have been closely associated with the district since the
time of Sir James Smollett, the novelist's grandfather.
The industries of Bonhill centre in the calico printing,
dyeing and bleaching which find their headquarters in the
valley. Population (1891) 3843; (1901) 3333. JAMESTOWN,
about 1 m. to the north-east of Alexandria, with a station
on the Forth & Clyde railway from Balloch to Stirling (North
British), contains some of the largest cotton-printing
works in Scotland. Population (1891) 1668; (1901) 2080.
ALEXANDRIA, a city and a port of entry of Alexandria county,
Virginia, U.S.A., on the W. bank of the Potomac river, 6
m. below Washington, D.C., with which it is connected by a
ferry. Pop. (1890) 14,339; (1900) 14,528, of whom 4533 were
negroes; (1910, census), 15,329. Alexandria is served by the
Baltimore & Ohio, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Southern and the
Washington Southern railways; by the Washington, Alexandria &
Mount Vernon electric railway; and by several lines of river
and coasting steamboats. It is a quaint, old-fashioned city,
with quiet, shady streets, and a number of buildings dating
back to the 18th century; of these the most interesting is the
old Christ Church in which George Washington and Robert E. Lee
worshipped. The city has a public library. About 2 1/2
m. W. of Alexandria is the Protestant Episcopal Theological
Seminary in Virginia, opened here in 1823 and chartered in
1854; in 1906-1907 the Seminary had a faculty of 7 and 46
students. Alexandria is a distributing and jobbing centre for
the north-east counties of Virginia. Among its manufactures
are fertilizers, bottles, carbonated beverages, flour, beer,
shoes, silk thread, aprons, brooms, leather, bricks, and
tiling and structural iron. The total value of its factory
product in 1905 was $2,186,658. The municipality owns and
operates its gas-lighting plant. Alexandria, first known as
Belhaven, was named in honour of John Alexander, who in the
last quarter of the 17th century had bought the land on which
the city now stands from Robert Howison; the first settlement
here was made in 1695. Alexandria was laid out in 1749 and
was incorporated in 1779. From 1790 until 1846 Alexandria
county was a part of the District of Columbia; at present the
city, although within the limits of Alexandria county, is not
administratively a part of it. The city was re-chartered in
1852. For some time Alexandria seemed destined to become
an important commercial centre, but the rise of Washington
created a rival that soon outstripped it, and since the
Civil War the city's growth has been comparatively slight.
At Alexandria in 1755 General Edward Braddock organized his
fatal expedition against Fort Duquesne, and here, in April of
the same year, the governors of Virginia, Massachusetts, New
Yfork, Pennsylvania and Maryland met (in a house still standing)
to determine upon concerted action against the French in
America. In March 1785 commissioners from Virginia and
Maryland met here to discuss the commercial relations of
the two states, finishing their business at Mount Vernon on
the 28th with an agreement for freedom of trade and freedom
of navigation of the Potomac. The Maryland legislature in
ratifying this agreement on the 22nd of November proposed
a conference between representatives from all the states to
consider the adoption of definite commercial regulations.
This led to the calling of the Annapolis convention of 1786,
which in turn led to the calling of the Federal convention of
1787. In 1814 Alexandria was threatened by a British fleet,
but bought immunity from attack by paying about $100,000. At
the opening of the Civil War the city was occupied by Federal
troops, and great excitement throughout the North was caused
by the killing (May 24, 1861) of Colonel E. E. Ellsworth
(1837-1861) by Captain James W. Jackson, a hotel proprietor,
from whose building Ellsworth had removed a Confederate
flag. After the erection of the state of West Virginia (1863),
and until the close of the war, Alexandria was the seat of what
was known as the ``Alexandria Government'' (see VIRGINIA).
ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. Under this title are generally included
certain strongly marked tendencies in literature, science and
art, which took their rise in the ancient Egyptian city of
Alexandria. That city, founded by Alexander the Great about
the time when Greece, in losing her national independence, lost
also her intellectual supremacy, was in every way admirably
adapted for becoming the new centre of the world's activity and
thought. Its situation brought it into commercial relations
with all the nations lying around the Mediterranean, and at
the same time rendered it the one communicating link with
the wealth and civilization of the East. The great natural
advantages it thus enjoyed were artificially increased to
an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt.
