Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/391

 S P A S P A 367 was taken by Odoacer in 431 and by Totila in tlie 6th century. Recovered by Justinian in 535, it was in 544 and 552 the starting- point of Belisarius and Narses for their Italian expeditious. In the 7th century Salona was completely destroyed by the Avars ; but the empty palace of Diocletian afforded an asylum for its inhabitants. The limits of the building proved sufficient for the new city up to the time that it passed under Hungarian and Venetian protection. Hungarian additions may still be seen above the Porta Aurea ; and the large octagonal tower bears the name of Torre d'Harvoye from the Bosnian general who was created duke of Spalato by Ladislaus. The Venetians enclosed the town with regular curtains and bastions in 1645-1670. About 1807-1809 the castle was dismantled and parts of the walls were thrown down. See Robert Adam, Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian, 1764 ; Cassas and LaynllJc, magnificent views and restorations of the architecture of the palace. SPALDING, a market-town of Lincolnshire, England, in the Parts of Holland, is situated on the river Welland, and on the Great Northern and Great Eastern Railways, 93 miles from London. The town, standing in the heart of the Fens, is the centre of a rich agricultural district. Amongst the public buildings are five churches, the John- son hospital (1881), the corn exchange (1856-57), the buildings of the mechanics' institute and of the Christian association and literary institute, and the district union- house. The parish church of St Mary and St Nicholas was built in 1284 and restored in 1865-66. The adjoining lady chapel (St Mary and St Thomas a Becket) was built in 1315; in 1588 it was appropriated for the grammar school endowed in 1568 by John Blanke and again in 1588 by John Gamlyn. A new grammar school was erected in 1881. Spalding has had a prison for upwards of 600 years; the present building, erected in 1824-25, was closed in 1884. The Welland is crossed at Spalding by two stone bridges. The existing high bridge, con- structed in 1838, took the place of a wooden erection dating from the end of the 17th century; this last was built on the site of an older Roman bridge of two arches, the foundations of the centre pier of which were disclosed when the wooden bridge was constructed. The popula- tion of the town in 1871 was 9111, and in 1881 9260. In 1051 Thorold of Bockenhale (now Bucknall, near Horncastle) gave his castle of Spalding and the chapel attached to it as a cell or monastery for the Benedictines of Crowland. Out of this grew the priory, which, however, was dissolved in 1535 ; the last fragments of its ruins were removed in 1832. About two miles north-east of Spalding stands the ruined chapel of Wykeham, dedicated to St Nicholas and built in 1311 by Prior Clement Hatfield. The build- ing is of the Decorated period, and has been roofless since 1782 ; its interior dimensions are 43 feet long by 22 feet wide ; the walls are 44| feet high. Each side contains three three-light windows with moulded flowing tracery, and each end one four-light window of similar character. The only one which retains its original mullions and tracery is the centre window on the south side. After the Con- quest the estates and priory of Spalding were given by William I. to Ivo Tailbois, who found such a stout antagonist in Hereward the Wake, lord of Brunue or Bourn. SPALDING, WILLIAM (1809-1859), logician and literary historian, was born in Aberdeen in 1809. After a thorough education at the grammar school and at Marischal College there, he came to Edinburgh in 1830, where he was called to the bar in 1833. In that year he published a Letter on Shakespeare' 's Authorship of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which, by its critical acumen and the knowledge of the old dramatists which it displayed, attracted the notice of Jeffrey and procured the author an invitation to become a contributor to the Edinburgh Review. Before settling down to the business of the bar he undertook a prolonged Continental tour. He was absent fifteen months, the greater part of the time being spent in Italy, and in 1841 the fruits of his stay appeared in three volumes entitled Italy and the Italian Islands from the Earliest Ages to tJie Present Time. This learned and comprehensive work went through five editions in a few years. His attempts to gain a legal practice not proving successful, he became a candidate in 1838 for the chair of rhetoric in Edinburgh university, which he held till 1845, when he was appointed professor of logic in the university of St Andrews. He held the latter post till his death on the 16th November 1859. Besides the works already mentioned, and various articles contributed to the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine, lie was the author of a concise History of English Literature, which has many merits and has been much used as a text book. He also wrote the articles " Logic " and " Rhetoric" (as well as a number of literary biographies) for the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia firitannicct. The former article, written mainly on Hamiltonian lines, constitutes a systematic treatise on Formal Logic, and is honourably distinguished by its clear scientific exposition. By these two articles and his History of English Literature Spalding is chiefly remembered. SPALLANZANI, LAZARO (1729-1799), is one of the most important and certainly also one of the most pictur- esque figures in the history of science during the 18th cen- tury. Born at Scandiano in Modena in 1729, he was at first educated by his father, who was an advocate. At the age of fifteen he was sent to the Jesuit college at Reggio di Modena, and was pressed to enter that body. He went, however, to the university of Bologna, where his famous kinswoman Laura Bassi, was professor, and it is to her influence that his scientific impulse has been usually attributed. With her he studied natural philo- sophy and mathematics, and gave also great attention to languages, both ancient and modern, but soon abandoned the study of law, and afterwards took orders. His reputation soon widened, and in 1754 he became professor of logic, metaphysics, and Greek in the university of Reggio, and in 1760 was translated to Modena, where he continued to teach with great assiduity and success, but devoted his whole leisure to natural science. He declined many offers from other Italian universities and from St Petersburg until 1768, when he accepted the invitation of Maria Theresa to the chair of natural history in the uni- versity of Pavia, which was then being reorganized. He also became director of the museum, which he greatly enriched by the collections of his many journeys along the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1785 he was invited to succeed Vallisneri at Padua, but to retain his services his sovereign doubled his salary and allowed him leave of absence for a visit to Turkey, Avhere he remained nearly a year, and made many observations, among which may be noted those of a copper mine in Chalki and of an iron mine at Principi. His return home was almost a triumphal pro- gress : at Vienna he was cordially received by Joseph II., and on reaching Pavia he was met with acclamations outside the city gates by the students of the university. During the following year his students exceeded five hundred. His integrity in the management of the museum was called in question, but a judicial investigation speedily cleared his honour, to the satisfaction even of his accusers. In 1788 he visited Vesuvius and the volcanoes of the Lipari Islands and Sicily, and embodied the results of his researches in a large work published four years later. He died from an apoplectic seizure, in 1799, at the age of seventy. His indefatigable exertions as a traveller, his skill and good for- tune as a collector, his brilliance as a teacher and expositor, and his keenness as a controversialist no doubt aid largely in accounting for Spallanzani's exceptional fame among his contemporaries, yet greater qualities were by no means lacking. His life was one of incessant eager questioning of nature on all sides, and his many and varied works all bear the stamp of a fresh and original genius, capable of stating and solving problems in all departments of science, at one time finding the true explanation of "ducks and drakes " (formerly attributed to the elasticity of water) and at another helping to lay the foundations of our modern vulcanology and meteorology. His main discoveries, however, were in the field of physiology : he wrote valuable and suggestive papers on respira- tion, on the senses of bats, &c., while his highly important con- troversy with Needham and Buffon, in which he experimentally disproved the occurrence of spontaneous generation, has been already