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 even be suggested that this occurred just early enough to prevent Strauss’s Salome from being regarded by the British public as an oratorio.

The earnest efforts of César Franck prevented French oratorio from drifting entirely towards the stage; and meanwhile year by year Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem (completed, except for one movement, in 1868) towers ever higher above all choral music since Beethoven’s Mass in D, and draws us away from the semi-dramatic oratorio towards the musically perfectible form of an enlarged cantata in which a group of choral movements is concentrated on a set of religious ideas differing from liturgical forms only in free choice of text. Within the essentially non-theatrical limitations of dramatic or epic oratorio, we may note the spirited new departures of Sir Charles Stanford in Eden (1891), and of Sir Hubert Parry in Judith (1888), Job (1892) and King Saul (1894), which showed that Wagnerian Leitmotif and continuity might well avail to produce an oratorio style standing to Mendelssohn as Wagner stands to Mozart, if musical interest be retained in the foreground. Freedom from the restrictions of the stage also means absence of the resources of the stage, so that Wagnerian Leitmotif is no sufficient substitute for formal musical coherence when the audience has no action before its eyes. Accordingly these leaders of the English musical renascence are by no means exclusively Wagnerian in their oratorios. A fine and typical example of their peculiar non-theatrical resources may be seen in the end of King Saul, where Parry (who, like Wagner, is his own librettist) makes the Witch of Endor foresee the battle of Gilboa, and allows her tale to become real in the telling: so that it is followed immediately by the final dirge.

ORATORY (Lat. oratoria, sc. ars; from orare, to speak or pray), the art of speaking eloquently or in accordance with the rules of (q.v.). From Lat. oratorium, sc. templum, a place of prayer, comes the use of the word for a small chapel or place of prayer for the use of private individuals, generally attached to a mansion and sometimes to a church. The name is also given to small chapels built to commemorate some special deliverance.

 ORATORY OF ST PHILIP NERI, CONGREGATION OF THE, or, a religious order consisting of a number of independent houses. The first congregation was formally organized in 1575 by the Florentine priest, Philip Neri. (See .)

 ORB, a circle or ring (Lat. orbis), hence a globe or disk or other spherical object. It is thus used, chiefly poetically, of any of the heavenly bodies, including the earth itself (Lat. orbis terrarum), or of the eye-ball or eye. The “orb,” also known as the “mound” (Lat. mundus, “world”), consisting of a globe surmounted by a cross, forms part of many regalia, being a symbol of sovereignty (see ). In architecture the meaning to be attached to the word “orb” is doubtful. It is usually now taken to mean properly a blank or blind window, and thence a blank panel. If so the word represents Lat. orbus, “bereft of,” “orphaned,” fenestra orba luminis. It is also identified with a circular boss concealing the intersection of arches in a vault.

 ORBETELLO, a town of Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Grosseto, 24 m. S. by E. of Grosseto by rail, 13 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 4188 (town), 5335 (commune). It is situated on a tongue of land projecting westward into a lagoon which is enclosed on the W. and S. by two long narrow sandy spits, and on the seaward (S.W.) side by the peninsula of Monte Argentario. A causeway connecting the town with this peninsula was built across the lagoon in 1842. On every side except the landward (E.) side the town is enclosed by an ancient terrace wall of polygonal work, and tombs have been discovered in the vicinity and even within the town itself. On the N. side of the promontory are the remains of a Roman villa partly below sea-level. The town must thus occupy an ancient site, the name of which is unknown. The town still has the bastions which the Spaniards built during the period (1557–1713) when they were masters of this corner of Italy. There is a large convict prison with which is connected another at Porto Ercole, on the east side of the peninsula. The mother house of the Passionist order crowns an eminence of Monte Argentario, now strongly fortified. The salt-water lagoon (11 sq. m. in extent), in the middle of which the town stands, abounds in white fish, soles and eels. On the eastern edge of the Monte Argentario is an active manganese iron ore mine, yielding some 30,000 tons per annum.

After the fall of the Republic of Siena, when the territory of Siena passed to Tuscany, Philip II. of Spain retained Orbetello, Talamone, Monte Argentario and the island of Giannutri until 1713, under the name of the Reali Stati dei Presidii. There are still many Spanish names among the inhabitants of Orbetello. In 1713 this district passed by treaty to the emperor, in 1736 to the king of the two Sicilies, in 1801 to the kingdom of Etruria, and in 1814 to the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

 ORBIGNY, ALCIDE DESSALINES D’(1802–1857), French palaeontologist, was born at Couërzon, Loire Inférieure, on the 6th of September 1802. He was educated at La Rochelle, where he became interested in the study of natural history, and in particular of zoology and palaeontology. His first appointment was that of travelling naturalist for the Museum of Natural History at Paris. In the course of his duties he proceeded in 1826 to South America, and gathered much information on the natural history and ethnology, the results being embodied in his great work Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale (1839–1842). Meanwhile he had decided to devote his time and energies to palaeontology, and he dealt in course of time with various invertebrata from foraminifera to crinoids and mollusca. In 1840 he commenced the publication of Paléontologie Française, ou description des fossiles de la France, a monumental work, accompanied by figures of the species. Eight volumes were published by him dealing with Jurassic and Cretaceous invertebrata, and since his death many later volumes have been issued. (See notes by C. D. Sherborn, “On the Dates of the Paléontologie Française of D’Orbigny,” Geol. Mag., 1899, p. 223.) Among his other works were Cours élementaire de paléontologie et de géologie stratigraphiques (3 vols., 1849–1852), and Prodrome de paléontologie stratigraphique (3 vols., 1850–1852). D’Orbigny introduced (1852) a methodical system of nomenclature for geological formations based partly on the English terms—thus Bathonian for the Great or Bath Oolite, Bajocian from Bajocea or Bayeux in Calvados for the Inferior Oolite. Many of these names have been widely adopted, but some are of too local application to be generally used. In 1853 he was appointed professor of palaeontology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, but died four years later, on the 30th of June 1857, at Pierresitte, near St Denis.

 ORBILIUS, PUPILLUS, a Latin grammarian of the 1st century, who had a school at Rome, where the poet Horace was one of his pupils. Horace (Epistles, ii.) criticizes his old schoolmaster and describes him as plagosus (a flogger), and Orbilius has become proverbial as a disciplinarian pedagogue.

ORBIT (from Lat. orbita, a track, orbis, a wheel), in astronomy, the path of any body, and especially of a heavenly body, revolving round an attracting centre. If the law of attraction is that of gravitation, the orbit is a conic section—ellipse, parabola or hyperbola—having the centre of attraction in one of its foci; and the motion takes place in accordance with Kepler’s laws (see ). But unless the orbit is an ellipse the body will never complete a revolution, but will recede indefinitely from the centre of motion. Elliptic orbits, and a parabolic orbit considered as the special case when the eccentricity of the ellipse is 1, are almost the only ones the astronomer has to consider, and our attention will therefore be confined to them in the present article. If the attraction of a central body is not the only force acting on the moving body, the orbit will deviate from the form of a conic section in a degree depending on the amount of the extraneous force; and the curve described may not be a re-entering curve at all, but one winding around so as 