Ptolemy Soter (reigned 323-285 B.C.), to whom, in the
general distribution of Alexander's conquests, this kingdom had
fallen, began to draw around him from various parts of Greece
a circle of men eminent in literature and philosophy. To these
he gave every facility for the prosecution of their learned
researches. Under the inspiration of his friend Demetrius of
Phalerum, the Athenian orator, statesman and philosopher, this
Ptolemy laid the foundations of the great Alexandrian library
and originated the keen search for all written works, which
resulted in the formation of a collection such as the world
has seldom seen. He also built, for the convenience of his
men of letters, the Museum, in which, maintained by the royal
bounty, they resided, studied and taught. This Museum, or
academy of science, was in many respects not unlike a modern
university. The work thus begun by Ptolemy Soter was carried
on vigorously by his descendants, in particular by his
two immediate successors, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy
Euergetes. Philadelphus (285-247), whose librarian was the
celebrated Callimachus, bought up all Aristotle's collection
of books, and also introduced a number of Jewish and Egyptian
works. Among these appears to have been a portion pf the
Septuagint. Euergetes (247-222) largely increased the library
by seizing on the original editions of the dramatists laid up
in the Athenian archives, and by compelling all travellers who
arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any work they possessed.
The intellectual movement so originated extended over a long
period of years. If we date its rise from the 4th century
B.C., at the time of the fall of Greece and the foundation
of the Graeco- Macedonian empire, we must look for its final
dissolution in the 7th century of the Christian era, at the
time of the fall of Alexandria and the rise of the Mahommedan
power. But this very long period falls into two divisions.
The first, extending from about 306 to 30, includes the time
from the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty to its final
subjugation by the Romans; the second extends from 30 to
A.D. 642, when Alexandria was destroyed by the Arabs. The
characteristic features of these divisions are very clearly
marked, and their difference affords an explanation of
the variety and vagueness of meaning attaching to the term
``Alexandrian School.'' In the first of the two periods the
intellectual activity was of a purely literary and scientific
nature. It was an attempt to continue and develop, under new
conditions, the old Hellenic culture. This direction of
effort was particularly noticeable under the early Ptolemies,
Alexandria being then almost the only home in the world for pure
literature. During the last century and a half before the
Christian era, the school, as it might be called, began to break
up and to lose its individuality. This was due partly to the
state of government under some of the later Ptolemies, partly
to the formation of new literary circles in Rhodes, Syria and
elsewhere, whose supporters, though retaining the Alexandrian
peculiarities, could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian
school. The loss of active life, consequent on this gradual
dissolution, was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman
sway. Then the influence of the school was extended over the
whole known world, but men of letters began to concentrate
at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In that city, however,
there were new forces in operation which produced a second
grand outburst of intellectual life. The new movement was
not in the old direction--had, indeed, nothing in common
with it. With its character largely determined by Jewish
elements, and even more by contact with the dogmas of
Christianity, this second Alexandrian school resulted in
the speculative philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and the
religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.
There appear, therefore, to be at least two definite significations
of the title Alexandrian School; or rather, there are two
Alexandrian schools, distinct both chronologically and in
substance. The one is the Alexandrian school of poetry and
science, the other the Alexandrian school of philosophy.
The term ``school,'' however, has not the same meaning as
when applied to the Academics or Peripatetics, the Stoics or
Epicureans. These consisted of a company united by holding
in common certain speculative principles, by having the same
theory of things. There was nothing at all corresponding to
this among the Alexandrians. In literature their activities
were directed to the most diverse objects; they have only
in common a certain spirit or form. There was among them
no definite system of phllosophy. Even in the later schools
of philosophy proper there is found a community rather of
tendency than of definite result or of fixed principles.
I. Literature.--The general character of the literature of
the school appears as the necessary consequence of the state
of affairs brought about by the fall of Greek nationality and
independence. The great works of the Greek mind had formerly
been the products of a fresh life of nature and perfect
freedom of thought. All their hymns, epics and histories were
bound up with their individuality as a free people. But the
Macedonian conquest at Chaeroneia brought about a complete
dissolution of this Greek life in all its relations, private and
political. The full, genial spirit of Greek thought vanished
when freedom, with which it was inseparably united, was
lost. A substitute for this originality was found at Alexandria
in learned research, extended and multifarious knowledge.
Amply provided with means for acquiring information, and
under the watchful care of a great monarch, the Alexandrians
readily took this new direction in literature. With all the
great objects removed which could excite a true spirit of
poetry, they devoted themselves to minute researches in all
sciences subordinate to literature proper. They studied
criticism, grammar, prosody and metre, antiquities and
mythology. The results of this study constantly appear in their
productions. Their works are never national, never addressed
to a people, but to a circle of learned men. Moreover, the very
fact of being under the protection and, as it were, in the pay
of an absolute monarch was damaging to the character of their
literature. There was introduced into it a courtjy element,
clear traces of which, with all its accompaniments, are found
in the extant works of the school. One other fact, not to
be forgotten in forming a general estimate of the literary
value of their productions, is, that the same writer was
