CHEQUE, or CHECK, in commercial law, a bill of exchange drawn on a banker and signed by the drawer, requiring the banker to pay on demand a certain sum in money to or to the order of a specified person or to bearer. In this, its most modern sense, the cheque is the outcome of the growth of the banking system of the 19th century. For details see BANKS AND BANKING: Law, and BILL OF EXCHANGE. The word check,[1] of which "cheque" is a variant now general in English usage, signified merely the counterfoil or indent of an exchequer bill, or any draft form of payment, on which was registered the particulars of the principal part, as a check to alteration or forgery. The check or counterfoil parts remained in the hands of the banker, the portion given to the customer being termed a "drawn note" or "draft." From the beginning of the 19th century the word "cheque" gradually became synonymous with "draft" as meaning a written order on a banker by a person having money in the banker's hands, to pay some amount to bearer or to a person named. Ultimately, it entirely superseded the word "draft," and has now a statutory definition (Bills of Exchange Act 1882, s. 73)—" a bill of exchange drawn on a banker payable on demand." The word "draft" has come to have a wider meaning, that of a bill drawn by one person on another for a sum of money, or an order (whether on a banker or other) to pay money. The employment of cheques as a method of payment offering greater convenience than coin is almost universal in Great Britain and the United States. Of the transactions through the banks of the United Kingdom between 86 and 90% are conducted by means of cheques, and an even higher proportion in the United States. On the continent of Europe the use of cheques, formerly rare, is becoming more general, particularly in France, and to some extent in Germany.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The original meaning of "check" is a move in the game of chess which directly attacks the king; the word comes through the Old Fr. eschec, eschac, from the Med. Lat. form scaccus of the Persian shah, king, i.e. the king in the game of chess; cf. the origin of "mate" from the Arabic shah-mat, the king is dead. The word was early used in a transferred sense of a stoppage or rebuff, and so is applied to anything which stops or hinders a matter in progress, or which controls or restrains anything, hence a token, ticket or counterfoil which serves as a means of identification, &c.



CHER, a department of central France, embracing the eastern part of the ancient province of Berry, and parts of Bourbonnais, Nivernais and Orleanais, bounded N. by the department of Loiret, W. by Loir-et-Cher and Indre, S. by Allier and Creuse, and E. by Nievre. Pop. (1906) 343,484. Area 2819 sq. m. The territory of the department is elevated in the south, where one point reaches 1654 ft., and in the east. The centre is occupied by a wide calcareous table-land, to the north of which stretches the plain of Sologne. The principal rivers, besides the Cher and its tributaries, are the Grande Sauldre and the Petite Sauldre on the north, but the Loire and Allier, though not falling within the department, drain the eastern districts, and are available for navigation. The Cher itself becomes navigable when it receives the Arnon and Yevre, and the communications of the department are greatly facilitated by the Canal du Berry, which traverses it from east to west, the lateral canal of the Loire, which follows the left bank of that river, and the canal of the Sauldre. The climate is temperate, and the rainfall moderate. Except in the Sologne, the soil is generally fertile, but varies considerably in different localities. The most productive region is that on the east, which belongs to the valley of the Loire; the central districts are tolerably fertile but marshy, being often flooded by the Cher; while in the south and south-west there is a considerable extent of dry and fertile land. Wheat and oats are largely cultivated, while hemp, vegetables and various fruits are also produced. The vine flourishes chiefly in the east of the arrondissement of Sancerre. The department contains a comparatively large extent of pasturage, which has given rise to a considerable trade in horses, cattle, sheep and wool for the northern markets. Nearly one-fifth of the whole area consists of forest. Mines of iron are worked, and various sorts of stone are quarried. Brick, porcelain and glassworks employ large numbers of the inhabitants. There are also flour-mills, distilleries, oil-works, saw-mills and tanneries. Bourges and Vierzon are metallurgical and engineering centres. Coal and wine are leading imports, while cereals, timber, wool, fruit and industrial products are exported. The department is served by the Orleans railway, and possesses in all more than 300 m. of navigable waterways. It is divided into three arrondissements (29 cantons, 292 communes) cognominal with the towns of Bourges, Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, and Sancerre, of which the first is the capital, the seat of an archbishop and of a court of appeal and headquarters of the VIII. army-corps. The department belongs to the academie (educational division) of Paris. Bourges, Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, Vierzon and Sancerre (q.v.) are the principal towns. Mehun-sur-Yevre (pop. 5227), a town with an active manufacture of porcelain, has a Romanesque church and a chateau of the 14th century. Among the other interesting churches of the department, that at St Satur has a fine choir of the 14th and 15th centuries; those of Dun-sur-Auron, Plaimpied, Aix d'Angillon and Jeanvrin are Romanesque in style, while Aubigny-Ville has a church of the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries and a chateau of later date. Drevant, built on the site of a Roman town, preserves ruins of a large theatre and other remains. Among the megalithic monuments of Cher, the most notable is that at Villeneuve-sur-Cher, known as the Pierre-de-la-Roche.



CHERAT, a hill cantonment and sanatorium in the Peshawar district of the North-West Frontier Province, India, 34 m. S.E. of Peshawar. It is situated at an elevation of 4500 ft, on the west of the Khattak range, which divides the Peshawar from the Kohat district. It was first used in 1861, and since then has been employed during the hot weather as a health station for the British troops quartered in the hot and malarious vale of Peshawar.



CHERBOURG, a naval station, fortified town and seaport of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Manche, on the English Channel, 232 m. W.N.W. of Paris on the Ouest-Etat railway. Pop. (1906) town, 35,710; commune, 43,827. Cherbourg is situated at the mouth of the Divette, on a small bay at the apex of the indentation formed by the northern shore of the peninsula of Cotentin. Apart from a fine hospital and the church of La Trinite dating from the 15th century, the town has no buildings of special interest. A rich collection of paintings is housed in the hotel de ville. A statue of the painter J.F. Millet, born near Cherbourg, stands in the public garden, and there is an equestrian statue of Napoleon I. in the square named after him. Cherbourg is a fortified place of the first class, headquarters of one of the five naval arrondissements of France, and the seat of a sub-prefect. It has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a lycee and a naval school. The chief industries of the town proper are fishing, saw-milling, tanning, leather-dressing, ship-building, iron and copper-founding, rope-making and the manufacture of agricultural implements. There are stone quarries in the environs, and the town has trade in farm produce.

Cherbourg derives its chief importance from its naval and commercial harbours, which are distant from each other about half a mile. The former consists of three main basins cut out of the rock, and has an area of 55 acres. The minimum depth of water is 30 ft. Connected with the harbour are dry docks, the yards where the largest ships in the French navy are constructed, magazines, rope walks, and the various workshops requisite for a naval arsenal of the first class. The works and town are carefully guarded on every side by redoubts and fortifications, and are commanded by batteries on the surrounding hills. There is a large naval hospital close to the harbour. The commerical harbour at the mouth of the Divette communicates with the sea by a channel 650 yds. long. It consists of two parts, an outer and tidal harbour 17-1/2 acres in extent, and an inner basin 15 acres in extent, with a depth on sill at ordinary spring tide of 25 ft. Outside these harbours is the triangular bay, which forms the roadstead of Cherbourg. The bay is admirably sheltered by the land on every side but the north. On that side it is sheltered by a huge breakwater, over 2 m. in length, with a width of 650 ft. at its base and 30 ft. at its summit, which is protected by forts, and leaves passages for vessels to the east and west. These passages are guarded by forts placed on islands intervening between the breakwater and the mainland, and themselves united to the land by breakwaters. The surface within these barriers amounts to about 3700 acres. Cherbourg is a port of call for the American, North German Lloyd and other important lines of transatlantic steamers. The chief exports are stone for road-making, butter, eggs and vegetables; the chief imports are coal, timber, superphosphates and wine from Algeria. Great Britain is the principal customer.

