Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/186

Rh 168 S A I S A I hats, pottery, and lime are among the miscellaneous manu- factured products of the town, which is besides a great centre of the ribbon trade, with a testing-house (condition) for examining the silk. From 500 to 600 tons of silk, valued at 1,200,000 to 1,400,000, are used per annum, and the manufactured articles reach a value ranging from 2,800,000 to 3,200,000. The ribbons, laces, trimmings (in silk, cotton, and india-rubber) produced in the arron- dissement of St Etienne are valued at 4,000,000, and form four-fifths of the total French production. With the exception of a few factories where machinery is employed, the whole manufacture is carried on by persons with small means. About 5000 looms (Jacquard's permitting thirty- six pieces to be woven at once) and 40,000 workmen are employed. Besides the old abbey church of Valbenoite (outside of the town) with its nave dating from the 13th century, the public buildings comprise a Protestant church, a synagogue, a town-house (finished under the second empire and decorated with statues of the ribbon trade and metallurgy), a school of mines (1816), with a mineralogical and geological collection, and a " palace of the arts," with a museum and library rich in old MSS. and collections in connexion with artillery and natural history. Near Valbenoite in the wooded gorge of the Furens is the reservoir of Gouffre d'Enfer, formed by a dam (1861-1866) 328 feet long, 131 high, and 131 wide at the base, and capable of storing about 70,000,000 cubic feet of water. The population of the town was 28,000 in 1764; by 1876 it was 126,019, but it had decreased to 114,962 (123,813 in the commune) in 1881. At the close of the 12th century St Etienne was only 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 by the close of the century the town was sur- rounded with walls and had consuls. A hundred years later it had three growing suburbs. The Wars of Religion stimulated the manufacture of arms, and about the same period the ribbon trade sprang into existence. It was not till the 18th century, however, that the town entered on its era of prosperity. The royal manu- factory of arms was established in 1764. In 1789 they were pro- ducing at the rate of 12,000 muskets per annum ; between September 1794 and May 1796 they delivered 170,858 ; and 100,000 was the annual average throughout the whole period of the empire. The first railways opened in France were the line between St Etienne and Andrezieu 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. Among the local celebrities are Francis Gamier, who conquered Tongking in, 1873, and several engravers who have given eminence to the St Etienne school of engraving. ST EUSTATIUS, or ST EUSTACHE, one of the Dutch West India Islands, a dependency of Curasao, lying north- west of St Kitts in 17 50' N. lat. and 62 40' W. long., consists of two volcanic cones and an intervening valley, and contains the small town of Orangetown and two forts. The population, which from 7600 in 1786 had decreased to 1741 (about 1000 Negroes), was again 2247 in 1882. Between 300 and 400 vessels visit the island annually. Yams and sweet potatoes are exported (5187 and 3010 tons in 1882). The Dutch occupied St Eustatius in 1635, and, after frequent French and English irruptions, were confirmed in their possession of it in 1814. SAINT-EVREMOND, CHARLES DE MARGUETEL DE SAINT-DENIS, SEIGNEUR DE (1613-1 703), was born at Saint- Denis-le-Guast near Coutances, the seat of his family in Normandy, on 1st April 1613. He was a younger son, but took his designation from one of the smaller estates of the family and appears to have had a sufficient portion. He was a pupil of the Jesuits at the College de Clermont, Paris, then a student at Caen. For a time he followed the law at the College d'Harcourt. He soon, however, took to arms and in 1629 went with Bassompierre to Italy. He served through great part of the Thirty Years' War, chiefly in Germany, and, meeting Gassendi at Paris, became strongly imbued with his doctrines. He was present at Rocroy, at Nordlingen, and at Lens. For a time he was attached to Conde, but is said to have offended him by some satirical speech or speeches. During the Fronde, Saint-Evremond, unlike most of his contemporaries, never changed sides, but was a steady royalist. The duke of Candale (of whom he has left a very severe portrait) gave him some appointments in Guienne, and Saint-Evremond is said to have saved 50,000 livres in less than three years. He was one of the numerous victims of the fate of Fouquet. His letter to Cre"qui on the peace of the Pyrenees, which is said to have been discovered by Colbert's agents at the seizure of the superintendent's papers, seems a very in- adequate cause for exile, and it has been supposed that there was more behind ; but nothing is known certainly. Saint-Evremond went to Holland and England, where he was received with open arms by Charles II., and was pen- sioned. He found himself very much at home in England, and though after James II. 's flight to France Saint- Evremond was invited to return he declined. Hortensc Mancini, the most attractive of Mazarin's strangely attrac- tive group of nieces, came to England and set up a salon for love-making, gambling, and witty conversation, and here Saint-Evremond was for many years at home. He died on Michaelmas Day 1 703, and was buried in West- minster Abbey, where his monument still is in Poet's Corner close to that of Prior. Saint-Evremond is perhaps the most remarkable instance of the curious 17th-century fancy for circulating literary work in manu- script or clandestinely. He never himself authorized the printing of any of his works during his long lifetime, though Barbin in 1668 published an unauthorized collection. But he empowered DCS Maizeaux to publish his works after his death, and they duly appeared, the earliest form and date being 3 vols. 4to, 1705. They were often reprinted in various fonns during the first half of the 18th century. Saint-Evremond, however, had made his mark and estab- lished his influence long before the earliest of these books appeared. He was an older man than Pascal, a very much older man than Anthony Hamilton, and he probably preceded the first, as he certainly long preceded the second, in the employment for literary purposes of a singularly light, polished, and graceful irony, which taught a great deal to Voltaire, but which Voltaire was never able to imitate with quite the air of good company which distinguishes his teacher. The masterpiece of Saint - Evremoud's style in this respect is the so-called Conversation du Martcluil d' ffwquincmtrt avcc le F&re Canaye (the latter a Jesuit and Saint -Evremond's master at school), which has been frequently classed with the Lettrcs Provinciates, but which with less of moral purpose and of cutting reproof even excels those famous compositions in dramatic power ,and in subtle good-humoured irony. The remainder of Saint-Evremond's works are desultory in the extreme. Some ela- borate letters contain the exposition of an Epicurean philosophy of life which had a very great influence on the polite society of his day. Others, and the most important of all, exhibit the writer as a literary critic of singular discrimination and taste. His com- parisons of Corneille and Racine, his remarks on English drama (chiefly that of Ben Jonson), his sketches of criticism on Roman character and literature, all show a remarkable union of acute and orderly generalization with freedom from the merely academic spirit which had in his time already begun to beset France. Altogether, Saint-Evremond may be said with greater right to deserve the phrase which used to be applied to Sir William Temple. He is the first master of the genteel style in French literature, and the lively poignancy of his irony prevents this gentility from ever becoming insipid. His influence indeed was hardly less in his adopted than in his native country, and it may be traced in the Queen Anne essayists to a not much less degree than in Hamilton and Voltaire. Saint-fivremoml's complete works have not recently been reprinted, but there are selections by Hippean, Giraud, and others. ST GALL, in area the sixth (789 square miles), in actual population the fourth (210,491), and in relative density of population the tenth of the Swiss cantons, was formed in 1 803 out of the two independent communities of the " town " and the " abbey " (including Toggenburg), Rapperswyl, Uznach, Gaster, Sargans, Gams, Rheinthal, Sax (with Forsteck), which belonged to Zurich, and AVer denberg, which belonged to Glarus. It encloses the canton