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