Cherbourg is supposed by some investigators to occupy the site of the Roman station of Coriallum, but nothing definite is known about its origin. The name was long regarded as a corruption of Caesaris Burgus (Caesar's Borough). William the Conqueror, under whom it appears as Carusbur, provided it with a hospital and a church; and Henry II. of England on several occasions chose it as his residence. In 1295 it was pillaged by an English fleet from Yarmouth; and in the 14th century it frequently suffered during the wars against the English. Captured by the English in 1418 after a four months' siege, it was recovered by Charles VII. of France in 1450. An attempt was made under Louis XIV. to construct a military port; but the fortifications were dismantled in 1688, and further damage was inflicted by the English in 1758. In 1686 Vauban planned harbour-works which were begun under Louis XVI. and continued by Napoleon I. It was left, however, to Louis Philippe, and particularly to Napoleon III., to complete them, and their successful realization was celebrated in 1858, in the presence of the queen of England, against whose dominions they had at one time been mainly directed. At the close of 1857, L8,000,000, of which the breakwater cost over L2,500,000, had been expended on the works; in 1889 a further sum of L680,000 was voted by the Chamber of Deputies for the improvement of the port.



CHERBULIEZ, CHARLES VICTOR (1829-1899), French novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 19th of July 1829, at Geneva, where his father, Andre Cherbuliez (1795-1874), was a classical professor at the university. He was descended from a family of Protestant refugees, and many years later Victor Cherbuliez resumed his French nationality, taking advantage of an act passed in the early days of the Revolution. Geneva was the scene of his early education; thence he proceeded to Paris, and afterwards to the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He returned to his native town and engaged in the profession of teaching. After his resumption of French citizenship he was elected a member of the Academy (1881), and having received the Legion of Honour in 1870, he was promoted to be officer of the order in 1892. He died on the 1st of July 1899. Cherbuliez was a voluminous and successful writer of fiction. His first book, originally published in 1860, reappeared in 1864 under the title of Un Cheval de Phidias: it is a romantic study of art in the golden age of Athens. He went on to produce a series of novels, of which the following are the best known:—Le Comte Kostia (1863), Le Prince Vitale (1864), Le Roman d'une honnete femme (1866), L'Aventure de Ladislas Bolski (1869), Miss Ravel (1875), Samuel Brohl et Cie (1877), L'Idee de Jean Teterol (1878), Noirs et rouges (1881), La Vocation du Comte Ghislain (1888), Une Gageure (1890), Le Secret du precepteur (1893), Jacquine Vanesse (1898), &c. Most of these novels first appeared in the Revue des deux mondes, to which Cherbuliez also contributed a number of political and learned articles, usually printed with the pseudonym G. Valbert. Many of these have been published in collected form under the titles L'Allemagne politique (1870), L'Espagne politique (1874), Profils etrangers (1889), L'Art et la nature (1892), &c. The volume Etudes de litterature et d'art (1873) includes articles for the most part reprinted from Le Temps. The earlier novels of Cherbuliez have been said with truth to show marked traces of the influence of George Sand; and in spite of modification, his method was that of an older school. He did not possess the sombre power or the intensely analytical skill of some of his later contemporaries, but his books are distinguished by a freshness and honesty, fortified by cosmopolitan knowledge and lightened by unobtrusive humour, which fully account for their wide popularity in many countries besides his own. His genius was the reverse of dramatic, and attempts to present two of his stories on the stage have not succeeded. His essays have all the merits due to liberal observation and thoroughness of treatment; their style, like that of the novels, is admirably lucid and correct. (C.)



CHERCHEL, a seaport of Algeria, in the arrondissement and department of Algiers, 55 m. W. of the capital. It is the centre of an agricultural and vine-growing district, but is commercially of no great importance, the port, which consists of part only of the inner port of Roman days, being small and the entry difficult. The town is chiefly noteworthy for the extensive ruins of former cities on the same site. Of existing buildings the most remarkable is the great Mosque of the Hundred Columns, now used as a military hospital. The mosque contains 89 columns of diorite, surmounted by a variety of capitals brought from other buildings. The population of the town in 1906 was 4733; of the commune of which Cherchel is the centre 11,088.

Cherchel was a city of the Carthaginians, who named it Jol. Juba II. (25 B.C.) made it the capital of the Mauretanian kingdom under the name of Caesarea. Juba's tomb, the so-called Tombeau de la Chretienne (see ALGERIA), is 7-1/2 m. E. of the town. Destroyed by the Vandals, Caesarea regained some of its importance under the Byzantines. Taken by the Arabs it was renamed by them Cherchel. Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa captured the city in 1520 and annexed it to his Algerian pashalik. In the early years of the 18th century it was a commercial city of some importance, but was laid in ruins by a terrible earthquake in 1738. In 1840 the town was occupied by the French. The ruins suffered greatly from vandalism during the early period of French rule, many portable objects being removed to museums in Paris or Algiers, and most of the monuments destroyed for the sake of their stone. Thus the dressed stones of the ancient theatre served to build barracks; the material of the hippodrome went to build the church; while the portico of the hippodrome, supported by granite and marble columns, and approached by a fine flight of steps, was destroyed by Cardinal Lavigerie in a search for the tomb of St Marciana. The fort built by Arouj Barbarossa, elder brother of Khair-ed-Din, was completely destroyed by the French. There are many fragments of a white marble temple. The ancient cisterns still supply the town with water. The museum contains some of the finest statues discovered in Africa. They include colossal figures of Aesculapius and Bacchus, and the lower half of a seated Egyptian divinity in black basalt, bearing the cartouche of Tethmosis (Thothmes) I. This statue was found at Cherchel, and is held by some archaeologists to indicate an Egyptian settlement here about 1500 B.C.

See AFRICA, ROMAN, and the description of the museum by P. Gauckler in the Musees et collections archeologiques de l'Algerie.



CHERCHEN, a town of East Turkestan, situated at the northern foot of the Altyn-tagh, a range of the Kuen-lun, in 85 deg. 35' E., and on the Cherchen-darya, at an altitude of 4100 ft. It straggles mostly along the irrigation channels that go off from the left side of the river, and in 1900 had a population of about 2000. The Cherchen-darya, which rises in the Arka-tagh, a more southerly range of the Kuen-lun, in 87 deg. E. and 36 deg. 20' N., flows north until it strikes the desert below Cherchen, after which it turns north-east and meanders through a wide bed (300-400 ft.), beset with dense reeds and flanked by older channels. It is probable that anciently it entered the disused channel of the Ettek-tarim, but at present it joins the existing Tarim in the lake of Kara-buran, a sort of lacustrine "ante-room" to the Kara-koshun (N.M. Przhevalsky's Lop-nor). At its entrance into the former lake the Cherchen-darya forms a broad delta. The river is frozen in its lower course for two to three months in the winter. From the foot of the mountains to the oasis of Cherchen it has a fall of nearly 4000 ft., whereas in the 300 m. or so from Cherchen to the Kara-buran the fall is 1400 ft. The total length is 500-600 m., and the drainage basin measures 6000-7000 sq. m.

See Sven Hedin, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902, vols. i. and ii. (1905-1906); also TAKLA-MAKAN.



