Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/216

Rh 196 S A I S A I a very young girl, Felicite Didot. For a short time in 1792 he was superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes and again for a short time professor of morals at the Ecole Normale in 1794. Next year he became a member of the Institute. After his first wife's death he married, in 1 800, when he was sixty-three, another young girl, Desire de Pelleport, and is said to have been very happy with her. He still continued to publish, and was something of a favourite with Napoleon. On the 21st of January 1814 he died at Eragny near Pontoise, where he had in his last years chiefly lived and where he had a house, so that he cannot have been ill off. It has been hinted that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's personal character was not entirely amiable; it may be added that his literary character has not in all English eyes sufficed to atone for it. Englishmen, and not Englishmen only, have been found to pro- nounce Paul et Virginie gaudy in style and unhealthy, not to say unwholesome, in tone. Perhaps Bernardin is not fairly to be judged by this famous story, in which the exuberant sensibility of the time finds equally exuberant expression. The Chaumi&rc and some passages in the Etudes dc la Nature proper may be thought to exhibit the real merits of his style to greater advantage. The historic estimate (the sole estimate that is of much worth in com- parative literary criticism) at once disengages the question from its difficulties. Where Beruardin is of merit and importance is in his breaking away from the dull and arid vocabulary and phrase which more than a centuiy of classical writing had brought upon France, in his genuine and vigorous preference of the beauties of nature to the mere charms of drawing-room society, and in the attempt which he made, with as much sincerity as could fairly be expected from a man of his day, to reproduce the aspects of the natural world faithfully. After Rousseau, and even more than Rousseau, Ber- nardin was in French literature the apostle of the return to nature, and, though in him and his immediate follower, Chateaubriand, there is still much mannerism and unreality, he should not and will not lack the credit due. Aime Martin, disciple of Bernardin and the second husband of his second wife, published a complete edition of his works in 18 volumes (Paris, 1818-20), afterwards increased by additional correspondence, &c. Paul et Virginie, the Chaumiire Indienne, &c., have been separately reprinted in innumerable forms. ST PIERRE AND MIQUELON, two islands 10 miles off the south coast of Newfoundland (see vol. xvii. pi. V.), at the entrance of Fortune Bay, are, with five lesser islets, the last remnant of the North American colonies of France. Both are rugged masses of granite, with a few small streams and lakelets, a thin covering of soil, and scanty vegetation. Miquelon (area, 45,542 acres) consists of Great Miquelon in the north and Little Miquelon, Langlade, or Langley in the south; previous to 1783 they were separate islands divided by a navigable channel, but they have since become connected by a dangerous sandbar. St Pierre (6420 acres) has a good harbour and roadstead, the latter, protected by lie aux Chiens, affording shelter, except in north-east storms, to the largest vessels. The small but busy town of St Pierre climbing the steep hill above the harbour is mainly built of wood; but it has a cathedral (of wood), an English chapel, a governor's resi- dence, and various administrative offices, including the American terminus of the French Atlantic cable. Cod- fishing, to which the settlement owes its prosperity, was prosecuted in the five years 1878-82, on an average, by 4560 fishermen (mainly from Dunkirk and other French ports), and produced 3876 tons of dried and 157,754 tons of undried cod, with 450 tons of cod-liver oil. The total exports and imports were valued, respectively, at 9,218,278 and 4,441,817 francs in 1865, and 17,164,153 and 11,062,617 francs in 1883. The foreign trade in 1883 was valued at 10,218,473 francs. The population of the islands was 5564 (town of St Pierre 4365) in 1883; but the number is often above 10,000 in the fishing-season. St Pierre and Miquelon, with 3000 inhabitants, were ceded to England along with Newfoundland in 1713; but on the English conquest of Canada they were assigned to France as a fishery depot. Destroyed by the English in 1778, restored to France in 1783, a^ain depopulated by the English in 1793, recovered by France in 1802 and lost in 1803, the islands have remained an undisputed French possession since 1816. ST PIERRE-LES-CALAIS, a suburb of CALAIS (q.v.), with a population of 30,786 in 1881. ST POL DE LtON, a town of France, in the arrond- issement of Morlaix and department of Finistere, not far from the shores of the English Channel, 13| miles north- west of Morlaix by the railway to Roscoff. This quiet episcopal city, old but modernized, is mainly of interest on account of its cathedral and the church of Notre Dame, though it also contains an episcopal palace (1712-50), a seminary (1691), and a hospital (1711). The cathedral, classed as an historical monument, belongs largely to the 13th century. Besides the west front, with its portico and its two towers with granite spires 180 feet high, the principal points of architectural interest are the traceried window of the south transept (with its glass) and the rect- angular apse, and in the interior the stalls of the choir (16th century) and the fascicled pillars and vault-arches of the nave. On .the right of the high altar is a wooden shrine containing the bell of St Pol de Le"on (6 ft 10 oz. in weight), which has the repute of curing headache and diseases of the ear, and at the side of the main entrance is a huge baptismal font, popularly regarded as the stone coffin of Conan Meriadec, king of the Bretons. Notre Dame de Creizker has a 15th-century spire, 252 feet high, which crowns the central tower. The north porch is a fine specimen of the flamboyant style. The population of the town in 1881 was 3739 and of the commune 6659. St Pol de Leon, or Famim Sancti Pauli Lconini, was formerly a place of considerable importance. The barony of Leon, in the possession of the dukes of Rohan, gave them the right of presiding in the provincial states alternatively with the duke of I .a Tivmouille, baron of Vitre. ST QUENTIN, a manufacturing town of France, the chef-lieu of an arrondissement and in population (45,697 in 1881) the largest town in the department of Aisne, stands on the right bank of the Somme, at the junction of the Somme Canal with the St Quentin Canal (which unites the Somme Canal with the Scheldt), 95| miles north- east of Paris by the railway to Brussels and Cologne, with branch lines to Guise (on the Oise) and Ep6hy on the Flanders and Picardy railway. Built on a slope, with a southern exposure, the town is crowned by the collegiate church of St Quentin, one of the finest Gothic buildings of the north of France, which was erected between 1114 and 1477, and has, like some English cathedrals, the somewhat rare peculiarity of double transepts. The length of the church is 436 feet and the height of the nave 131. The magnificent clerestory windows are supported by a very elegant triforium. The baptismal chapel contains a fine stone retable. The choir has a great resemblance to that of Rheims, and, like the chapels of the apse, has been decorated with polychromic paintings. Under the choir is a crypt occupying the site of an older crypt constructed in the 9th century, of which only the three vaults with the tombs of St Quentin and his fellow-martyrs remain. The town-house of St Quentin is a splendid building of the 15th and 16th centuries, with a flamboyant facade, adorned with curious sculptures. Behind the central gable rises a bell-tower with chimes. The council-room is a fine hall with a double wooden ceiling and a huge chimneypiece half Gothic half Renaissance. The old buildings of the Bernardines of Fervaques now provide accommodation for the courts, the learned societies, the school of design, the museum, and the library, and contain a large hall for public meetings. St Quentin is the centre of an indus- trial district which employs 130,000 workmen in 800 factories, and manufactures the fortieth part of the cotton imported into France, producing goods to the value of about 3, 500,000, mainly calicoes, percales (glazed cottons), cretonnes, jaconas, twills, piques, muslins, cambrics, gauzes, wool-muslins, Scotch cashmeres, and merinos. Other in-