ALCOBACA, a town of Portugal, in the district of Leiria,
formerly included in the province of Estremadura, on the Alcoa
and Baca rivers, from which it derives its name. Pop. (1900)
2309. Alcobaca is chiefly interesting for its Cistercian
convent, now partly converted into schools and barracks.
The monastic buildings, which form a square 725 ft. in
diameter, with a huge conical chimney rising above them, were
founded in 1148 and completed in 1222. During the middle
ages it rivalled the greatest European abbeys in size and
wealth. It was supplied with water by an affluent of the
Alcoa, which still flows through the kitchen; its abbot
ranked with the highest Portuguese nobles, and, according
to tradition, 999 monks continued the celebration of mass
without intermission throughout the year. The convent was
partly burned by the French in 1810, secularized in 1834
and afterwards gradually restored. Portions of the library,
which comprised over 100,000 volumes, including many precious
MSS., were saved in 1810, and are preserved in the public
libraries of Lisbon and Braga. The monastic church (1222) is
a good example of early Gothic, somewhat defaced by Moorish
and other additions. It contains a fine cloister and the
tombs of Peter I. (1357-1367) and his wife, Inez de Castro.
ALCOCK, JOHN (c. 1430-1500), English divine, was born at
Beverley in Yorkshire and educated at Cambridge. In 1461 he was
made dean of Westminster, and henceforward his promotion was rapid
in church and state. In the following year he was made master
of the rolls, and in 1470 was sent as ambassador to the court of
Castile. He was consecrated bishop of Rochester in 1472 and was
successively translated to the sees of Worcester (1476) and Ely
(1486). He twice held the office of lord chancellor, and
exhibited great ability in the negotiations with James III. of
Scotland. He died at Wisbech Castle on the 1st of October
1500. Alcock was one of the most eminent pre-Reformation
divines; he was a man of deep learning and also of great
proficiency as an architect. Besides founding a charity
at Beverley and a grammar school at Kingston-upon-Hull, he
restored many churches and colleges; but his greatest enterprise
was the erection of Jesus College, Cambridge, which he
established on the site of the former Convent of St Radigund.
Alcock's published writings, most of which are extremely
rare, are: Mons Perfectionis, or the Hill of Perfection
(London, 1497); Gallicontus Johannis Alcock episcopi
Eliensis ad frates suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell
(1498), a good specimen of early English printing and quaint
illustrations; The Castle of Labour, translated from the French
(1536), and various other tracts and homilies. See J. Bass
Mullinger's Hist. of the University of Cambridge, vol. i.
ALCOCK, SIR RUTHERFORD (1809-1897), British consul and
diplomatist, was the son of Dr Thomas Alcock, who practised
at Ealing, near London, and himself followed the medical
profession. In 1836 he became a surgeon in the marine
brigade which took part in the Carlist war, and gaining
distinction by his services was made deputy inspector-general
of hospitals. He retired from this service in 1837, and
seven years later was appointed consul at Fuchow in China,
where, after a short official stay at Amoy, he performed the
functions, as he himself expressed it, ``of everything from
a lord chancellor to a sheriff's officer.'' Fuchow was one
of the ports opened to trade by the treaty of 1842, and Mr
Alcock, as he then was, had to maintain an entirely new position
with the Chinese authorities. In so doing he was eminently
successful, and earned for himself promotion to the consulate at
Shanghai. Thither he went in 1846 and made it an especial
part of his duties to superintend the establishment, and
laying out of the British settlement, which has developed
into such an important feature of British commercial life in
China. In 1858 he was appointed consul-general in the newly
opened empire of Japan, and in the following year was promoted
to be minister plenipotentiary. In those days residence in
Japan was surrounded with many dangers, and the people were
intensely hostile to foreigners. In 1860 Mr Alcock's native
interpreter was murdered at the gate of the legation, and
in the following year the legation was stormed by a body
of Ronins, whose attack was repulsed by Mr Alcock and his
staff. Shortly after this event he returned to England on
leave. Already he had been made a C.B. (1860); in 1862 he
was made a K.C.B., and in 1863 hon. D.C.L. Oxon. In 1864
he returned to Japan, and after a year's further residence
he was transferred to Pekin, where he represented the British
government until 1871, when he retired. But though no longer
in official life his leisure was fully occupied. He was
for some years president of the Royal Geographical Society,
and he served on many commissions. He was twice married,
first in May 1841 to Henrietta Mary, daughter of Charles
Bacon, who died in 1853, and secondly (July 8, 1862) to the
widow of the Rev. John Lowder, who died on the 13th of March
1899. He was the author of several works, and was one of the
first to awaken in England an interest in Japanese art; his
best-known book is The Capital of the Tycoon, which appeared in
1863. He died in London on the 2nd of November 1897. (R. K. D.)
ALCOFORADO, MARIANNA (1640-1723), Portuguese authoress,
writer of the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, was the daughter
of a landed proprietor in Alemtejo. Beja, her birthplace,
was the chief garrison town of that province, itself the
principal theatre of the twenty-eight years' war with Spain
that followed the Portuguese revolution of 1640, and her
widowed father, occupied with administrative and military
commissions, placed Marianna in her childhood in the wealthy
convent of the Conception for security and education.
