Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/301

Rh V I V L 277 of the same nerve. The superior laryngeal is also the sensory nerve of the larynx. Stirling has found ganglionic cells in the course of this nerve. Paralysis of the motor fibres causes aphonia, or loss of voice. If one cord is paralysed the voice may be lost or become falsetto in tone. Sometimes the cords may move in breathing or during coughing, but be motionless during an attempt at the pro duction of voice. Rarely, incomplete unilateral paralysis of the recurrent nerve, or the existence of a tumour on each cord, thus making them unequal in length, may cause a double tone, or diphthongia (Turck). Hoarseness is caused by roughness or swelling of the cords. On the history of the theories of voice production, see Longet s Traite de Physiologie, 18&amp;lt;i J, vol. ii. p. 733, and Gavarret s Phonatton et Audition, 1877, p. 541. An excellent bibliography is given in Beatinis s Physiologie Humaine, 1881, vol. ii. p. 946; also in Quain s Anatomy, 1882, vol. ii. p. 538. (J. G. M.) VOIRON, a manufacturing town of France, in the de partment of Isere, stands on the banks of the Morge (a tributary of the Isere) and on the lower slopes of a moun tain nearly 2500 feet high, 15 miles north-north-west of Grenoble on the Lyons railway. Some 30 or 35 factories, employing from 4000 to 5000 persons, are engaged in the production of a kind of cloth that takes its name from the town (toiles de Voiron), and the industry is carried on in the neighbourhood also, every inhabitant having his loom. Table linen, silk stuffs (2000 looms), and liqueurs are also made, and there are paper-mills, bleachworks, foundries, edge-tool factories, and building sheds. The monks of La Grande Chartreuse have stores at Voiron in connexion with the railway. A fine modern church was built from 1864 to 1873 in the style of the 13th century. The chief attraction of the town lies in the fine views it possesses of the mountains of Grenoble and the valley of the Isere. The population in 1886 was 8575. VOITURE, VINCENT (1598-1648), the best writer of vers de societe that France has yet produced, and one of the most influential preceptors of classical French prose, was born at Amiens in 1598. His father was a well-to-do wine merchant, who had connexions with the court, and it is one of the charges brought against Voiture that he was unnecessarily ashamed of his origin. At any rate he soon obtained a position in society, being appointed by Gaston d Orleans to various offices in his household. Voiture had been well educated, and had profited both by liis education and by the school friendships which it enabled him to make. He was early introduced to the Hotel de Rambouillet, and travelled in the suite of Monsieur, or on missions, a good deal both in and out of France, on one occasion extending his journeyings as far as Ceuta, whence he wrote a letter of elaborate gallantry to Mademoiselle Paulet. Although a follower of Gascon, he made friends with Richelieu, and was one of the earliest Academicians. He also received appointments and pen sions from Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, and became altogether a very prosperous person. During his lifetime he, like most of the literary men of his time who were not cither dramatists or serious scholars, published nothing in book form, but his verses and his prose letters were the delight of the coteries, and were copied, handed about, and admired more perhaps than the work of any contemporary. This coterie success has, it would seem, done them more harm than good in the eyes of posterity. When the long and rather wearisome history of the quarrel between the Uranistes and the Jobelins (partisans of the respective merits of a sonnet of Voiture addressed to a certain Uranie and of another composed by his younger rival Benserade on the subject of Job) is mentioned, the modern reader is apt to suppose that the interest of the affair is merely one of antiquarian gossip. Yet it is difficult to think of any living writer who could surpass, or of any writer living during the last two centuries who could have surpassed, the mixture of gallantry and sincerity in the Uranie sonnet. Another famous piece of his of the same kind, &quot; La Belle Matineuse,&quot; is less exquisite, but still very admirable, and, generally speaking, Voiture deserves the praise given to him at the head of this article. His prose letters, if less interesting to the present generation, are full of lively wit, and are historically even more important. He ranks with Jean de Balzac as the chief director of the reform in French prose which accompanied that of Malherbe, and preceded that of Corneille, in French verse. Nor is there any one to whom more than to Voiture (who was for many years almost an arbiter degantiarum in literary matters) the escape of French prose from the over-legislation which had such injurious effect on French verse can be ascribed. The fault of the century a tendency to elaborate and &quot; metaphysical &quot; turns of phrase affected him to a certain extent, but in a mild form ; and, on the whole, he was the Frenchman of letters of the old school who has been least favourably treated by the resurrection of taste for that old school which the present century has seen. It may seem absurd, but is probably just, to ascribe this absence of enthusiasm in part to the fact that the most unjust censures of the extreme classical school passed harmless by him. Boileau had no abuse for him, and the 18th century read him with pleasure. The militant spirit of Romanticism had therefore nothing to avenge. Voiture lived a careless and Epicurean life for just fifty years, and died at the outbreak of the Fronde, which killed the society to which he was accustomed, on the 26th of May 1648. His works were first published two years later, and a characteristic and rather absurd literary quarrel, which made a great noise at the time, broke out, on the subject of his literary merits, between his friend Costar and a certain Sieur de Griac. The standard modern edition of Voiture is that of Ubicini, 2 vols., Paris, 1855. VOLCANOES. See GEOLOGY, vol. x. pp. 240-254. VOLE (Germ. Wuhlmaiis, Fr. Campagnol}. This word, little known as it is to the majority of English people, is the proper name for a genus containing three of the com monest of our English mammals, namely, the water, bank, and field voles, animals generally called &quot; water-rat,&quot; &quot; red field-mouse,&quot; and &quot;short-tailed field-mouse &quot; respect ively. The scientific name for the group is Arvicola, a genus which, with the lemmings and two or three other genera, forms the subfamily Arvicolinse, of the great Rodent family Murid&amp;lt;v, whose proper place in the general system is shown under MAMMALIA (vol. xv. p. 419). The voles, as a whole, are distinguished by their squat and heavy shape, their slower and less graceful move ments, very small eyes, blunt snout, &quot;^ inconspicuous ears, andshortened limbs and tail, in all of which points they are markedly con trasted with the true rats and mice of the genus Jfus, the only animals with which they can be confounded. Molars of Water-Vole (Arvicola amphibius); But by far the top view. most important characteristic of the voles lies in their molar teeth, which have been said to form &quot;the perfection of Rodent dentition &quot; from their wonderful specialization and adaptation to the purpose of grinding vegetable substances. These teeth, three in number on each side of each jaw, are rootless, that is to say, they go on grow ing during the whole life of the animal at the same rate