Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/322

292 were from an early date four conservatorios conducted on a similar plan to those in Naples, but exclusively for girls. These died out with the decay of the Venetian republic, and the centre of musical instruction for Northern Italy was transferred to Milan, where a conservatorio on a large scale was established by Prince Eugene Beauharnais in 1808. The celebrated conservatoire of Paris owes its origin to the Ecole Royale de Chant et de Declamation, founded by Baron de Breteuil in 1784, for the purpose of training singers for the opera. Suspended during the stormy period of the Revolution, its place was taken by the Conservatoire de Musique, established in 1795 on the basis of a school for gratuitous instruction in military music, founded by the mayor of Paris in 1792. The plan and scale on which it was founded had to be modified more than once in suc ceeding years, but it continued to flourish, and in the inter- valbetween 1820and 1840, under thedirection of Cherubini, may be said to have led the van of musical progress in Europe. In more recent years that place of honour belongs decidedly to the conservatorium at Leipsic, founded by Mendelssohn in 1842, which, so far as composition and instrumental music are concerned, is now the chief resort of those who wish to rise to eminence in the art. Of other Continental conservatoires of the first rank may be named those of Prague, founded in 1810, of Brussels, founded in 1833 and long presided over by the celebrated Fetis, of Cologne, founded in 1849, and those instituted more re cently at Munich and Berlin, the instrumental school in the latter being under the direction of Joachim. In England the functions of a conservatoire have been discharged by the Royal Academy of Music of London, which was founded in 1822, and received a charter of incorporation in 1830. With very limited resources as compared with the larger Continental establishments, it has done excellent service in providing a constant succession of thoroughly trained pro fessional musicians. A national training school of music was opened at South Kensington under distinguished auspices in May 1876, the object being to provide a free education of the highest kind to pupils of remarkable promise as tested by examination.  CONSISTORY, a term applied originally to an antechamber or outer-room of the palace of the emperors of Rome, where the petitioners for justice assembled and awaited the presence of the emperor, who upon his entrance into the consistory took his seat upon a tribunal, whilst the others stood around him (consistebant). The word &quot; con sistory,&quot; as a term of ecclesiastical law, in which sense it is for the most part employed in niodern times, came to be used first of all to danote certain ecclesiastical councils, in which the bishop was seated, whilst the presbyters and other clergy stood around him. It came by degrees to be used generally for all ecclesiastical councils in which a bishop presided, and in which matters of order rather than of doctrine were discussed and decided. The term &quot;con sistory,&quot; as used in the Latin Church, is applied at Rome to denote the assembly of the cardinals convoked by the Pope. This assembly is styled a consistory, &quot; quia simul prsesente Papa consistunt cardinales,&quot; the Pope s presence being a necessary condition to constitute the assembly of the cardinals a consistory. There are two kinds of consistory which the Pope is in the habit of convoking a public consistory and a private consistory. A public consistory is now rarely summoned; it is, in fact, an extraordinary assembly of the cardinals, at which other prelates and ecclesiastical magnates are present, and over which the Pope presides in his pontifical robes of state. It was usual for the Pope to receive foreign sovereigns and their ambassadors in a public consistory, and the hat used to be conferred on newly-created cardinals in such a consistory. The private or secret consistory is the ordinary court in which the cardinals attend on the Pope, and in which the Pope formally transacts certain ecclesiastical matters, which are of high importance and are termed consistorial matters ; for instance, his Holi ness nominates in secret consistory to all consistorial benefices, creates cardinals, appoints to vacant bishoprics, confirms the election of bishops, deposes bishops, decrees the pallium to be sent to archbishops, unites churches, grants extraordinary dispensations, &c. This ordinary consistory of the Pope is for the most part held in a chamber of the Papal palace at Rome known as the camera papagali or papagalliy which may be translated &quot; The Painted Chamber,&quot; as Ducange renders it, &quot; aula orna- mentis decora.&quot; The phrase seems to have come into use in the Cserimoniale Romanum, as &quot; the Star Chamber &quot; at Westminster came to be so called from the painting or tapestry on its walls. The term &quot; consistory &quot; is used in the Church of England to signify the tribunal or place of justice, which in olden times was fitted up within the nave of every cathedral church, for the most part on the left hand side of the western entrance, for the bishop of the diocese or his vicar-general to hold his court for the hearing and deciding of ecclesiastical causes. Under the question able influence of the spirit of resistance to the authority of the bishop, which has been a distinctive characteristic of the cathedral bodies in the Church of England from the earliest period of the Papal exemptions, the deans and chapters of the cathedral churches of England have in most cases caused the consistorial court of the diocesan bishop to be removed from the nave of the cathedrals, so that it is very rare to find at the present time traces of any such struc ture. The last trace of the diocesan consistory of the arch bishop of Canterbury was removed from his cathedral within the memory of the living, when a restoration of the nave was made ; and the consistorial court of the bishop of London, which was on the south side of the nave of St Paul s cathedral church, has been converted in very recent times, under the auspices of the late Dean Milman, into a memorial chapel for the reception of a national monument of the first Duke of Wellington. The consistorial courts of the bishops of the Church of England are now but &quot; the shadows of great names,&quot; as the state has deprived the judges of the consistorial courts of the jurisdiction formerly exercised by them in matrimonial and testamentary matters, and their corrective jurisdiction over criminous clerks has been transferred to other tribunals. It is not necessary, nor is it usual for the bishops to hold their diocesan visitations in their consistorial courts. The term &quot;consistory&quot; is used in certain of the Reformed churches, which do not recognize the order of bishops, to signify the supreme governing council of presbyters and elders, and such churches are hence termed consistorial churches.  CONSOLIDATION ACTS. The practice of legislating for small portions of a subject only at a time, which is characteristic of the English Parliament, produces as a necessary consequence great confusion in the statute law. The Acts relating to any subject of importance or difficulty will be found to be scattered over many years, and through the operation of clauses partially repealing or amending former Acts, the final sense of the Legislature becomes enveloped in unintelligible or contradictory expressions. Where opportunity offers, the law thus expressed in any statute is sometimes recast in a single statute, called a Consolidation Act. Among such are the Criminal Laws Consolidation Act and the Customs Laws Consolidation Act. These observations apply to the public general Acts of the Legislature. On the other hand, in settling private Acts, such as those relating to railway and canal enterprise, the Legislature always inserted certain clauses, 