She made her profession as a Franciscan nun at sixteen or
earlier, without any real vocation, and lived a routine
life in that somewhat relaxed house until her twenty-fifth
year, when she met Noel Bouton. This man, afterwards marquis
de Chamilly, and marshal of France, was one of the French
officers who came to Portugal to serve under the great captain,
Frederick, Count Schomberg, the re-organizer of the Portuguese
army. During the years 1665-1667 Chamilly spent much of his
time in and about Beja, and probably became acquainted with
the Alcoforado family through Marianna's brother, who was a
soldier. Custom then permitted religious to receive and entertain
visitors, and Chamilly, aided by his military prestige and some
flattery, found small difficulty in betraying the trustful
nun. Before long their intrigue became known and caused a
scandal, and to avoid the consequences Chamilly deserted Marianna
and withdrew clandestinely to France. The letters to her
lover which have earned her renown in literature were written
between December 1667 and June 1668, and they described the
successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which she
passed. As a piece of unconscious psychological self-analysis,
they are unsurpassed; as a product of the Peninsular heart
they are unrivalled. These five short letters written by
Marianna to ``expostulate her desertion'' form one of the few
documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion
which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its
heat. Perhaps their dominant note is reality, and, sad reading
as they are from the moral standpoint, their absolute candour,
exquisite tenderness and entire self-abandonment have excited
the wonder and admiration of great men and women in every
age, from Madame de Sevigne to W. E. Gladstone. There are
signs in the fifth letter that Marianna had begun to conquer
her passion, and after a life of rigid penance, accompanied
by much suffering, she died at the age of eighty-three. The
letters came into the possession of the comte de Guilleragues,
director of the Gazette de France, who turned them into
French, and they were published anonymously in Paris in January
1669. A Cologne edition of the same year stated that Chamilly
was their addressee, which is confirmed by St Simon and Duclos,
but the name of their authoress remained undivulged. In 1810,
however, Boissonade discovered Marianna's name written in a copy
of the first edition by a contemporary hand, and the veracity
of this ascription has been placed beyond doubt by the recent
investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition
in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese
nun. The letters created a sensation on their first appearance,
running through five editions in a year, and, to exploit
their popularity, second parts, replies and new replies were
issued from the press in quick succession. Notwithstanding
that the Portuguese original of the five letters is lost,
their genuineness is as patent as the spuriousness of their
followers, and though Rousseau was ready to wager they were
written by a man, the principal critics of Portugal and France
have decided against him. It is now generally recognized that
the letters are a verbatim translation from the Portuguese.
The foreign bibliography of the Letters, containing almost
one hundred numbers, will be found in Cordeiro's admirable
study, Soror Marianna, A Friera Portugueza, 2nd ed. (Lisbon,
1891). Besides the French editions, versions exist in Dutch,
Danish, Italian and German; and the English bibliography is
given by Edgar Prestage in his translation The Letters of
a Portuguese Nun (Marianna Alcoforado), 3rd ed. (London,
1903). The French text of the editio princeps was printed
in the first edition (1893) of this book. Edmund Gosse in
the Fortnightly Review, vol. xlix. (old series) p. 506,
shows the considerable influence exercised by the Letters on
the sentimental literature of France and England. (E. PR.)
ALCOHOL, in Commerce, the name generally given to ``spirits
of wine''; in systematic organic chemistry it has a wider
meaning, being the generic name of a class of compounds
(hydroxy hydrocarbons) of which ordinary alcohol (specifically
ethyl alcohol) is a typical member (see ALCOHOLS.)
Etymology.
The word ``alcohol'' is of Arabic origin, being derived
from the particle al and the word kohl, an impalpable
powder used in the East for painting the eyebrows. For many
centuries the word was used to designate any fine powder; its
present-day application to the product of the distillation
of wine is of comparatively recent date. Thus Paracelsus
and Libavius both used the term to denote a fine powder, the
latter speaking of an alcohol derived from antimony. At
the same time Paracelsus uses the word for a volatile liquid;
alcool Or alcool vini occurs often in his writings, and
once he adds ``id est vino ardente.'' Other names have
been in use among the earlier chemists for this same liquid.
Eau de vie (``elixir of life'') was in use during the 13th
and 14th centuries; Arnoldus Villanovanus applied it to the
product of distilled wine, though not as a specific name.
Ethyl alcohol.
Ordinary alcohol, which we shall frequently refer to by its
specific name, ethyl alcohol, seldom occurs in the vegetable
kingdom; the unripe seeds of Heracleum giganteum and H.
Sphondylium contain it mixed with ethyl butyrate. In the
animal kingdom it occurs in the urine of diabetic patients and
of persons addicted to alcohol. Its important source lies in
its formation by the ``spirituous'' or ``alcoholic fermentation''
of saccharine juices. The mechanism of alcoholic fermentation