CHEREMISSES, or TCHEREMISSES, a Finnish people living in isolated groups in the governments of Kazan, Viatka, Novgorod, Perm, Kostroma and Ufa, eastern Russia. Their name for themselves is Mori or Mari (people), possibly identifiable with the ancient Merians of Suzdalia. Their language belongs to the Finno-Ugrian family. They number some 240,000. There are two distinct physical types: one of middle height, black-haired, brown skin and flat-faced; the other short, fair-haired, white skinned, with narrow eyes and straight short noses. Those who live on the right bank of the Volga are sometimes known as Hill Cheremis, and are taller and stronger than those who inhabit the swamps of the left bank. They are farmers and herd horses and cattle. Their religion is a hotchpotch of Shamanism, Mahommedanism and Christianity. They are usually monogamous. The chief ceremony of marriage is a forcible abduction of the bride. The women, naturally ugly, are often disfigured by sore eyes caused by the smoky atmosphere of the huts. They wear a head-dress, trimmed with glass jewels, forming a hood behind stiffened with metal. On their breasts they carry a breastplate formed of coins, small bells and copper disks.

See Smirinov, Mordres et Tcheremisses (Paris, 1895); J. Abercromby, Pre- and Proto-historic Finns (London, 1898).



CHERIBON, a residency of the island of Java, Dutch East Indies, bounded S. and W. by the Preanger regencies, N.W. by Krawang, N. by the Java Sea, and E. by the residencies of Tegal and Banyumas. Pop. (1897) 1,577,521, including 867 Europeans, 21,108 Chinese, and 2016 Arabs and other Asiatic foreigners. The natives consist of Middle Javanese in the north and Sundanese in the south. Cheribon has been for many centuries the centre of Islamism in western Java, and is also the seat of a fanatical Mahommedan sect controlled from Mecca. The native population is on the whole orderly and prosperous. The northern half of the residency is flat and marshy in places, especially in the north-western corner, while the southern half is mountainous. In the middle stands the huge volcano Cherimai, clad with virgin forest and coffee plantations, and surrounded at its foot by rice fields. South-south-west of Cherimai on the Preanger border is the Sawal volcano, at whose foot is the beautiful Penjalu lake. Sulphur and salt springs occur on the slopes of Cherimai, and near Palimanan there is a cavernous hole called Guwagalang (or Payagalang), which exhales carbonic acid gas, and is considered holy by the natives and guarded by priests. There is a similar hole in the Preanger. The principal products of cultivation are sugar, coffee, rice and also tea and pulse (rachang), the plantations being for the most part owned by Europeans. The chief towns are Cheribon, a seaport and capital of the residency, the seaport of Indramaya, Palimanan, Majalengka, Kuningan and Chiamis. Cheribon has a good open roadstead. The town is very old and irregularly built, and the climate is unhealthy; nevertheless it has a lively export trade in sugar and coffee and is a regular port of call. In 1908 the two descendants of the old sultans of Cheribon still resided there in their respective Kratons or palaces, and each received an annual income of over L1500 for the loss of his privileges. A country residence belonging to one of the sultans is situated close to Cheribon and is much visited on account of its fantastic architecture. Indramaya was a considerable trading place in the days of the early Portuguese and Dutch traders. Kuningan is famous for a breed of small but strong horses.



CHERKASY (Polish, Czerkasy), a town of Russia, in the government of Kiev, 96 m. S.E. of Kiev, on the right bank of the Dnieper. Pop. (1883) 15,740; (1897) 26,619. The inhabitants (Little Russians) are mostly employed in agriculture and gardening; but sugar and tobacco are manufactured and spirits distilled. Cherkasy was an important town of the Ukraine in the 15th century, and remained so, under Polish rule, until the revolt of the Cossack hetman Chmielnicki (1648). It was annexed by Russia in 1795.



CHERNIGOV, a government of Little Russia, on the left bank of the Dnieper, bounded by the governments of Mogilev and Smolensk on the N., Orel and Kursk on the E., Poltava on the S., and Kiev and Minsk on the W. Area, 20,233 sq. m. Its surface is an undulating plain, 650 to 750 ft. high in the north and 370 to 600 ft. in the south, deeply grooved by ravines and the valleys of the rivers. In the north, beyond the Desna river, about one-third of the area is under forest (rapidly disappearing), and marshes occur along the courses of the rivers; while to the south of the Desna the soil is dry and sometimes sandy, and gradually it assumes the characters of a steppe-land as one proceeds southward. The government is drained by the Dnieper, which forms its western boundary for 180 m., and by its tributary the Desna. The latter, which flows through Chernigov for nearly 350 m., is navigable, and timber is brought down its tributaries. The climate is much colder in the wooded tracts of the north than in the south; the average yearly temperature at the city of Chernigov is 44.4 deg. F. (January, 23 deg.; July 68.5 deg.).

The population reached 1,996,250 in 1883, 2,316,818 in 1897, and 2,746,300 (estimate) in 1906. It is chiefly Little Russian (85.6%); but Great Russians (6.1%), mostly Raskolniks, i.e. nonconformists, and White Russians (5.6%) inhabit the northern districts. There are, besides, some Germans, as well as Greeks, at Nyezhin. Agriculture is the principal occupation; in the north, however, many of the inhabitants are engaged in the timber trade, and in the production of tar, pitch, wooden wares, leather goods and so forth. Cattle-breeding is carried on in the central districts. Beet is extensively cultivated. The cultivation of tobacco is increasing. Hemp is widely grown in the north, and the milder climate of the south encourages gardening. Bee-keeping is extensively carried on by the Raskolniks. Limestone, grindstones, china-clay and building-stone are quarried. Manufactures have begun to develop rapidly of late, the most important being sugar-works, distilleries, cloth-mills and glass-works. The government is divided into fifteen districts, their chief towns being Chernigov (q.v.), Borzna (pop. 12,458 in 1897), Glukhov (14,856), Gorodnya (4197), Konotop (23,083), Kozelets (5160), Krolevets (10,375), Mglin (7631), Novgorod-Syeversk (9185), Novozybkov (15,480), Nyezhin (32,481), Oster (5384), Sosnitsa (2507), Starodub (12,451) and Surazh (4004).



CHERNIGOV, a town of Russia, capital of the above government, on the right bank of the Desna, nearly half a mile from the river, 141 m. by rail N.E. of Kiev on a branch line. Pop. (1897) 27,006. It is an archiepiscopal see and possesses a cathedral of the 11th century. In 907 the city is mentioned in the treaty of Oleg as next in importance to Kiev, and in the 11th century it became the capital of the principality of Syeversk and an important commercial city. The Mongol invasion put an end to its prosperity in 1239. Lithuania annexed it in the 14th century, but it was soon seized by Poland, which held it until the 17th century. In 1686 it was definitely annexed to Russia.



