Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/17

 At the close of the 12th century St Etienne was a parish of the Pays de Gier belonging to the abbey of Valbenoite. By the middle of the 14th century the coal trade had reached a certain development, and at the beginning of the 15th century Charles VII. permitted the town to erect fortifications. The manufacture of fire-arms for the state was begun at St Etienne under Francis I. and was put under the surveillance of state inspectors early in the 18th century. In 1789 the town was producing at the rate of 12,000 muskets per annum; between September 1794 and May 1796 they delivered over 170,000; and 100,000 was the annual average throughout the period of the empire. The first railways opened in France were the line between St Etienne and Andrézieux on the Loire in 1828 and that between St Etienne and Lyons in 1831. In 1856 St Etienne became the administrative centre of the department instead of Montbrison.

ST EUSTATIUS and SABA, two islands in the Dutch West Indies. St Eustatius lies 12 m. N.W. of St Kitts in 17° 50′ N. and 62° 40′ W. It is 8 sq. m. in area and is composed of several volcanic hills and intervening valleys. It contains Orangetown, situated on an open road stead on the W., with a small export trade in yams and sweet potatoes. Pop. (1908) 1283.

A few miles to the N.W. is the island of, 5 sq. m. in extent. It consists of a single volcanic cone rising abruptly from the sea to the height of nearly 2800 ft. The town, Bottom, standing on the floor of an old crater, can only be approached from the shore 800 ft. below, by a series of steps cut in the solid rock and known as the “Ladder.” The best boats in the Caribbees are built here; the wood is imported and the vessels, when complete, are lowered over the face of the cliffs. Pop. (1908) 2294. The islands form part of the colony of (q.v.).

SAINT-ÉVREMOND, CHARLES DE MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS, (1610–1703), was born at Saint-Denis-le-Guast, near Coutances, the seat of his family in Normandy, on the 1st of April 1610. He was a pupil of the Jesuits at the Collège de Clermont (now Louis-le-Grand), Paris; then a student at Caen. For a time he studied law at the Collège d’Harcourt. He soon, however, took to arms, and in 1629 went with Marshal Bassompierre to Italy. He served through great part of the Thirty Years’ War, distinguishing himself at the siege of Landrecies (1637), when he was made captain. During his campaigns he studied the works of Montaigne and the Spanish and Italian languages. In 1639 he met Gassendi in Paris, and became one of his disciples. He was present at Rocroy, at Nordlingen, and at Lerida. For a time he was personally attached to Condé, but offended him by a satirical remark and was deprived of his command in the prince’s guards in 1648. During the Fronde, Saint-Évremond was a steady royalist. The duke of Candale (of whom he has left a very severe portrait) gave him a command in Guienne, and Saint-Évremond, who had reached the grade of maréchal de camp, is said to have saved 50,000 livres in less than three years. He was one of the numerous victims involved in the fall of Fouquet. His letter to Marshal Créqui on the peace of the Pyrenees, which is said to have been discovered by Colbert’s agents at the seizure of Fouquet’s papers, seems a very inadequate cause for his disgrace. Saint-Évremond fled to Holland and to England, where he was kindly received by Charles II. and was pensioned. After James II.’s flight to France Saint-Évremond was invited to return, but he declined. Hortense Mancini, the most attractive of Mazarin’s attractive group of nieces, came to England in 1670, and set up a salon for love-making, gambling and witty conversation, and here Saint-Évremond was for many years at home. He died on the 29th of September 1703 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his monument still is in Poet’s Corner close to that of Prior.

Saint-Évremond never authorized the printing of any of his works during his lifetime, though Barbin in 1668 published an unauthorized collection. But he empowered Des Maizeaux to publish his works after his death, and they were published in London (2 vols., 1705), and often reprinted. His masterpiece in irony is the so-called Conversation du maréchal d’Hocquincourt avec le père Canaye (the latter a Jesuit and Saint-Évremond’s master at school), which has been frequently classed with the Lettres provinciales.

