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Project Gutenberg's Encyclopedia, vol. 1 ( A - Andropha

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Serre and the Aisne, the latter of which joins it beyond the 
limits of the department; and the Marne and the Ourcq in the 
south.  The climate is in general cold and humid, especially 
in the north-east.  Agriculture is highly developed; 
cereals, principally wheat and oats, and beetroot are the 
chief crops; potatoes, flax, hemp, rape and hops are also 
grown.  Pasturage is good, particularly in the north-east, 
where dairy-farming flourishes.  Wine of medium quality is 
grown on the banks of the Marne and the Aisne.  Bee-farming 
is of some importance.  Large tracts of the department are 
under wood; the chief forests are those of Nouvion and St 
Michel in the north, Coucy and St Gobain in the centre, and 
Villers-Cotterets in the south.  The osiers grown in the 
vicinity of St Quentin supply an active basket-making industry. 

Though destitute of metals Aisne furnishes abundance of 
freestone, gypsum and clay.  There are numerous tile and 
brick works in the department.  Its most important industrial 
establishments are the mirror manufactory of St Gobain and the 
chemical works at Chauny, and the workshops and foundries of 
Guise, the property of an association of workpeople organized 
on socialistic lines and producing iron goods of various 
kinds.  The manufacture of sugar is very important; brewing, 
distilling, flour-milling, iron-founding, the weaving and 
spinning of cotton, wool and silk, and the manufacture of iron 
goods, especially agricultural implements, are actively carried 
on.  Aisne imports coal, iron, cotton and other raw material 
and machinery; it exports cereals, live-stock and agricultural 
products generally, and manufactured goods.  The department 
is served chiefly by the lines of the Northern railway; in 
addition, the main line of the Eastern railway to Strassburg 
traverses the extreme south.  The Oise, Aisne and Marne are 
navigable, and canals furnish 170 m. of waterway.  Aisne is 
divided into five arrondissements--St Quentin and Vervins in the 
north, Laon in the centre, and Soissons and Chateau-Thierry 
in the south-and contains 37 cantons and 841 communes.  
It forms part of the educational division (academie) 
of Douai and of the region of the second army corps, its 
military centre being at Amiens, where also is its court of 
appeal.  Laon is the capital, and Soissons the seat of a 
bishopric of the province of Reims.  Other important places 
are Chateau-Thierry, St Quentin and Coucy-le-Chateau.  La 
Forte-Milon has remains of an imposing chateau of the 14th 
and 15th centuries with interesting fortifications.  The 
ruined church at Longpont (13th century) is the relic of an 
important Cistercian abbey; Urcel and Mont-Notre-Dame have 
fine churches, the first entirely in the Romanesque style, 
the second dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, to which 
period the church at Braisne also belongs.  At Premontre 
the buildings of the abbey, which was the cradle of the 
Premonstratensian order, are occupied by a lunatic asylum. 

AISSE [a corruption of HAIDEE], MADEMOISELLE (c. 
1694-1733), French letter-writer, was the daughter of a 
Circassian chief, and was born about 1694.  Her father's palace 
was pillaged by the Turks, and as a child of four years old 
she was sold to the comte de Ferriol, the French ambassador at 
Constantinople.  She was brought up in Paris by Ferriol's 
sister-in-law with her own sons, MM. d'Argental and Pont de 
Veyle.  Her great beauty and romantic history made her the 
fashion, and she attracted the notice of the regent, Philip, 
duke of Orleans, whose offers she had the strength of mind to 
refuse.  She formed a deep and lasting attachment to the 
Chevalier d'Aydie, by whom she had a daughter.  She died in 
Paris on the 13th of March 1733.  Her letters to her friend 
Madame Calandrini contain much interesting information with 
regard to contemporary celebrities, especially on Mme. du 
Deffand and Mme. de Tencin, but they are above all of interest 
in the picture they afford of the writer's own tenderness and 
fidelity.  Her Lettres were edited by Voltaire (1787), 
by J. Ravenel, with a notice by Sainte-Beuve (1846) 
and by Eugene Asse (1873).  Mlle.  Aisse has been the 
subject of three plays: by A. de Lavergne and P. Woucher 
(1854), by Louis Bouilhet (1872) and by Dejoux (1898). 

See also Courteault, Une Idylle au XVIIIe siecle, Mlle.  
Aisse et le Chevalier d'Aydie (Macon, 1900); and notices 
prefixed to the editions of 1846 and 1873.  There is an 
interesting essay by E. Gosse in his French Profiles (1905). 

AITON, WILLIAM (1731-1793), Scottish botanist, was born 
near Hamilton in 1731.  Having been regularly trained to the 
profession of a gardener, he travelled to London in 1754, 
and became assistant to Philip Miller, then superintendent 
of the Physic Garden at Chelsea.  In 1759 he was appointed 
director of the newly established botanical garden at Kew, 
where he remained until his death on the 2nd of February 
1793.  He effected many improvements at the gardens, and in 1789 
he published Hortus Kewensis, a catalogue of the plants there 
cultivated.  A second and enlarged edition of the Hortus was 
brought out in 1810-1813 by his eldest son, WILLIAM TOWNSEND 
AITON (1766-1849), who succeeded him at Kew and was commissioned 
by George IV. to lay out the gardens at the Pavilion, Brighton. 

AITZEMA, LIEUWE (LEO) VAN (1600-1669), Dutch historian 
and statesman, was born at Doccum, in Friesland, on the 19th 
of November 1600.  In 1617 he published a volume of Latin 
poems under the title of Poemata Juvenilia, of which a 
copy is preserved in the British Museum.  He made a special 
study of politics and political science and was for thirty 
years resident for the towns of the Hanseatic League at the 
Hague, where he died on the 23rd of February 1669.  His most 
important work was the Saken van Staet in Oorlogh in ende 
omtrent de Vereenigte Nederlanden (14 Vols. 4to, 1655-1671), 
embracing the period from 1621 to 1668.  It contains a large 
number of state documents, and is an invaluable authority 
on one of the most eventful periods of Dutch history. 

