Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/187

Rh S A I S A I 169 of Appenzell, extending between the Lake of Constance and the Lake of Zurich on the west, and being bounded by the Rhine on the east, while in the south-west lies the valley occupied by the Wallenstatt Lake and the Linth Canal. The E-hine separates St Gall from Tyrol, and the rest of its frontier is conterminous in succession with Grisons, Glarus, Schwyz, Zurich, and Thurgau. In alti- tude the canton ranges from 1306 feet above the sea (the height of the Lake of Constance) to 10,660 feet in the Ringelspitz of the Sardona group. The arable area is not sufficient to supply the local demand for grain ; but the stock-breeding and especially the manufacturing indus- tries, to which a large part of the population is devoted, make up for any agricultural deficiency. Rorschach and Rapperswyl are lake ports ; Wyl, Lichtensteig, Altstatten, and Uznach markets of some importance for local pro- ducts. Ironstone is worked in the Gonzen district, and there are quarries at Rorschach and Bolligen, Mels and Degersheim. Ragatz, the well-known watering-place, is supplied with mineral water from Pfaffers. The people of St Gall are three-fifths Roman Catholic and two-fifths Protestant (126,164 and 83,441 in 1880), but, in spite of this and considerable diversities of culture and character from district to district, a fair degree of harmony has ulti- mately been secured even in the treatment of educational questions. The constitution dates from 1861 and was partially revised in 1875. After being abolished for many years, the death-penalty was re-enacted in 1882. Besides the city of St Gall there were in the canton in 1880 three communes with upwards of 5000 inhabitants each, Tablat (8092), Wattwyl (a seat of the cotton manufacture, 5283), and Straubenzell (5026). ST GALL (German Sankt Gotten), capital of the above canton, occupies along with its suburbs St Fiden, Neudorf, and Langgasse (to the east), and Lachen and Vonwil (to the west), an area 4 miles long by 1 broad in the high- land valley of the Steinach, which descends north-east to the Lake of Constance. On a pillar in the market- place are the following details : Lat. 47 25' 36" N. ; long. 7 2' 27" E. from Paris (9 22' 41" Green.); height above the sea, 2196'6 feet; mean annual temperature, 45'6; an- nual rainfall, 50 inches ; air-distance from Zurich 39 miles, from Geneva 174. The only town not village in Europe which has a higher position than St Gall is Madrid. The chief building in St Gall is the abbey, of which (as it was originally arranged) a ground plan and description are given in vol. i. pp. 12, 13. The abbey church, since 1846 the Roman Catholic cathedral, was entirely rebuilt in the latter part of the 18th century in the rococo style. Partly from the desire to include within the choir the tombs of the two founders and partly from the hostility which long existed between town and tonsure, both the towers (217 feet) are placed at the east end and the main entrance is in the north side. The whole church has a length of 400 feet (with the sacristy 454 feet), and a breadth in the nave of 95 feet, a disproportion which is considerably disguised by the arrangement of the interior. Among the internal decorations are two colossal statues of St Desiderius and St Mauritius, the original patrons of the church, whose relics were brought from Scotland. Other buildings of importance are the (Protestant) church of St Lawrence, partially rebuilt (1851-53) according to plans by the Swiss poet Johann G. Mu'ller, the Government offices on the east side of the abbey-court (where ScholPs famous relief of the cantons of St Gall and Appenzell is to be seen), the town-house, the offices of the Mercantile Directorium (a 1 7th-century institution to which the town owes much of its commercial prosperity), the great cantonal school comprising a gymnasium, a technical school (pre- paratory to the polytechnicum at Zurich), and a mercantile school the cantonal reformatory of St Jacob, the hospitals, and the infantry and cavalry barracks. In the town park, part of which is occupied by the botanic gardens, stands the public museum, containing natural history collections, the industrial collections and industrial drawing- school of the Mercantile Directorium, the picture gallery of the Art Society, and the antiquarian collections of the Historical Society. The museum of the East Swiss Geographical Commercial Society is located in the cantonal school. Besides the abbey library, famous for its ancient MSS. (original of the Niebelungenlied, &c.), there is a town library (Bibliotheca Vadiana), founded by the reformer Joachim de Watt or Vadianus. In spite of its position and climate, St Gall is the seat of extensive industries and trades. About 45,000 persons in the surrounding cantons are engaged in the manufacture of embroidered goods, mainly muslins, for the St Gall capitalists, who also em- ploy some 6000 or 7000 women in chain-stitch and hand embroidery. In 1872 6384 machines were at work in this department in the town and vicinity, and in 1882 14,883. The value of textile fabrics and embroidered goods annu- ally exported from St Gall is 3,600,000 to 4,000,000. All round the town the meadows are used as bleaching- grounds for the webs. In 1870 the population was 16,675, in 1880 21,438. The abbey of St Gall was named after its founder, a follower of St Columba, who along with Columban left Ireland on the destruc- tion of Bangor and finally settled down in the midst of the great forest which then stretched from the Lake of Constance to the Santis Mountains, for the purpose of converting the Alemanns. On his death on 16th October 625 this apostle of Celtic Christianity was buried in his oratory, and in the 9th centuiy the spot thus con- secrated became the site of the monastic buildings erected by Abbots Gozbert and Grimoald. The foundation was already a wealthy one, and it soon became a great centre of literary and artistic ciilture, attracting numerous pupils and receiving the homage of dukes and emperors. In the 10th century the abbey and its cluster of houses were surrounded with a wall, which in 954 had to defend the settle- ment against an attack by a band of Saracens. In the reign of Rudolph of Hapsburg the town obtained a recognition of its com- munal independence from Abbot Ulrichand from the emperor him- self a variety of important privileges. An alliance defensive and offensive was formed in 1312 with Zurich, Constance, and Schaff- hausen ; and, although the prosperity of the town received a severe check by a great conflagration in 1314, the vigour with which the burghers prosecuted the newly introduced linen manufacture soon made it one of the most flourishing towns of Switzerland. About the middle of the 14th century the burghers began to share in the government of the town ; and in 1457 they bought up all the claims of the abbots to territorial jurisdiction. In 1454 St Gall joined the confederation of the Swiss towns, Zurich, &c. Abbot Ulrich VIII. determined to remove the abbey to Rorschacli ; but the inhabitants of St Gall, Appenzell, &c., combined to destroy his new buildings, and, though St Gall was besieged by the abbot's supporters and had to pay grievous damages (1490), the treaty which it signed bound the abbots never to attempt to remove the relics of the founder. The abbey, which had purchased the countship of Toggenburg, passed at the Reformation into the hands of the town (1529), but it was restored to the abbots in 1530 ; and, when in 1712 in the " Toggenburg War " Zurich and Bern devastated the abbey and its possessions, the townsfolk remained neutral. The final dissolution of the abbey occurred in 1798. Under the French, St Gall was the chief town of the canton of Santis. SAINT-GERMAIN, COMTE DE (d. 1780), a celebrated adventurer of the 1 8th century who by the assertion of his discovery of some extraordinary secrets of nature exercised considerable influence at several European courts. Of his parentage and place of birth nothing is definitely known ; the common version is that he was a Portuguese Jew. It was also commonly stated that he obtained his money from discharging the functions of spy to one of the Euro- pean courts. He knew nearly all the European languages, spoke good German and English, excellent Italian, French (with a Piedmontese accent), and Portuguese and Spanish with perfect purity. Grimm affirms him to have been the man of the best parts he had ever known. His knowledge of history was comprehensive and minute, and his acconi- XXI. 22