Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/28

ITA. ITA, 6Ui'. See Ahta.

ITACOL'UMITE (from Itacolumi, a mountain in Miiias Cii-racs, Brazil). A schistose, light-colored rock composed largely of quartz grains, but also containing mica, chlorite, talc, and other minerals. It occurs in thin plates, which commonly possess the jjrofK-rty of llexihility and can be bent backward and forward like a piece of sole-leather. The cause of this flexibility is generally assigned to the peculiar form of the quartz grains; the latter, according to some ob- servers, are elongated and have reentrant and projecting surfaces which articulate like joints. Itacolumite is associated with the crystalline schists of Urazil, where it covers large areas and is also found along the southern Appalachians in the United States. The source of the Brazil- ian diamond has been referred to itacolumite.

ITAGAKI, e't!-rii'kf. TaisuivE (1S38— ). A iTa|ianese statesman, called the 'Rousseau of Japan.' Me was born in the Province of Tosa, island of Shikoku. Ho received the usual edu- cation of a samurai, or militarj' gentleman, and when a yoimg man became a strenuous advocate of the ^Nlikado's supremacy as against the his- toric usuq)ation of the Shcgiin in Yedo. In the Civil War of 1SG8 be was aide-de-camp to the Imperial general Arisugawa-no-Miya, and was especially active in the campaign a^'ainst Aidzu in northern Hondo. After the Re.-toration in Tokio, he was made one of the Pri'y Councilors to the Emperor, and held that oflice from 1871 to 1873. He resigned because he. with .Saigo Taka- mori of the Satsiima clan, advocated war with Korea on account of the refusal of the latter to continue the tribute which had been paid for centuries to the Shogtm's Government, and the further refusal of Korea "to acknowledge the Jlikado as Emperor of .Japan or to have any official relations with his Government, which it licdd to be in league with the Western bar- barians." The war party failed, however, and Itagaki, believing that his countrymen would have favored such a war had any political ma- chinery existed for making known their views, became an ardent advocate of representative government based on the system of Great Brit- ain or the United States. When, in 1877, the Satsuma Rebellion broke out under Saigo. Ita- gaki made fresh efforts, by peaceful agitation, for constitutional government. He organized the first political party in .Tapan (Jufu-to. or Lib- erals), contending that in the Constitution prom- ised by the Emperor it should be provided that the IMinistr^- should be responsible to the Par- liament and not to the throne. In 1878 he was ^Minister of Public Works, and ^linistcr of the Interior in 1880. After nnicli hesitation he ac- cepted the title and decoration of Count in 1887. In 1808 the Liberals, under Itagaki. united with the Prorrressives under Okuma. and the fusion was called the Constitutional Party, which had a large majority in the Lower House. The Em- peror thereupon invited Counts Okuma and Ita- gaki to form a Cabinet (Itagaki holding the portfolio for Home Affairs), which, however, lasted bit six months, when the Ministers re- signed and the partv resolved itself into its old elements. Itagaki has all along been, and still is, an uncompromising advocate of the adoption of the British or L'nited States constitutional system as against that based on the German, drafted by Ito and adopted in 1889, He is a Christian in faith and was long an olliccr of the (burch.

ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE. A term used by certain English writers to designate the Uenais- sanee style of avchilecture because it originated in Italy. See Kkxaissance Abt. ITALIAN BAND. Sec.

ITALIAN LANGUAGE. That one of the Ronuince languages, or inodcrn descendants of Latin, which is sjioken in the Italian Peninsula, in Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, in a portion of Switzerland, and Southwestern Austria (Tyrol, Istria, Dalmatia, Triest), in Malta, and in a small district in the southeast corner of France. The term Italian may denote gcnerieally the Romance dialects of the regions mentioned, or it may be used to indicate their connnon medium of literature and culture, the dialect of Tuscany. Literary Italian was given permanent importance when Dante and the writers of the fourteenth century adopted the Tuscan dialect as the idiom of their works. The dialects at large diverge so nuich that a native of the south of Italy finds it ilillicult to make himself imderstood in the north of the Peninsula. A short story by Boccaccio has been translated into several hundred Italian patois and dialects.

Tuscan and the lesser dialects of the Italian- speaking domain are living forms of a popular, sjioken Latin, which in vocaliulary and syntax' differed from the Latin of the classics not a little. Thus the pojmlar Latin had a tendency to .substitute prepositional phrases for case dis- tinctions and verbal periphrases for single forms as, for example, aniare habeo (Ital. nwcro) for amaho; and as these substitutions prevailed in the newly evolved speech, it results that Italian is largely an analytical language, where- as classical Latin was chiefly inllectional in character. So, also, we meet with many words in Italian which are not to be found in the classic Latin documents, but which, from the remarks of early grammarians, we know to have been commonly used by the people. When the bar- barians overran Italy they left some of their Germanic words as contributions to the speech of the land, but apart from this and some siinilar additions of a later date and of learned importa- tion, the lexical, phonological, and grammatical eliments of Italian are developments or modifica- tions of the corresponding elements of the popular or vulgar Latin. On vulgar Latin and its im- portance for the history of Italian and the other Romance languages, consult Seelmann, Die Aiis- sprache des Lateins nach physiol<)gisch-histar- ischen Onuidsiitxen (Heilbronn. 188.5) : Schu- ehardt. Drr' Vol-aUnDtux dc.t Vulfiiirlntein/s (Leip- zig. 1800-69) ; Groeber. ^'ul!^iirlateinische Sub- strate romanischer Wiirfer, in Wiilffiin, Archiv fiir latcinisphe Lexicofiraphie (ib., 1884) ; Meyer- Liibke, Ocschichte drr Infeinischen Volkssprnrhen, in Groeber, driindrixii der romanischen Philologie (Strassburg, 188.5) : Budinsky, Die Auslreilunri der lateinisrhrn Sprttrhen iiher Ifalien und die Prorinzen (Berlin, 1881).

We may now consider briefly some striking characteristics of the Tuscan dialect, the Italian par cxceUenee. or rather of that tongue which we find to have been employed by most of the great writers from Dante down. First, we shall see that Italian is a far more vocalic