Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/612

 588 T R S T R 12,000 men; and a yearly festival in the town still celebrates the occasion. After the peace of Westphalia Stralsund was ceded with the rest of Western Pomerania to Sweden ; and for more than a century and a half it was exposed to attack and capture as the ttte-de-pont of the Swedes in Continental Europe. In 1815 it passed to Prussia. In 1809 it was the scene of the death of Major Schill, in his gallant though ineffectual attempt to rouse his countrymen againsfthe French invaders. STRANGE, SIR ROBERT (1721-1792), an eminent line engraver, was descended from the Scottish family of Strange, or Strang, of Balcasky, Fife, and was born in the Mainland of Orkney, on July 14, 1721. In his youth he spent some time in an attorney's office ; but, having mani- fested a taste for drawing, he was apprenticed, in 1735, to Richard Cooper, an engraver in Edinburgh. After leaving Cooper in 1741, he started on his own account as an en- graver, and had attained a fair position when, in 1745, he joined the Jacobite army as a member of the corps of life guards. He engraved a half-length of the Young Pre- tender, and also etched plates for a bank-note designed for the payment of the troops. He was present at the battle of Culloden, and after the defeat remained in hiding in the Highlands, but ultimately returned to Edinburgh, where, in 1747, he married Isabella, only daughter of William Lumisden, son of a bishop of Edinburgh. In the following year he proceeded to Rouen, and there studied drawing under J. B. Descamps, carrying off the first prize in the Academy of Design. In 1749 he removed to Paris, and placed himself under the celebrated Le Bas. It was from this master that he learned the use of the dry point, an instrument which he greatly improved, and employed with excellent effect in his own engravings. In 1750 Strange returned to England. Presently he settled in London along with his wife and daughter, and super- intended the illustrations of Dr William Hunter's great work on the Gravid Uterus, published in 1774. The plates were engraved from red chalk drawings by Van Kymsdyk, now preserved in the Hunterian Museum, Glas- gow, and two of them were executed with great skill by Strange's own hand. By his plates of the Magdalen and Cleopatra, engraved after Guido in 1753, he at once established his professional reputation. He was invited in 1759 to engrave the portraits of the prince of Wales and Lord Bute, by Allan Ramsay, but declined, on the ground of the insufficient remunera- tion offered and of the pressure of more congenial work after the productions of the Italian masters. His refusal was attributed to his Jacobite proclivities, and it led to an acrimonious correspondence with Ramsay, and to the loss, for the time, of royal patronage. In 1760 Strange started on a long-meditated tour in Italy. He studied in Florence, Naples, Parma, Bologna, and Rome, execut- ing innumerable drawings, of which nUny the Day of Correggio, the Danae and the Venus and Adonis of Titian, the St Cecilia of Raphael, and the Barberini Magdalen of Guido, &c. were afterwards reproduced by his burin. On the Continent he was received with great distinction, and he was elected a member of the academies of Rome, Florence, Parma, and Paris. He left Italy in 1764, and, having engraved in the French capital the Justice and the Meekness of Raphael, from the Vatican, he carried them with him to London in the following year. The rest of his life was spent mainly in these two cities, in the diligent prosecution of his art. In 1766 he was elected a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and in 1775, piqued by the exclusion of engravers from the Royal Academy, he published an attack on that body, entitled An Enquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Royal Academy of Arts at London, and prefaced by a long letter to Lord Bute. In 1787 he engraved West's Apotheosis of the Princes Octavius and Alfred, and was rewarded with the honour of knighthood. He died in London on the 5th of July 1792. In the technique of engraving Strange was a master. His line is tender and flowing, without monotony or confusion, and his expression of flesh is characterized by uncommon delicacy and transparency. In draftsmanship his works are often defective. After his death a splendid edition of reserved proofs of his engravings was issued ; and a catalogue of his works, by Charles Blanc, was published in 1848 by Rudolph Weigel of Leipsic, forming part of Le Graveur en Tattle Douce. See Memoirs of Sir liobcrt Strange, Knl., and his Brother-in-law Andrew Lumisden, by James Dennistoun of Dennistoun, 1855. STRANRAER, a royal burgh of Wigtownshire, Scot- land, is situated on the North Channel, at the head of Loch Ryan, 7| miles north-east of Portpatrick, and 59 miles south-south-west of Ayr. In the centre of the town is the old baronial castle of the 15th century occupied by Claverhouse when he held the office of sheriff of Galloway. The principal public buildings are the old town-hall, the new town-hall and court-house (1873), and the academy (1845). A reformatory provides accommodation for 100 boys, and there is a combination poorhouse for the county and a few parishes beyond it. The town possesses a library and public reading-room. The harbour, which is tidal, only admits the entrance of vessels of 150 tons, but there is good anchorage in the loch, and the east pier permits of the approach of large steamers, which ply in connexion with the railway daily to Larne in Ireland. There is also steam communication with Glasgow, Liver- pool, and other towns ; but since the construction of the Girvan and Portpatrick Railway the trade of the port has been on the decline. The principal import is coal, and the principal exports are agricultural produce. The town is chiefly dependent on agriculture. The fishing industry is of minor importance. The population in 1881 of the royal burgh (area 55 acres) was 3455, and of the police burgh 6342. The town was created a burgh of barony in 1596, and a royal burgh in 1617. In 1885 its parlia- mentary representation (it had been one of the Wigtown burghs) was merged in that of the county. STRASBURG (Germ. Strassburg, Fr. Strasbourg), the principal town of Alsace, and a fortress of the first rank, is situated at the junction of the 111 and the Breusch, about two miles to the west of the Rhine, in one of the most fertile districts in the upper Rhenish plain. It lies about 90 miles to the north of Basel, 250 miles to the east of Paris, and 370 miles to the south-west of Berlin. Since 1871 it has been the seat of government for the German crownland of Alsace-Lorraine (Elsass- Lothringen) ; and it is also the see of a Roman Catholic bishop Environs of Strasburg. and the headquarters of the 15th corps of the German army. The town proper is divided by the arms of the 111 into three parts, of which the central is the largest and most important. Most of the streets are narrow and irregular, and the quaint aspect of a free mediaeval town has to a considerable extent been maintained. The quarters which suffered most in the bombardment of 1870 have, how- ever, been rebuilt in a more modern fashion, and the recent widening of the circle of fortifications, with the destruction of the old walls, has given the city opportunity to expand in all directions. By far the most prominent building is the minster, or cathedral, which in its present form represents the activity of four centuries. Part of the crypt dates from about 1015; the apse shows the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic style ; and the nave, finished