CHEROKEE (native Tsalagi, "cave people"), a tribe of North American Indians of Iroquoian stock. Next to the Navaho they are the largest tribe in the United States and live mostly in Oklahoma (formerly Indian territory). Before their removal they possessed a large tract of country now distributed among the states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and the west of Florida. Their chief divisions were then settled around the head-waters of the Savannah and Tennessee rivers, and were distinguished as the Elati Tsalagi or Lower Cherokees, i.e. those in the plains, and Atali Tsalagi or Upper Cherokees, i.e. those on the mountains. They were further divided into seven exogamous clans. Fernando de Soto travelled through their country in 1540, and during the next three centuries they were important factors in the history of the south. They attached themselves to the English in the disputes and contests which arose between the European colonizers, formally recognized the English king in 1730, and in 1755 ceded a part of their territory and permitted the erection of English forts. Unfortunately this amity was interrupted not long after; but peace was again restored in 1761. When the revolutionary war broke out they sided with the royalist party. This led to their subjugation by the new republic, and they had to surrender that part of their lands which lay to the south of the Savannah and east of the Chattahoochee. Peace was made in 1781, and in 1785 they recognized the supremacy of the United States and were confirmed in their possessions. In 1820 they adopted a civilized form of government, and in 1827, as a "Nation," a formal constitution. The gradual advance of white immigration soon led to disputes with the settlers, who desired their removal, and exodus after exodus took place; a small part of the tribe agreed (1835) to remove to another district, but the main body remained. An appeal was made by them to the United States government; but President Andrew Jackson refused to interfere. A force of 2000 men, under the command of General Winfield Scott, was sent in 1838, and the Cherokees were compelled to emigrate to their present position. After the settlement various disagreements between the eastern and western Cherokees continued for some time, but in 1839 a union was effected. In the Civil War they all at first sided with the South; but before long a strong party joined the North, and this led to a disastrous internecine struggle. On the close of the contest they were confirmed in the possession of their territory, but were forced to give a portion of their lands to their emancipated slaves. Their later history is mainly a story of hopeless struggle to maintain their tribal independence against the white man. In 1892 they sold their western territory known as the "Cherokee outlet." Until 1906, when tribal government virtually ceased, the "nation" had an elected chief, a senate and house of representatives. Many of them have become Christians, schools have been established and there is a tribal press. Those in Oklahoma still number some 26,000, though most are of mixed blood. A group, known as the Eastern Band, some 1400 strong, are on a reservation in North Carolina. Their language consists of two dialects—a third, that of the "Lower" branch, having been lost. The syllabic alphabet invented in 1821 by George Guess (Sequoyah) is the character employed.

See also Handbook of American Indians(Washington, 1907); T.V. Parker, Cherokee Indians (N.Y., 1909); and INDIANS, NORTH AMERICAN.



CHEROOT, or SHEROOT (from the Tamil word "shuruttu," a roll), a cigar made from tobacco grown in southern India and the Philippine Islands. It was once esteemed very highly for its delicate flavour. A cheroot differs from other cigars in having both ends cut square, instead of one being pointed, and one end considerably larger than the other.



CHERRAPUNJI, a village in the Khasi hills district of Assam. It is notable as having the heaviest known rainfall in the world. In 1861 it registered a total of 905 in., and its annual average is 458 in. This excessive rainfall is caused by the fact that Cherrapunji stands on the edge of the plateau overlooking the plains of Bengal, where it catches the full force of the monsoon as it rises from the sea. There is a good coal-seam in the vicinity.



CHERRY. As a cultivated fruit-tree the cherry is generally supposed to be of Asiatic origin, whence, according to Pliny, it was brought to Italy by Lucullus after his defeat of Mithradates, king of Pontus, 68 B.C. As with most plants which have been long and extensively cultivated, it is a matter of difficulty, if not an impossibility, to identify the parent stock of the numerous cultivated varieties of cherry; but they are generally referred to two species: Prunus Cerasus, the wild or dwarf cherry, the origin of the morello, duke and Kentish cherries, and P. Avium, the gean, the origin of the geans, hearts and bigarreaus. Both species grow wild through Europe and western Asia to the Himalayas, but the dwarf cherry has the more restricted range of the two in Britain, as it does not occur in Scotland and is rare in Ireland. The cherries form a section Cerasus of the genus Prunus; and they have sometimes been separated as a distinct genus from the plums proper; both have a stone-fruit or drupe, but the drupe of the cherry differs from that of the plum in not having a waxy bloom; further, the leaves of the plum are rolled (convolute) in the bud, while those of the cherry are folded (conduplicate).

The cherries are trees of moderate size and shrubs, having smooth, serrate leaves and white flowers. They are natives of the temperate regions of both hemispheres; and the cultivated varieties ripen their fruit in Norway as far as 63 deg. N. The geans are generally distinguished from the common cherry by the greater size of the trees, and the deeper colour and comparative insipidity of the flesh in the ripe fruit, which adheres firmly to the "nut" or stone; but among the very numerous cultivated varieties specific distinctions shade away so that the fruit cannot be ranged under these two heads. The leading varieties are recognized as bigarreaus, dukes, morellos and geans. Several varieties are cultivated as ornamental trees and on account of their flowers.

The cherry is a well-flavoured sub-acid fruit, and is much esteemed for dessert. Some of the varieties are particularly selected for pies, tarts, &c., and others for the preparation of preserves, and for making cherry brandy. The fruit is also very extensively employed in the preparation of the liqueurs known as kirschwasser, ratafia and maraschino. Kirschwasser is made chiefly on the upper Rhine from the wild black gean, and in the manufacture the entire fruit-flesh and kernels are pulped up and allowed to ferment. By distillation of the fermented pulp the liqueur is obtained in a pure, colourless condition. Ratafia is similarly manufactured, also by preference from a gean. Maraschino, a highly valued liqueur, the best of which is produced at Zara in Dalmatia, differs from these in being distilled from a cherry called marasca, the pulp of which is mixed with honey, honey or sugar being added to the distillate for sweetening. It is also said that the flavour is heightened by the use of the leaves of the perfumed cherry, Prunus Mahaleb, a native of central and southern Europe.

The wood of the cherry tree is valued by cabinetmakers, and that of the gean tree is largely used in the manufacture of tobacco pipes. The American wild cherry, Prunus serotina, is much sought after, its wood being compact, fine-grained, not liable to warp, and susceptible of receiving a brilliant polish. The kernels of the perfumed cherry, P. Mahaleb, are used in confectionery and for scent. A gum exudes from the stem of cherry trees similar in its properties to gum arabic.

The cherry is increased by budding on the wild gean, obtained by sowing the stones of the small black or red wild cherries. To secure very dwarf trees the Prunus Mahaleb has been used for the May duke, Kentish, morello and analogous sorts, but it is not adapted for strong-growing varieties like the bigarreaus. The stocks are budded, or, more rarely, grafted, at the usual seasons. The cherry prefers a free, loamy soil, with a well-drained subsoil. Stiff soils and dry gravelly subsoils are both unsuitable, though the trees require a large amount of moisture, particularly the large-leaved sorts, such as the bigarreaus. For standard trees, the bigarreau section should be planted 30 ft. apart, or more, in rich soil, and the May duke, morello and similar varieties 20 or 25 ft. apart; while, as trained trees against walls and espaliers, from 20 to 24 ft. should be allowed for the former, and from 15 to 20 ft. for the latter. In forming the stems of a standard tree the temporary side-shoots should not be allowed to attain too great a length, and should not be more than two years old when they are cut close to the stem. The first three shoots retained to form the head should be shortened to about 15 in., and two shoots from each encouraged, one at the end, and the other 3 or 4 in. lower down. When these have become established, very little pruning will be required, and that chiefly to keep the principal branches as nearly equal in strength as possible for the first few years. Espalier trees should have the branches about a foot apart, starting from the stem with an upward curve, and then being trained horizontally. In summer pruning the shoots on the upper branches must be shortened at least a week before those on the lower ones. After a year or two clusters of fruit buds will be developed on spurs along the branches, and those spurs will continue productive for an indefinite period. For wall trees any form of training may be adopted; but as the fruit is always finest on young spurs, fan-training is probably the most advantageous. A succession of young shoots should be laid in every year. The morello, which is of twiggy growth and bears on the young wood, must be trained in the fan form, and care should be taken to avoid the very common error of crowding its branches.