Four continuations of the history, by the poet and 
historian Lambert van den Bos, were published successively 
at Amsterdam in 1683, 1688, 1698 and 1699.  The Derde 
Vervolg Zinde het vierde Stuck van het vervolgh op 
de historie, &c., brings the history down to 1697. 

AIVALI (Gr. Kydonia), a prosperous town on the W. 
coast of Asia Minor, opposite the island of Mitylene.  Pop. 
21,000.  It stands near the site of the Aeolian Heraclea, on 
rising ground at the end of a bay which is separated from the 
Gulf of Adramyttium, and protected from the prevailing winds 
by the Moschonisi Islands (Hecatonnesoi.) In 1821 it was 
burned to the ground during a fight between the Turks and the 
Greeks, and a large number of its Greek population killed or 
enslaved.  It is one of the most thriving towns in the 
Levant, with a purely Greek population distinguished for its 
commercial, industrial and maritime enterprise.  The exports 
are olive oil, grain and wood, and a fleet of fishing-boats 
supplies Constantinople and Smyrna with fish; the exports 
in 1902 were valued at L. 987,070, and the imports at 

AIWAN, the reception-hall or throne-room of a Parthian or Sassanian palace. 

AIX, a city of south-eastern France, capital of an arrondissement 
in the department of Bouches-du-Rhone, 18 m.  N. of Marseilles 
by rail.  Pop. (1906) 19,433.  It is situated in a plain 
overlooking the Arc, about a mile from the right bank of the 
river.  The Cours Mirabeau, a wide thoroughfare, planted 
with double rows of plane-trees, bordered by fine houses 
and decorated by three fountains, divides the town into two 
portions.  The new town extends to the south, the old town 
with its wide but irregular streets and its old mansions 
dating from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries lies to the 
north.  Aix is an important educational centre, being the 
seat of the faculties of law and letters of the university of 
Aix-Marseille, and the north and east quarter of the town, 
where the schools and university buildings are situated, is 
comparable to the Latin Quarter of Paris.  The cathedral of St 
Sauveur, which dates from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, 
is situated in this portion of Aix. It is preceded by a rich 
portal in the Gothic style with elaborately carved doors, and 
is flanked on the north by an uncompleted tower.  The interior 
contains tapestry of the 16th century and other works of 
art.  The archbishop's palace and a Romanesque cloister adjoin 
the cathedral on its south side.  The church of St Jean de 
Malto, dating from the 13th century, contains some valuable 
pictures.  The hotel de ville, a building in the classical style 
of the middle of the 17th century, looks on to a picturesque 
square.  It contains some fine wood-work and a large library 
which includes many valuable MSS. At its side rises a handsome 
clock-tower erected in 1505.  Aix possesses many beautiful 
fountains, one of which in the Cours Mirabeau is surmounted 
by a statue of Rene, count of Provence, who held a brilliant 
court at Aix in the 15th century.  Aix has thermal springs, 
remarkable for their heat and containing lime and carbonic 
acid.  The bathing establishment was built in 1705 near the 
site of the ancient baths of Sextius, of which vestiges still 
remain.  The town, which is the seat of an archbishop and 
court of appeal, and the centre of an academie (educational 
circumscription), numbers among its public institutions 
a Court of assizes, tribunals of first instance and of 
commerce, and a chamber of arts and manufactures.  It also has 
training-colleges, a lycee, a school of art and technics, 
museums of antiquities, natural history and painting, 
and several learned societies.  The industries include 
flour-milling, the manufacture of confectionery, iron-ware 
and hats, and the distillation of olive-oil.  Trade is in 
olive-oil, almonds and stone from the neighbouring quarries. 

Aix (Aquae Sextiae) was founded in 123 B.C. by the 
Roman consul Sextius Calvinus, who gave his name to its 
springs.  In 102 B.C. its neighbourhood was the scene of 
the defeat inflicted on the Cimbri and Teutones by Marius.  
In the 4th century it became the metropolis of Narbonensis 
Secunda.  It was occupied by the Visigoths in 477, in the 
succeeding century was repeatedly plundered by the Franks 
and Lombards, and was occupied by the Saracens in 731. Aix, 
which during the middle ages was the capital of the county 
of Provence, did not reach its zenith until after the 12th 
century, when, under the houses of Aragon and Anjou, it became 
an artistic centre and seat of learning.  With the rest of 
Provence, it passed to the crown of France in 1487, and in 
1501 Louis XII. established there the parlement of Provence 
which existed till 1789.  In the 17th and 18th centuries 
the town was the seat of the intendance of Provence. 

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE (Ger. Aachen, Dutch Aken), a city and 
spa of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, situated in a 
pleasant valley, 44 m.  W. of Cologne and contiguous to the 
Belgian and Dutch frontiers, to which its municipal boundaries 
extend.  Pop. (1885) 95,725; (1905) including Burtscheid, 
143,906.  Its position, at the centre of direct railway 
communications with Cologne and Dusseldorf respectively on 
the E. and Liege-Brussels and Maestricht-Antwerp on the W., 
has favoured its rise to one of the most prosperous commerical 
towns of Germany.  The city consists of the old inner town, the 
former ramparts of which have been converted into promenades, 
and the newer outer town and suburbs.  Of the ancient gates 
but two remain, the Ponttor on the N.W. and the Marschiertor 
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