Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/553

Rh of Courtrai, province of West Flanders, 26 miles south west of Ghent. It is a neat well-built town, situated on both sides of the Lys or Leye, and connected by railways with most of the principal places in Belgium. Among its remarkable public buildings are the hotel de ville, a Gothic edifice, built in 1526, and containing two singularly-carved chimney-pieces, representing the Virtues and Vices, and events in the early history of the town, and the church of Notre Dame, a Gothic structure, founded in 1238 by Baldwin, count of Flanders and emperor of Constantinople, but, except a small portion on one side, modernized and lined with marble. This church contains Vandyck s cele brated painting of the Raising of the Cross. In St Martin s Church is a beautiful tabernacle of carved stone work in the richest Gothic style, erected probably about the end of the loth century ; this church, which dates from about 1390, wis rebuilt in the 15th century, and again after being burned in 1862. Courtrai has also an exchange, a college, an academy of design, two orphan asylums, and a public library. A great part of its inhabitants are employed in the spinning of flax and the weaving of plain and damask linens ; 5000 to 6000 women are employed in lace-making, besides which cotton and woollen goods, paper, sugar, tobacco, leather, soap, &c., are manufactured. The vicinity is highly cultivated, producing large quantities of the finest flax for supplying the manufactories of the town and for exportation. Courtrai existed in the time of the Romans under the name of Cortoriacum, which was after wards changed to Curtricum. In the 7th century it was a municipal city, and in 1302 was fought under its walls the famous battle of the Spurs, in which 20,000 Flemings, chiefly weavers from Ghent and Bruges, routed and put to flight a French army of 7000 knights and noblemen, and 40,000 infantry. About 700 gilt spurs were gathered on the field of battle, and hung up as a trophy in the church of the convent of Groenangen, now destroyed. The town was taken by the French in 1793, and made the capital of the department of Lys. Population (1874) 27,076.   COUSIN, (1792-1867), was, like another eminent Frenchman, Jean Jacques Rousseau, the son of a watchmaker. He was born in Paris, in the Quartier St Antoine, on the 28th November 1792. The year of his birth was a critical one for France and for Europe. The ruins of the Bastille, which adjoined the place of his birth, already symbolized the wreck of the ancient order of things. The National Assembly had in the autumn decreed the deposition of the king ; the National Convention had been appointed to try him as Louis Capet (21st September), and three days later France was declared a republic. While the childhood of the future philosopher was passing in the Quartier St Antoine, the king was guillotined in the neigh bouring Place de la Revolution ; Christianity was deposed, like the monarch himself, and the worship of reason colemnly inaugurated ; Marie Antoinette passed through her bitter humiliations to execution. Before the boy was old enough to be sent to the secondary school of the Quartier, Dan ton and Robespierre had risen, tyrannized, and fallen ; the Girondists had gone down before the Jacobins, and Bonaparte had been proclaimed consul. A youth whoso predilections were towards letters or philo sophy had his lot cast in especially troubled times. At the age of ten young Cousin was sent to the secondary or grammar school of the Quartier St Antoine, named Lycee Charlemagne, a seminary of a rank analogous to the Prussian gymnasium. He t 3 he studied until he was eighteen. This embraced the time of the Consulate and the First Empire, the period of the power of Bonaparte clown to very near the commencement of its decline. The Lycee had a connection with the university, and when Cousin left the secondary school, he was crowned in the ancient hall of the Sorhonne for the Latin oration delivered by him there, in the general concourse of his school com petitors. This juvenile distinction may be taken as the sign and promise of that fervid oratorical power for which in after years he was so remarkable. Curiously enough, it was this very hall of the Sorbonne which afterwards witnessed the greatest oratorical triumphs of his manhood, and it was in a suite of rooms under the same roof that he passed in quiet reflective seclusion the latter years of his long and active intellectual life. The careful classical training of the Lycee had at this early period strongly dis posed him to Literature. He was already known among his compeers for a decided superiority in Greek and familiarity with the best Greek authors. From the Lyceelie passed to the Normal School of Paris, an institution of the higher educational order corresponding very much to the faculty of arts in our Scottish universities. It was destined to train the best youths of the secondary schools for teachers in Ihe more advanced departments. At fiist simply a pupil, he ve*ry soon became a monitor or maitre-repetitenr in Greek. His impulse at this time was entirely towards^Earty pi letters. But it was now his fortune to meet with a power- losophica ful influence in a somewhat opposite direction. This vas.* lfluence; the teaching of Laromiguiere, who was then lecturing on philosophy in the Normal School. Cousin was through life essentially open to and impressible by outward influences ; and the earnestness and striking power of intellectual analysis displayed by the thinker in France who first opened up to him the questions of philosophy, and first, though only slightly, broke up the beaten path of Condillacism, were very certain to modify his character and studies. la the second prefaca to the Fraymcns Philosophises, in which he manfully and candidly states the varied philo sophical influences of his life and their relation to his own opinions, he speaks of the grateful emotion excited by tha memory of the day in 1811, when as a pupil in the Normal School destined to letters, he heard Laromiguiere for the first time. &quot;That day decided rny whole life. Laromi guiere taught the philosophy of Locke and Condillac, happily modified on some points, with a clearness and grace which in appearance at least removed difficulties, and with a charm of spiritual bonhomie which penetrated and sub dued.&quot; Cousin was set forthwith to lecture on philosophy, and he speedily obtained the position of master of confer ences (maitre de conferences) in the school. It was tha practice of his pupils, who were usually in the third year of their course, to take notes and make a summary of tho lectures delivered, and thereafter to meet in conference, the master presiding, for the purpose of discussing the principal points contained in them. This was the revival of a process very much akin to tho mediaeval practice of determining as it was called. Cousin in the first preface to the Fragmens refers with great pleasure to the cherished memories of this period, when, he himself young and ardent and surrounded by sympathetic pupils, they together, for getful of all else, essayed &quot; the eternal problems &quot; of speculative philosophy. The youthful thinker very soon, however, passed beyond the point of view of Laromiguiere. Royer-Collard was lecturing in the chair of the history of modern philosophy in the faculty of letters. Cousin was very speedily attracted by him, and the teaching of Royer-Collard formed the second great philosophical impulse of his life. This teacher, as he tells us, &quot; by the severity of his logic, the gravity and weight of his words, turned me by degrees, and not without resistance, from the beaten path of Coa- dillac into the way which has since become so easy, but which was then painful and unfrequented, that of tho Scottish philosophy. 1 In 1815-16 Cousin attained tho position of supplcant or assistant to Royer-Collard in the 