that an essential part of sexual union is the
fusion of the two nuclei concerned. It is interesting to
know, on the authority of Oltmanns, that when the oosphere is
forming in the oogonium of Vaucheria, there is a retrocession
of all the included nuclei but one. that the antherozoid of
Vaucheria contains a single nucleus had been inferred before.
From a comparison of those Euchlorophyceae which have been
most closely investigated, it appears probable that sexual
reproductive cells have in the course of evolution arisen
as the result of specialization among asexual reproductive
cells, and that in turn oogamous reproduction has arisen
as the result of differentiation of the two conjugating
cells into the smaller male gamete and the larger male
gamete. It would further appear that oogamous reproduction
has arisen independently in each of the three main groups
of Euchlorophyceae, viz. Ptotococcales, Siphonales and
Confervales. Thus among Volvocaceae, a family of Protococcales,
while in some of the genera (Chloraster, Sphondylomorum)
no sexual union has as yet been observed, in others
(Pandorina, Chlorogonium, Stephanosphaera, Sphaerella)
conjugation of similar gametes takes place, in others still
(Phacotus, Eudorina, Volvox) the union is of the nature of
fertilization. No other family of Protococcales has advanced
beyond the stage of isogamous reproduction. Again, among
Siphonales only one family (Vaucheriaceae) has reached the
stage of oogamy, although an incipient heterogamy is said
to occur in two other families (Codiaceae, Bryopsidaceae).
Elsewhere among Siphonales, in those cases where reproductive
cells are known, the reproduction is either isogamous or
asexual. Among Confervales there is no family in which
sexual reproduction--isogamy or oogamy--is not known to occur
among some of the component species, and as many as four
families (Cylindrocapsaceae, Sphaeropleaceae, Oedogoniaceae,
Coleochaetaceae) are oogamous. On these, as well as other
grounds. Confervales are regarded as having attained to the
highest rank among Euchlorophyceae. Although the phenomena
attending isogamous and oogamous reproduction respectively
are essentially the same in all cases, slight variations in
both instances appear in different families, attributable
doubtless to the independent origin of the process in different
groups. Thus, although isogamy consists in typical cases of
a union of naked motile gametes by a fusion which begins at
the beaked ends, and results in the formation of an immotile
spherical zygote surrounded by a cell-wall, in Leptosira it
is noticeable that the fusion begins at the blunt end; in a
species of Chlamydomonas the two gametes are each included
in a cell-wall before fusion; and in many cases the zygote
retains for some time its motility with the double number of
cilia. Again, in oogamous reproduction, while in general only
one oosphere is differentiated in the oogonium, in Sphaeroplea
several oospheres arise in each oogonium; and while the oospheres
usually contract away from the oogonial wall, acquiring for
themselves a new cell-wall after fertilization, in Coleochaete
the oosphere remains throughout in contact with the oogonial
wall. The oosphere is in all cases fertilized while still within
the oogonium, the antherozoids being admitted by means of a
pore. There is usually distinguishable upon the surface
of the oosphere an area free from chlorophyll, known as the
receptive spot, at which the fusion with the antherozoid
takes place; and in many cases, before fertilization, a small
mucilaginous mass has been observed to separate itself off
from the oosphere at this point and to escape through the
pore. In Coleochaete the oogonial wall is drawn out into a
considerable tube, which is provided with an apical pore, and
this tube has a somewhat similar appearance to the imperforate
trichogyne of Florideae to be hereafter described. In certain
species of Oedogonium minute male plantlets, known as dwarf
males, become attached to the female plant in the neighbourhood
of the oogonia, thus facilitating fertilization. Indeed the
genus Oedogonium exhibits a high degree of specialization
in its reproductive system, considering that its thallus
has not advanced beyond the stage of an unbranched filament.
Many Euchlorophyceae are endowed with both asexual and sexual
reproduction. Such are Coleochaete, Oedogonium, Cylindrocapsa,
Ulothrix, Vaucheria, Volvox, &c. In others only the asexual
method is yet known. When a species resorts to both methods,
it is generally found that the asexual method prevails in the
early part of the vegetative period and the sexual towards
the close of that period. This is in consonance with the
facts already mentioned that zoospores germinate forthwith,
and that the sexually-produced cell or zygote enters upon a
period of rest. It is known that zoogametes, which usually
conjugate, may, when conjugation fails, germinate directly
(Sphaerella.) In rare cases the oosphere has been known to
germinate without fertilization (Oedogonium, Cylindrocapsa.)
The germination of a zygospore or oospore is effected by
the rupture of an outer cuticularized exosporium; then the
cell may protrude an inner wall, the endosporium, and grow
out into the new plant ( Vaucheria), or the contents may
break up into a first brood of zoospores. It is held that
in Coleochaetea parenchyma results from the division of
the oospore, from each cell of which a zoospore arises.
Reproduction is also effected among Euchlorophyceae by means of
aplanospores and akinetes. Aplanospores would seem to represent
zoospores arrested in their development; without reaching
the stage of motility, they germinate within the sporangium.
Akinetes are ordinary thallus cells, which on account of their
acquisition of a thick wall are capable of surviving unfavourable
conditions. Both aplanospores and akinetes may germinate with
or without the formation of zoospores at the initial stage.