The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 142

CORELLI, MARIE, a novelist, a prolific auth.o.r.ess, and very popular; her first work "The Romance of Two Worlds," one of her latest "The Sorrows of Satan"; _b_. 1864.

CORFE CASTLE, a village in the Isle of Purbeck, Dorsets.h.i.+re, round a castle now in ruins, and the scene of martyrdoms and murders not a few in its day.

CORFU (78), the most northerly of the Ionian Islands and the largest, 40 m. long, from 4 to 18 broad; was under the protection of Britain, 1815-64; has since belonged to Greece; has a capital (79) of the same name.

CORIN'NA, a poetess of ancient Greece, born in Boeotia; friend and rival of Pindar; only a few fragments of her poetry remain.

CORINNE, the heroine and t.i.tle of a novel of Mme. de Stael's, her princ.i.p.al novel, in which she celebrates the praises of the great men and great masterpieces of Italy; her heroine is the type of a woman inspired with poetic ideas and the most generous sentiments.

CORINTH, an ancient city of Greece, and one of the most flouris.h.i.+ng, on an isthmus of the name connecting the Peloponnesus with the mainland; a great centre of trade and of material wealth, and as a centre of luxury a centre of vice; the seat of the wors.h.i.+p of Aphrodite, a very different G.o.ddess from Athene, to whom Athens was dedicated.

CORINTHIANS, EPISTLES TO THE, two epistles of St. Paul to the Church he had established in Corinth, the chief object of which was to cleanse it of certain schisms and impurities that had arisen, and to protest against the disposition of many in it to depart from simple gospel which they had been taught.

CORIOLA'NUS, a celebrated Roman general of patrician rank, who rallied his countrymen when, in besieging Corioli, they were being driven back, so that he took the city, and was in consequence called Coriola.n.u.s; having afterwards offended the plebs, he was banished from the city; took refuge among the people he had formerly defeated; joined cause with them, and threatened to destroy the city, regardless of every entreaty to spare it, till his mother, his wife, and the matrons of Rome overcame him by their tears, upon which he withdrew and led back his army to Corioli, prepared to suffer any penalty his treachery to them might expose him.

CORIOLI, a town of ancient Latium, capital of the Volsci.

CORK (73), a fine city, capital of a county (436) of the same name in Munster, Ireland, on the Lee, 11 m. from its mouth; with a magnificent harbour, an extensive foreign trade, and manufactures of various kinds.

CORMENIN, a French statesman and jurist, born at Paris; had great influence under Louis Philippe; his pamphlets, signed _Timon_, made no small stir; left a work on administrative law in France (1788-1886).

CORMONTAIGNE, a celebrated French engineer, born at Strasburg; successor of Vauban (1696-1752).

CORNARO, an ill.u.s.trious patrician family in Venice, from which for centuries several Doges sprung.

CORN-CRACKER, the nickname of a Kentucky man.

CORNEILLE, PIERRE, the father of French tragedy, born at Rouen, the son of a government legal official; was bred for the bar, but he neither took to the profession nor prospered in the practice of it, so gave it up for literature; threw himself at once into the drama; began by dramatising an incident in his own life, and became the creator of the dramatic art in France; his first tragedies are "The Cid," which indeed is his masterpiece, "Horace," "Cinna," "Polyeucte," "Rodogune," and "Le Menteur"; in his verses, which are instinct with vigour of conception as well as sublimity of feeling, he paints men as they should be, virtuous in character, brave in spirit, and animated by the most exalted sentiments. Goethe contrasts him with Racine: "Corneille," he says, "delineated great men; Racine, men of eminent rank." "He rarely provokes an interest," says Professor Saintsbury, "in the fortunes of his characters; it is rather in the way that they bear their fortune, and particularly in a kind of haughty disdain for fortune itself... He shows an excellent comic faculty at times, and the strokes of irony in his serious plays have more of true humour in them than appears in almost any other French dramatist" (1606-1684).

CORNEILLE, THOMAS, younger brother of the preceding, a dramatist, whose merits were superior, but outshone by those of his brother (1625-1709).