Forcing.—The cherry will not endure a high temperature nor close atmosphere. A heat of 45 deg. at night will be sufficient at starting, this being gradually increased during the first few weeks to 55 deg., but lowered again when the blossom buds are about to open. After stoning the temperature may be again gradually raised to 60 deg., and may go up to 70 deg. by day, or 75 deg. by sun heat, and 60 deg. at night. The best forcing cherries are the May duke and the royal duke, the duke cherries being of more compact growth than the bigarreau tribe and generally setting better; nevertheless a few of the larger kinds, such as bigarreau Napoleon, black tartarian and St Margaret's, should be forced for variety. The trees may be either planted out in tolerably rich soil, or grown in large pots of good turfy friable calcareous loam mixed with rotten dung. If the plants are small, they may be put into 12-in. pots in the first instance, and after a year shifted into 15-in. pots early in autumn, and plunged in some loose or even very slightly fermenting material. The soil of the pots should be protected from snow-showers and cold rains. Occasionally trees have been taken up in autumn with balls, potted and forced in the following spring; but those which have been established a year in the pots are to be preferred. Such only as are well furnished with blossom-buds should be selected. The trees should be removed to the forcing house in the beginning of December, if fruit be required very early in the season. During the first and second weeks it may be kept nearly close; but, as vegetation advances, air becomes absolutely necessary during the day, and even at night when the weather will permit. If forcing is commenced about the middle or third week of December, the fruit ought to be ripe by about the end of March. After the fruit is gathered, the trees should be duly supplied with water at the root, and the foliage kept well syringed till the wood is mature. (See also FRUIT AND FLOWER FARMING.)



CHERRYVALE, a city of Montgomery county, Kansas, U.S.A., about 140 m. S.S.E. of Kansas City. Pop. (1890) 2104; (1900) 3472, including 180 negroes; (1905, state census) 5089; (1910) 4304. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and the main line and a branch (of which it is a terminus) of the St Louis & San Francisco railways. It is in a farming district and in the Kansas natural-gas and oil-field, and has large zinc smelters, an oil refinery, and various manufactures, including vitrified brick, flour, glass, cement and ploughs. Cherryvale was laid out in 1871 by the Kansas City, Lawrence & South Kansas Railway Company (later absorbed by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe). The main part of the town was destroyed by fire in 1873, but was soon rebuilt, and in 1880 Cherryvale became a city of the third and afterwards of the second class. Natural gas, which is used as a factory fuel and for street and domestic lighting, was found here in 1889, and oil several years later.



CHERRY VALLEY, a village of Otsego county, New York, U.S.A., in a township of the same name, 68 m. N.W. of Albany. Pop. (1890) 685; (1900) 772; (1905) 746; (1910) 792; of the township (1910) 1706. It is served by the Delaware & Hudson railway. Cherry Valley is in the centre of a rich farming and dairying region, has a chair factory, and is a summer resort with sulphur and lithia springs. It was the scene of a terrible massacre during the War of Independence. The village was attacked on the 11th of November 1778 by Walter Butler (d. 1781) and Joseph Brant with a force of 800 Indians and Tories, who killed about 50 men, women and children, sacked and burned most of the houses, and carried off more than 70 prisoners, who were subjected to the greatest cruelties and privations, many of them dying or being tomahawked before the Canadian settlements were reached. Cherry Valley was incorporated in 1812.



CHERSIPHRON, a Cretan architect, the traditional builder (with his son Metagenes) of the great Ionic temple of Artemis at Ephesus set up by the Greeks in the 6th century. Some remains of this temple were found by J.T. Wood and brought to the British Museum. In connexion with the pillars, which are adorned with archaic reliefs, a fragmentary inscription has been found, recording that they were presented by King Croesus, as indeed Herodotus informs us. This temple was burned on the day on which Alexander the Great was born.



CHERSO, an island in the Adriatic Sea, off the east coast of Istria, from which it is separated by the channel of Farasina. Pop. (1900) 8274. It is situated in the Gulf of Quarnero, and is connected with the island of Lussin, lying on the S.W. by a turn bridge over the small channel of Ossero, and with the island of Veglia, lying on the E. by the Canale di Mezzo. These three are the principal islands of the Quarnero group, and form together the administrative district of Lussin in the Austrian crownland of Istria. Cherso is an elongated island about 40 m. long, 1-1/4 to 7 m. wide, and has an area of 150 sq. m. It is traversed by a range of mountains, which attain in the peak of Syss an altitude of 2090 ft. and form natural terraces, planted with vines and olive trees, specially in the middle and southern parts of the island. The northern part is covered with bushes of laurel and mastic, but there are scarcely any large trees. There is a scarcity of springs, and the houses are generally furnished with cisterns for rain water. In the centre of the island is an interesting lake called the Vrana or Crow's Lake, situated at an altitude of 40 ft. above, the level of the sea, 3-3/4 m. long, 1 m. wide and 184 ft. deep. This lake is in all probability fed by subterranean sources, The chief town of the island is Cherso, situated on the west coast. It possesses a good harbour and is provided with a shipwright's wharf.



CHERSONESE, CHERSONESUS, or CHERRONESUS (Gr. [Greek: chersos], dry, and [Greek: nesos], island), a word equivalent to "peninsula." In ancient geography the Chersonesus Thracica, Chersonesus Taurica or Scythica, and Chersonesus Cimbrica correspond to the peninsulas of the Dardanelles, the Crimea and Jutland; and the Golden Chersonese is usually identified with the peninsula of Malacca. The Tauric Chersonese was further distinguished as the Great, in contrast to the Heracleotic or Little Chersonese at its S.W. corner, where Sevastopol now stands.

The Tauric Chersonese[1] (from 2nd century A.D. called Cherson) was a Dorian colony of Heraclea in Bithynia, founded in the 5th century B.C. in the Crimea about 2 m. S. of the modern Sevastopol. After defending itself against the kingdom of Bosporus (q.v.), and the native Scythians and Tauri, and even extending its power over the west coast of the peninsula, it was compelled to call in the aid of Mithradates VI. and his general Diophantus, c. 110 B.C., and submitted to the Pontic dynasty. On regaining a nominal independence, it came more or less under the Roman suzerainty. In the latter part of the 1st century A.D., and again in the succeeding century, it received a Roman garrison and suffered much interference in its internal affairs. In the time of Constantine, in return for assistance against the Bosporans and the native tribes, it regained its autonomy and received special privileges. It must, however, have been subject to the Byzantine authorities, as inscriptions testify to restorations of its walls by Byzantine officials. Under Theophilus the central government sent out a governor to take the place of the elected magistrate. Even so it seems to have preserved a measure of self-government and may be said to have been the last of the Greek city states. Its ruin was brought about by the commercial rivalry of the Genoese, who forbade the Greeks to trade there and diverted its commerce to Caffa and Sudak. Previous to this it had been the main emporium of Byzantine commerce upon the N. coast of the Euxine. Through it went the communications of the empire with the Petchenegs and other native tribes, and more especially with the Russians. The commerce of Cherson is guaranteed in the early treaties between the Greeks and Russians, and it was in Cherson, according to Ps. Nestor's chronicle, that Vladimir was baptized in 988 after he had captured the city. The constitution of the city was at first democratic under Damiorgi, a senate and a general assembly. Latterly it appears to have become aristocratic, and most of the power was concentrated in the hands of the first archon or Proteuon, who in time was superseded by the strategus sent out from Byzantium. Its most interesting political document is the form of oath sworn to by all the citizens in the 3rd century B.C.

The remains of the city occupy a space about two-thirds of a mile long by half a mile broad. They are enclosed by a Byzantine wall. Foundations and considerable remains of a Greek wall going back to the 4th century B.C. have been found beneath this in the eastern or original part of the site. Many Byzantine churches, both cruciform and basilican, have been excavated. The latter survived here into the 13th century when they had long been extinct in other Greek-speaking lands. The churches were adorned with frescoes, wall and floor mosaics, some well preserved, and marble carvings similar to work found at Ravenna. The fact that the site has not been inhabited since the 14th century makes it important for our knowledge of Byzantine life. The city was used by the Romans as a place of banishment: St Clement of Rome was exiled hither and first preached the Gospel; another exile was Justinian II., who is said to have destroyed the city in revenge. We have a considerable series of coins from the 3rd century B.C. to about A.D. 200, and also some of Byzantine date.