ST FLORENTIN, a town of north-central France, in the department of Yonne, 37 m. S.E. of Sens on the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway. Pop. (1906) 2303. It stands on a hill on the right bank of the Armance, half a mile from its confluence with the Armancon and the canal of Burgundy. In the highest part of the town stands the church, begun in the latter half of the 15th century, and though retaining the Gothic form, with great flying buttresses, is mainly in the Renaissance style. It is approached through a narrow alley up a steep flight of steps, and contains a fine Holy Sepulchre in bas-relief and a choir screen and stained glass of admirable Renaissance workmanship. The nave, left incomplete, was restored and finished between 1857 and 1862. The market-gardens of St Florentin produce large quantities of asparagus. The town stands on the site of the Roman military post Castrodunum, the scene of t.he martyrdom in the 3rd century of Saints Florentin and Hilaire, round whose tomb it grew up. The abbey established here in the 9th century afterwards became a priory of the abbey of St Germain at Auxerre. The town and its territory belonged, under the Merovingians, to Burgundy, and in later times to the counts of Champagne, from whom it passed to the kings of France. Louis XV. raised it from the rank of viscount to that of county and bestowed it on Louis Phelypeaux, afterwards Duc de la Vrillière.

ST FLOUR, a town of south-central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Cantal, situated at a height of 2900 ft. on a basaltic plateau overlooking the Lander, a tributary of the Truyère, 47 m. E.N.E. of Aurillac by rail. Pop. (1906) 4090. The streets are dark and narrow, but the town has spacious promenades established in the 18th century. St Flour grew up round the tomb of St Florus, the apostle of Auvergne, who died there in the 4th century. The abbey founded there about the beginning of the 11th century became in 1317 an episcopal chapter, and the town is still the seat of a bishopric. The cathedral (1396–1466) is the principal building. The manufacture of coarse woollen fabrics, of earthenware and candles is carried on. A few miles S.E. of the town the gorge of the Truyère is spanned by the fine railway viaduct of Garabit over 600 yds. long and at a height of 400 ft. above the river.

ST GALL (Ger. St Gallen), one of the cantons of north-east Switzerland, on the border of the Austrian province of the Vorarlberg and of the independent principality of Liechtenstein. It entirely surrounds the canton of Appenzell, which, like a great part, of this canton, formerly belonged to the abbots of St Gall, while the “enclave” of Horn is in the canton of Thurgau.

Its area is 779·3 sq. m., of which 710·1 sq. m. are reckoned “productive,” forests covering 157·1 sq. m. and vineyards 1·8 sq. m., while of the remainder 2·8 sq. m. are occupied by glaciers. The altitude above the sea-level varies from 1306 ft.(the lake of Constance) to 10,667 ft. (the Ringelspitz). The canton includes portions of the lake of Constance (21 sq. m.), of the Walensee (rather over 7 sq. m.), and of the lake of Zürich (4 sq. m.), and several small lakes wholly within its limits. Hilly in its N. region, the height gradually increases towards the S. border, while to its S.W. and extend considerable alluvial plains on the banks of the Linth and of the Rhine. The two rivers just named form in part its frontiers, the principal stream within the canton being the Thur (as regards its upper course), with the middle reach of its principal affluent, the Sitter, both forming part of the Rhine basin. It has ports on the lake of Constance (Rorschach) and of Zürich (Rapperswil), as well as Weesen and Walenstadt on the Walensee, while the watering place of (q.v.) is supplied with hot mineral waters from Pfafers. The main railway lines from Zurich past Sargans for Coire, and from Sargans past Altstatten and Rorschach for Constance, skirt its borders, while the capital is on the direct railway line from Zürich past Wil to Rorschach, and communicates by rail with Appenzell and with Frauenfeld. In 1900 the population of the canton was 250,285, of whom 243,358 were German-speaking, 5300 Italian-speaking and 710 French-speaking, while there were 150,412 “Catholics” (whether