Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/306

Rh 282 V L V L hides, and tallow are partly manufactured within the government, and partly exported to Riga and Poland. Volhynia is traversed by a raihvay from Kieff via Berditcheff to Brest-Litovsk, with branches to Lublin and to Lemberg. The traffic by this line is considerable, and the Radziviloff custom-house, on the Austrian frontier, is one of the most important in Russia. Yolhyuia is divided into twelve districts, the chief towns of which are ZHITOMIR (q.v. which had 54,830 inhabitants in 1884, Dubno(7255), Kovel (13,980), Kremenets (10,560), Lutsk (13,770), Novgrad Volhynskiy (13,590), Ostrog (16,520), Ovrutch (6480), Radziviloff (7350), Rovno (7300), Staro-Konstantinoff (17,980), and Zasiavl (10,120). Volhynia has been inhabited by Slavonians from a remote antiquity. In Nestor s Annals its people are mentioned under the name of Dulebs, and later in the 12th century they were known as Velhynians and Buzhans (dwellers on the Bug). From the 9th century the towns of Volhynia Vladimir, Ovrutch, Lutsk, and Dubno were ruled by descendants of Rank, and the land of Volhynia remained independent until the 14th century, when it fell under Lithuania. In 1659 it was annexed to Poland, and so remained until 1795, when it was taken possession of by Russia. VOLNEY, COXSTANTIN FRANCOIS CHASSEBCEUF, COMTE DE (1757-1820), was born at Craon, on February 3, 1757, of a good but not noble family, and educated first at the neighbouring provincial towns of Ancenis and Angers, then at Paris. According to the common and curious habit of the time and country he was at first surnamed Boisgirais, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney. When he was about four and twenty he acquired some reputation by an essay on the chronology of Herodotus, and was introduced into literary and philosophical society. He then did what was at the time not common, common as it has become since. Having inherited a sum of money, he visited the East and spent some four years in Egypt and Syria, writing the history of his travels when he returned, and publishing it in 1787. He had not merely travelled but had learnt Arabic, and had studied the politics as well as the topography of the countries he visited. Of the former study he gave evidence the year before the Revolu tion by some Considerations on the war between Russia and Turkey. He was a member both of the States- General and of the Constituante, and distinguished himself as an ardent reformer. In 1791 appeared the book Les Humes, by which he is known to a great many people who have never read it. It is a kind of essay on the philosophy of history written from the philosophe point of view, and of course containing some direct and much oblique manifestation of phUosophe antipathy to religion. It is probable, however, that those who, after the lapse of a century, read it under the impression of the strong denunciations of it by some orthodox writers of its own and immediately succeeding times will be not a little surprised. The book, of which the full title is Les Ruines, ou Meditation sur les Revolutions dcs Empires, purports to contain the discourses of a traveller among the ruins of Palmyra with a very 18th-century genius. Volney was a good deal more than a mere author. He tried to put his politico-economic theories into practice in Corsica, where in 1792 he bought an estate and made an attempt to cultivate colonial produce. He was thrown into prison during the Jacobin triumph, but escaped the guillotine. He was some time professor of history at the newly-founded Ecole Normale, lectured there, and published his lectures. Then he undertook a journey to the United States, the result of which took form in a book (chiefly geographical) published in 1803. Next year he republished and much enlarged his early essay on Herodotus. He was not a partisan of Napoleon, but, being a moderate man, a savant, and a Liberal, was impressed into service by the emperor, who made him a count and put him into the senate, of which he was one of the least servile members. The restoration in the same way recruited him against his will, and he became a peer of France. He was a member of the Institute and latterly of the Academy proper, and, besides his historical, political, and (as the 18th century understood philosophy) philosophical studies, was a philo logist of some power. He died at Paris on April 25, 1820, and his complete works appeared soon afterwards in 8 volumes. Volney has been called the last of the philosophes, and so, if date and eminence together be considered, he was. It may, as in many such cases, be doubted whether his identification with a powerful but one-sided movement was more of service than of disservice to him. No doubt it stimulated his work, but it also cramped and distorted it, the curious and not wholly intelligible attitude of the whole school towards Christianity showing itself distinctly in him as a prejudicing and narrowing force. He was, however, an accurate observer, a thinker of acutencss and originality if not of great width or depth, and master of his pen in no ordinary degree. His style suffers from the general defects of 18th-century French prose, in being thin, colourless, and devoid of flavour despite its clearness and brilliancy. But it serves him as a most excellent vehicle both of description and of argument. VOLO, a town and seaport of Greece, on the east coast of Thessaly, at the head of the gulf to which it gives its name. Volo lies just below the mouth of the little river Orchestus, near the west foot of Mount Pelion, on the southern verge of an undulating and extremely fertile plain, which stretches thence northwards beyond Larissa, and which is skirted on the east by the chain above which tower Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus. The town, which has a mixed population (1884) of 4000, comprises three distinct quarters : the kastro, enclosed by walls and inhabited chiefly by Turks ; the scala, or port, centre of the trade and shipping ; and the squalid Graeco-Jewish suburb, which stretches from near the kastro to the coast. Volo, which is regularly visited by the Austrian, French, and Greek steamers plying weekly between the Piraeus and Constanti nople, is the only outlet for the produce of northern Greece. The exports (tobacco, hides and skins, fruits, olive oil, raw silk and cocoons, &c.) were valued in 1886 at 31,000, while the imports (cereals, cotton goods, petroleum, sugar, hardware, &amp;lt;tc.) amounted to 259,000. The castle of Volo stands on or close to the site of Pagasae, whence the gulf took the name of Sinus Pagasteus or Pagasicus, and which was one of the oldest places of which mention occurs in thu legendary history of Greece. From this port the Argonautic expedi tion was said to have sailed, and it was already a nourishing place under the tyrant Jason, who from the neighbouring Phenu ruled over all Thessaly. Two miles farther south stand the ruins of Demetrias, founded (290 B.C.) by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and for some time a favourite residence of the Macedonian kings. On the opposite side of the little inlet at the head of the gulf rises the hill of Episcopi, on which stood the ancient city of lolcus. Here Dr Lolling discovered in 18S3 some underground sepulchral chambers resembling those of Myeeiise and Orchomenus. VOLOGDA, a government of north-eastern Russia, having Archangel on the N., Tobolsk on the E., Perm, Vyatka, Kostroma, and Yaroslavl on the S., Novgorod and Olonetz on the W. This immense government, which comprises an area of 155,500 square miles, stretches in a north-easterly direction for 800 miles, from Novgorod to the Urals, including the broad depression drained by the Sukhona from the S.W. and the Vytchegda from the N.E., head-waters of the Dwina. From the basin of the Volga it is separated by a flat, swampy, and wooded swelling, where the heads of tributaries belonging to both Arctic and Caspian drainage-areas are closely intermingled. The eastern boundary of Vologda follows the main water- parting of the Urals, which has but few points over 3000 feet ; wide parmas, or woody plateaus, fill up the space between the main Urals and the southern spars of the Timansk Mountains, in the upper basin of the Petchora, and it is above the parmas especially over those which are nearest to the Urals proper that the highest summits of the Urals rise in the form of dome-shaped mountains (Tellposs, 5540 feet above sea-level ; Hoste-piiir, 4955 feet ;