See B. Koehne, Beitrage zur Geschichte von Cherronesus in Taurien (St Petersburg, 1848); art. "Chersonesos" (20) by C.G. Brandis in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencydopadie, vol. iii. 221; A. A. Bobrinskoj, Chersonesus Taurica (St Petersburg, 1905) (Russian); V. V. Latyshev, Inscrr. Orae Septentr. Ponti Euxini, vols. i. and iv. Reports of excavations appear in the Compte rendu of the Imperial Archaeological Commission of St Petersburg from 1888 and in its Bulletin. See E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1907). (E. H. M.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In Pliny "Heraclea Chersonesus," probably owing to a confusion with the name of the mother city.



CHERTSEY, a market town in the Chertsey parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 22 m. W.S.W. from London by the London & South-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 12,762. It is pleasantly situated on the right bank of the Thames, which is crossed by a bridge of seven arches, built of Purbeck stone in 1785. The parish church, rebuilt in 1808, contains a tablet to Charles James Fox, who resided at St Anne's Hill in the vicinity, and another to Lawrence Tomson, a translator of the New Testament in the 17th century. Hardly any remains are left of a great Benedictine abbey, whose buildings at one time included an area of 4 acres. They fell into almost complete decay in the 17th century, and a "fair house" was erected out of the ruins by Sir Nicholas Carew of Beddington. The ground-plan can be traced; the fish-ponds are complete; and carved stones, coffins and encaustic tiles of a peculiar manufacture are frequently exhumed. Among the abbots the most famous was John de Rutherwyk, who was appointed in 1307, and continued, till his death in 1346, to carry on a great system of alteration and extension, which almost made the abbey a new building. The house in which the poet Cowley spent the last years of his life remains, and the chamber in which he died is preserved unaltered. The town is the centre of a large residential district. Its principal trade is in produce for the London markets.

The first religious settlement in Surrey, a Benedictine abbey, was founded in 666 at Chertsey (Cerotesei, Certesey), the manor of which belonged to the abbot until 1539, since when it has been a possession of the crown. In the reign of Edward the Confessor Chertsey was a large village and was made the head of Godley hundred. The increase of copyhold under Abbot John de Rutherwyk led to discontent, the tenants in 1381 rising and burning the rolls. Chertsey owed its importance primarily to the abbey, but partly to its geographical position. Ferries over the Redewynd were subjects of royal grant in 1340 and 1399; the abbot built a new bridge over the Bourne in 1333, and wholly maintained the bridge over the Thames when it replaced the 14th century ferry. In 1410 the king gave permission to build a bridge over the Redewynd. As the centre of an agricultural district the markets of Chertsey were important and are still held. Three days' fairs were granted to the abbots in 1129 for the feast of St Peter ad Vincula by Henry III. for Holy Rood day; in 1282 for Ascension day; and a market on Mondays was obtained in 1282. In 1590 there were many poor, for whose relief Elizabeth gave a fair for a day in Lent and a market on Thursdays. These fairs still survive.

See Lucy Wheeler, Chertsey Abbey (London, 1905); Victoria County History, Surrey.



CHERUBIM, the Hebrew plural of "cherub" (kerub), imaginary winged animal figures of a sacred character, referred to in the description of Solomon's temple (1 Kings vi. 23-35, vii. 29, viii. 6, 7), and also in that of the ark of the tabernacle (Ex. xxv. 18-22, xxvi. 1, 31, xxxvii. 7-9). The cherub-images, where such occur, represent to the imagination the supernatural bearers of Yahweh's throne or chariot, or the guardians of His abode; the cherub-carvings at least symbolize His presence, and communicate some degree of His sanctity. In Gen. iii. 24 the cherubim are the guards of Paradise; Ezek. xxviii. 14, 16 cannot be mentioned here, the text being corrupt. We also find (1 Sam. iv. 4; 2 Sam. vi. 2) as a divine title "that sitteth upon the cherubim"; here it is doubted whether the cherubim are the material ones in the temple, or those which faith assumes and the artist tries to represent—the supernatural steeds upon which Yahweh issues forth to interfere in human affairs. In a poetic theophany (Ps. xviii. 10) we find "upon a cherub" parallel to "upon the wings of the wind" (cp. Isa. xix. 1; Ps. civ. 3). One naturally infers from this that the "cherub" was sometimes viewed as a bird. For the clouds, mythologically, are birds. "The Algonkins say that birds always make the winds, that they create the waterspouts, and that the clouds are the spreading and agitation of their wings." "The Sioux say that the thunder is the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings." If so, Ps. xviii. 10 is a solitary trace of the archaic view of the cherub. The bird, however, was probably a mythic, extra-natural bird. At any rate the cherub was suggested by and represents the storm-cloud, just as the sword in Gen. iii. 24 corresponds to the lightning. In Ezek. i. the four visionary creatures are expressly connected with a storm-wind, and a bright cloud (ver. 4). Elsewhere (xli. 18) the cherub has two faces (a man's and a bird's), but in i. 10 and x. 14 each cherub has four faces, a view tastefully simplified in the Johannine Apocalypse (Rev. iv. 7).

It is best, however, to separate Ezekiel from other writers, since he belongs to what may be called a great mythological revival. Probably his cherubim are a modification of older ones, which may well have been of a more sober type. His own accounts, as we have seen, vary. Probably the cherub has passed through several phases. There was a mythic bird-cherub, and then perhaps a winged animal-form, analogous to the winged figures of bulls and lions with human faces which guarded Babylonian and Assyrian temples and palaces. Another analogy is furnished by the winged genii represented as fertilizing the sacred tree—the date-palm (Tylor); here the body is human, though the face is sometimes that of an eagle. It is perhaps even more noteworthy that figures thought to be cherubs have been found at Zenjirli, within the ancient North Syrian kingdom of Ya'di (see Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients, pp. 350 f.); we may combine this with the fact that one of the great gods of this kingdom was called Rakab'el or Rekub'el (also perhaps Rakab or Rekub). A Sabaean (S. Arabian) name Karab'el also exists. The kerubim might perhaps be symbolic representatives of the god Rakab'el or Rekub'el, probably equivalent to Hadad, whose sacred animal was the bull. That the figures symbolic of Rakab or Hadad were compounded or amalgamated by the Israelites with those symbolic of Nergal (the lion-god) and Ninib (the eagle-god), is not surprising.

See further "Cherubim," in Ency. Bib. and Hast. D.B.; Cheyne, Genesis; Tylor, Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. xii. 383 ff.; Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, pp. 529 f., 631 f.; Dibelius, Die Lade Jahves (1906), pp. 72-86. (T.K.C.)



CHERUBINI, MARIA LUIGI CARLO ZENOBIO SALVATORE (1760-1842), Italian musical composer, was born at Florence on the 14th of September 1760, and died on the 15th of March 1842 in Paris. His father was accompanist (Maestro al Cembalo) at the Pergola theatre. Cherubini himself, in the preface of his autograph catalogue of his own works, states, "I began to learn music at six and composition at nine, the former from my father, the latter from Bartolomeo and Alessandro Felici, and, after their death, from Bizzarri and J Castrucci." By the time he was sixteen he had composed a great deal of church music, and in 1777 he went to Bologna, where for four years he studied under Sarti. This deservedly famous master well earned the gratitude which afterwards impelled Cherubini to place one of his double choruses by the side of his own Et Vitam Venturi as the crown of his Treatise on Counterpoint and Fugue, though the juxtaposition is disastrous for Sarti. But besides grounding Cherubini in the church music for which he had early shown so special a bent, Sarti also trained him in dramatic composition; sometimes, like the great masters of painting, entrusting his pupil with minor parts of his own works. From 1780 onwards for the next fourteen years dramatic music occupied Cherubini almost entirely. His first complete opera, Quinto Fabio, was produced in 1780, and was followed in 1782 by Armida, Adriano in Siria, and other works. Between 1782 and 1784 the successful production of five operas in four different towns must have secured Cherubini a dignified position amongst his Italian contemporaries; and in 1784 he was invited to London to produce two works for the Italian opera there, one of which, La Finta Frincipessa, was favourably received, while the other, Giulio Sabino, was, according to a contemporary witness, "murdered" by the critics.