CORNELIA, the daughter of Scipio Africa.n.u.s and the mother of the GRACCHI (q. v.), the Roman matron who, when challenged by a rival lady to outs.h.i.+ne her in wealth of gems, proudly led forth her sons saying, "These are my jewels"; true to this sentiment, it was as the mother of the Gracchi she wished to be remembered, and is remembered, in the annals of Rome.

CORNELIUS, PETER VON, a distinguished German painter, born at Dusseldorf; early gave proof of artistic genius, which was carefully fostered by his father; spent much time as a youth in studying and copying Raphael; before he was 20 he decorated a church at Neuss with colossal figures in chiaroscuro; in 1810 executed designs for Goethe's "Faust"; in the year after went to Rome, where, along with others, he revived the old art of fresco painting, in which he excelled his rivals; the subjects of these were drawn from Greek pagan as well as Christian sources, his "Judgment" being the largest fresco in the world; the thought which inspires his cartoons, critics say, surpa.s.ses his power of execution; it should be added, he prepared a set of designs to ill.u.s.trate the "Nibelungen" (1787-1867).

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, a university in Ithaca, New York State, founded in 1868 at a cost of 152,000, named after its founder, Ezra Cornell; it supports a large staff of teachers, and gives instruction in all departments of science, literature, and philosophy; it provides education to sundry specified cla.s.ses free of all fees, as well as means of earning the benefits of the inst.i.tution to any who may wish to enjoy them.

CORN-LAWS, laws in force in Great Britain regulating the import and export of corn for the protection of the home-producer at the expense of the home-consumer, and which after a long and bitter struggle between these two cla.s.ses were abolished in 1846.

CORN-LAW RHYMER, THE, EBENEZER ELLIOTT (q. v.) who, in a volume of poems, denounced the corn-laws and contributed to their abolition.

CORNO, MONTE, the highest peak of the Apennines, 9545 ft.

CORNWALL (322), a county in the SW. extremity of England, forming a peninsula between the English and the Bristol Channels, with a rugged surface and a rocky coast, indented all round with more or less deep bays inclosed between high headlands; its wealth lies not in the soil, but under it in its mines, and in the pilchard, mackerel, and other fisheries along its stormy sh.o.r.es; the county town is Bodmin (5), the largest Penzance (12), and the mining centre Truro (11).

CORNWALL, BARRY, the _nom de plume_ of B. W. PROCTER (q. v.).

CORNWALLIS, LORD, an English general and statesman; saw service in the Seven Years' and the American Wars; besieged in the latter at York Town, was obliged to capitulate; became Governor-General of India, and forced Tippoo Sahib to submit to humiliating terms; as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland crushed the rebellion of '98; re-appointed Governor-General of India; died there (1738-1805).

COROMANDEL COAST, E. coast of Hindustan, extending from the Krishna to Cape Comorin.

CORONATION CHAIR, a chair inclosing a stone carried off by Edward I.

from Scone in 1296, on which the sovereigns of England are crowned.

COROT, JEAN BAPTISTE, a celebrated French landscape-painter, born at Paris; was 26 years of age before he began to apply himself to art, which he did by study in Italy and Rome, returning to Paris in 1827, where he began to exhibit, and continued to exhibit for nearly 50 years; it was long before his pieces revealed what was in him and the secret of his art; he appeared also as a poet as well as a painter, giving free play to his emotions and moving those of others (1796-1875).

CORPS LeGISLATIF, the lower house of the French legislature, consisting of deputies.

CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY, the philosophy which accounts for physical phenomena by the position and the motions of corpuscles.

CORR, ERIN, an eminent engraver, born in Brussels, of Irish descent; spent 10 years in engraving on copper-plate Rubens's "Descent from the Cross" (1793-1862).

CORRECTOR, ALEXANDER THE, Alexander Cruden, who believed he had a divine mission to correct the manners of the world.

CORREGGIO, ANTONIO ALLEGRI DA, an ill.u.s.trious Italian painter, born at Correggio, in Modena; founder of the Lombard school, and distinguished among his contemporaries for the grace of his figures and the harmony of his colouring; he has been ranked next to Raphael, and it has been said of him he perfected his art by adding elegance to truth and grandeur; he is unrivalled in chiaroscuro, and he chose his subjects from pagan as well as Christian legend (1494-1534).