In 1786 he left London for Paris, which became his home after a visit to Turin in 1787-1788 on the occasion of the production there of his Ifigenia in Aulide. With Cherubini, as with some other composers first trained in a school where the singer reigned supreme, the influence of the French dramatic sensibility prpved decisive, and his first French opera, Demophon (1788), though not a popular success, already marks a departure from the Italian style, which Cherubini still cultivated in the pieces he introduced into the works of Anfossi, Paisiello and Cimarosa, produced by him as director of the Italian opera in Paris (established in 1789). As in Paris Gluck realized his highest ambitions, and even Rossini awoke to a final effort of something like dramatic life in Guillaume Tell, so in Paris Cherubini became a great composer. If his melodic invention had been as warm as Gluck's, his immensely superior technique in every branch of the art would have made him one of the greatest composers that ever lived. But his personal character shows in quaint exaggeration the same asceticism that in less sour and more negative form deprives even his finest music of the glow of that lofty inspiration that fears nothing.

With Lodoiska (1791) the series of Cherubim's masterpieces begins, and by the production of Medee (1797) his reputation was firmly established. The success of this sombre classical tragedy, which shows Cherubini's genius in its full power, is an honour to the Paris public. If Cherubini had known how to combine his high ideals with an urbane tolerance of the opinions of persons of inferior taste, the severity of his music would not have prevented his attaining the height of prosperity. But Napoleon Bonaparte irritated him by an enthusiasm for the kind of Italian music against which his whole career, from the time he became Sarti's pupil, was a protest. When Cherubini said to Napoleon, "Citoyen General, I perceive that you love only that music which does not prevent you thinking of your politics," he may perhaps have been as firmly convinced of his own conciliatory manner as he was when many years afterwards he "spared the feelings" of a musical candidate by "delicately" telling him that he had "a beautiful voice and great musical intelligence, but was too ugly for a public singer." Napoleon seems to have disliked opposition in music as in other matters, and the academic offices held by Cherubini under him were for many years far below his deserts. But though Napoleon saw no reason to conceal his dislike of Cherubini, his appointment of Lesueur in 1804 as his chapelmaster must not be taken as an evidence of his hostility. Lesueur was not a great genius, but, although recommended for the post by the retiring chapelmaster, Paesiello (one of Napoleon's Italian favourites), he was a very meritorious and earnest Frenchman whom the appointment saved from starvation. Cherubini's creative genius was never more brilliant than at this period, as the wonderful two-act ballet, Anacreon, shows; but his temper and spirits were not improved by a series of disappointments which culminated in the collapse of his prospects of congenial success at Vienna, where he went in 1805 in compliance with an invitation to compose an opera for the Imperial theatre. Here he produced, under the title of Der Wassertrager, the great work which, on its first production on the 7th of January 1801 (26 Nivose, An8) as Les Deux Journees, had thrilled Paris with the accents of a humanity restored to health and peace. It was by this time an established favourite in Austria. On the 25th of February Cherubini produced Faniska, but the war between Austria and France had broken out immediately after his arrival, and public interest in artistic matters was checked by the bombardment and capitulation of Vienna. Though the meeting between Cherubini and the victorious Napoleon was not very friendly, he was called upon to direct the music at Napoleon's soirees at Schonbrunn. But this had not been his object in coming to Vienna, and he soon returned to a retired and gloomy life in Paris.

His stay at Vienna is memorable for his intercourse with Beethoven, who had a profound admiration for him which he could neither realize nor reciprocate. It is too much to expect that the mighty genius of Beethoven, which broke through all rules in vindication of the principles underlying them, would be comprehensible to a mind like Cherubini's, in which, while the creative faculties were finely developed, the critical faculty was atrophied and its place supplied by a mere disciplinary code inadequate even as a basis for the analysis of his own works. On the other hand, it would be impossible to exaggerate the influence Les Deux Journees had on the lighter parts of Beethoven's Fidelio. Cherubini's librettist was also the author of the libretto from which Fidelio was adapted, and Cherubini's score was a constant object of Beethoven's study, not only before the production of the first version of Fidelio, as Leonore, but also throughout Beethoven's life. Cherubini's record of his impressions of Beethoven as a man is contained in the single phrase, "Il etait toujours brusque," which at least shows a fine freedom from self-consciousness on the part of the man whose only remark on being told of the death of Brod, the famous oboist, was, "Ah, he hadn't much tone" ("Ah, petit son"). Of the overture to Leonore Cherubini only remarked that he could not tell what key it was in, and of Beethoven's later style he observed, "It makes me sneeze." Beethoven's brusqueness, notorious as it was, did not prevent him from assuring Cherubini that he considered him the greatest composer of the age and that he loved him and honoured him. In 1806 Haydn had just sent out his pathetic "visiting card" announcing that he was past work; Weber was still sowing wild oats, and Schubert was only nine years old. We need not, then, be surprised at Beethoven's judgment. And though we must regret that Cherubini's disposition prevented him from understanding Beethoven, it would be by no means true to say that he was uninfluenced at least by the sheer grandeur of the scale which Beethoven had by that time established as the permanent standard for musical art. Grandeur of proportion was, in fact, eminently characteristic of both composers, and the colossal structure of such a movement as the duet Perfides ennemis in Medee is almost inconceivable without the example of Beethoven's C minor trio, op. 1, No. 3, published two years before it; while the cavatina Eterno iddio in Faniska is not only worthy of Beethoven but surprisingly like him in style.

After Cherubini's disappointing visit to Vienna he divided his time between teaching at the conservatoire and cutting up playing-cards into figures and landscapes, which he framed and placed round the walls of his study. Not until 1809 was he aroused from this morbid indolence. He was staying in retirement at the country seat of the prince de Chimay, and his friends begged him to write some music for the consecration of a church there. After persistent refusals he suddenly surprised them with a mass in F for three-part chorus and orchestra. With this work the period of his great church music may be said to begin; although it was by no means the end of his career as an opera writer, which, in fact, lasted as late as his seventy-third year. This third period is also marked by some not unimportant instrumental compositions. An early event in the annals of the Philharmonic Society was his invitation to London in 1815 to produce a symphony, an overture and a vocal piece. The symphony (in D) was afterwards arranged with a new slow movement as the string quartet in C (1829), a fact which, taken in connexion with the large scale of the work, illustrates Cherubini's deficient sense of style in chamber music. Nevertheless all the six string quartets written between 1814 and 1837 are interesting works performed with success at the present day, though the last three, discovered in 1880, are less satisfactory than the earlier ones. The requiem in C minor (1817) caused Beethoven to declare that if he himself ever wrote a requiem Cherubini's would be his model.

At the eleventh hour Cherubini received recognition from Napoleon, who, during the Hundred Days, made him chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Then, with the restoration of the Bourbons, the very fact that Cherubini had not been persona grata with Napoleon brought him honour and emoluments. He was appointed, jointly with Lesueur, as composer and conductor to the Chapel Royal, and in 1822 he obtained the permanent directorship of the conservatoire. This brought him into contact, for the most part unfriendly, with all the most talented musicians of the younger generation. It is improbable that Berlioz would have been an easy subject for the wisest and kindest of spiritual guides; but no influence, repellent or attractive, could have been more disastrous for that passionate, quick-witted and yet eminently puzzle-headed mixture of Philistine and genius, than the crabbed old martinet whose regulations forbade the students access to Gluck's scores in the library, and whose only theory of art (as distinguished from his practice) is accurately formulated in the following passage from Berlioz's Grande Traite de l'instrumentation et d'orchestration: "It was no use for the modern composer to say, 'But do just listen! See how smoothly this is introduced, how well motived, how deftly connected with the context, and how splendid it sounds!' He was answered, 'That is not the point. This modulation is forbidden; therefore it must not be made.'" The lack of really educative teaching, and the actual injustice for which Cherubini's disciplinary methods were answerable, did much to weaken Berlioz's at best ill-balanced artistic sense, and it is highly probable that, but for the kindliness and comparative wisdom of his composition master, Lesueur, he would have broken down from sheer lack of any influence which could command the respect of an excitable youth starving in the pursuit of a fine art against the violent opposition of his family. Only when Mendelssohn, at the age of seventeen, visited Paris in 1825, did Cherubini startle every one by praising a young composer to his face.

In 1833 Cherubini produced his last work for the stage, Ali Baba, adapted (with new and noisy features which excited Mendelssohn's astonished disgust) from a manuscript opera, Koukourgi, written forty years earlier. It is thus, perhaps, not a fair illustration of the vigour of his old age; but the requiem in D minor (for male voices), written in 1836, is one of his greatest works, and, though not actually his last composition, is a worthy close to the long career of an artist of high ideals who, while neither by birth nor temperament a Frenchman, must yet be counted with a still greater foreigner, Gluck, as the glory of French classical music. In this he has no parallel except his friend and contemporary, Mehul, to whom he dedicated Medee, and who dedicated to him the beautiful Ossianic one-act opera Uthal. The direct results of his teaching at the conservatoire were the steady, though not as yet unhealthy, decline of French opera into a lighter style, under the amiable and modest Boieldieu and the irresponsible and witty Auber; for, as we have seen, Cherubini was quite incapable of making his ideals intelligible by any means more personal than his music; and the crude grammatical rules which he mistook for the eternal principles of his own and of all music had not the smallest use as a safeguard against vulgarity and pretentiousness.

Lest the passage above quoted from Berlioz should be suspected of bias or irrelevance, we cite a few phrases from Cherubini's Treatise on Counterpoint and Fugue, of which, though the letter-press is by his favourite pupil, Halevy, the musical examples and doctrine are beyond suspicion his own. Concerning the 16th-century idiom, incorrectly but generally known as the "changing note" (an idiom which to any musical scholar is as natural as "attraction of the relative" is to a Greek scholar), Cherubini remarks, "No tradition gives us any reason why the classics thus faultily deviated from the rule." Again, he discusses the use of "suspensions" in a series of chords which without them would contain consecutive fifths, and after making all the observations necessary for the rational conclusion that the question whether the fifths are successfully disguised or not depends upon the beauty and force of the suspensions, he merely remarks that "The opinion of the classics appears to me erroneous, notwithstanding that custom has sanctioned it, for, on the principle that the discord is a mere suspension of the chord, it should not affect the nature of the chord. But since the classics have pronounced judgment we must of course submit." In the whole treatise not one example is given from Palestrina or any other master who handled as a living language what are now the forms of contrapuntal discipline. As a dead language Cherubini brought counterpoint up to date by abandoning the church modes; but in true severity of principle, as in educational stimulus, his treatise shows a deplorable falling off from the standard set a hundred years before in Fux's Gradus ad Panassum with its delightful dialogues between master and pupil and its continual appeal to artistic experience. Whatever may have been Cherubini's success in imparting facility and certainty to his light-hearted pupils who established 19th-century French opera as a refuge from the terrors of serious art, there can be no doubt that his career as a teacher did more harm than good. In it the punishment drill of an incompetent schoolmaster was invested with the authority of a great composer, and by it the false antithesis between the "classical" and the "romantic" was erected into a barrier which many critics still find an insuperable obstacle to the understanding of the classical spirit. And yet as a composer Cherubini was no pseudo-classic but a really great artist, whose purity of style, except at rare moments, just failed to express the ideals he never lost sight of, because in his love of those ideals there was top much fear.

His principal works are summarized by Fetis as thirty-two operas, twenty-nine church compositions, four cantatas and several instrumental pieces, besides the treatise on counterpoint and fugue.

Good modern full scores of the two Requiems and of Les Deux Journees(the latter unfortunately without the dialogue, which, however, is accessible in its fairly good German translation in the Reclam Bibliolhek), and also of ten opera overtures, are current in the Peters edition. Vocal scores of some of the other operas are not difficult to get. The great Credo is in the Peters edition, but is becoming scarce. The string quartets are in Payne's Miniature Scores.It is very desirable that the operas, from Demophon onwards, should be republished in full score.

See also E. Bellasis, Cherubini (1874); and an article with personal reminiscences by the composer Ferdinand Hiller, in Macmillan's Magazine(1875). A complete catalogue of his compositions (1773-1841) was edited by Bottee du Toulmon. (D. F. T.)



CHERUEL, PIERRE ADOLPHE (1800-1891), French historian, was born at Rouen on the 17th of January 1809. He was educated at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and became a fellow (agrege) in 1830. His early studies were devoted to his native town. His Histoire de Rouen sous la domination anglaise au XVe siecle(1840) and Histoire de Rouen pendant l'epoque comunale, 1150-1382(Rouen, 1843-1844), are meritorious productions for a time when the archives were neither inventoried nor classified, and contain useful documents previously unpublished. His theses for the degree of doctor, De l'administration de Louis XIV d'apres les Memoires inedits d'Olivier d'Ormesson and De Maria Stuarta et Henrico III. (1849), led him to the study of general history. The former was expanded afterwards under the title Histoire de l'administration monarchique en France depuis l'avenement de Philippe-Auguste jusqu'a la mort de Louis XIV(1855), and in 1855 he also published his Dictionnaire historique des institutions, moeurs et coutumes de la France, of which many editions have appeared. These works may still be consulted for the 17th century, the period upon which Cheruel concentrated all his scientific activity. He edited successively the Journal d'Olivier Lefevre d'Ormesson(1860-1862), interesting for the history of the parlement of Paris during the minority of Louis XIV.; Lettres du cardinal Mazarin pendant son ministere (6 vols., 1870-1891), continued by the vicomte G. d'Avenel; and Memoires du duc de Saint-Simon, published for the first time according to the original MSS. (2 editions, 1856-1858 and 1878-1881). To Saint-Simon also he devoted two critical studies, which are acute but not definitive: Saint-Simon considere comme historien de Louis XIV (1865) and Notice sur la vie et sur les memoires du duc de Saint-Simon(1876). The latter may be considered as an introduction to the famous Memoires. Among his later writings may be mentioned the Histoire de la France pendant la minorite de Louis XIV (4 vols., 1880) and Histoire de la France sous le ministere de Mazarin (3 vols., 1882-1883). These two works are valuable for abundance of facts, precision of details, and clear and intelligent arrangement, but are characterized by a slightly frigid style. In their compilation Cheruel used a fair number of unpublished documents. To the student of the second half of the 17th century in France the works of Cheruel are a mine of information. He died in Paris on the 1st of May 1891.



CHERUSCI, an ancient German tribe occupying the basin of the Weser to the north of the Chatti. Together with the other tribes of western Germany they submitted to the Romans in 11-9 B.C., but in A.D. 9 Arminius, one of their princes, rose in revolt, and defeated and slew the Roman general Quintilius Varus with his whole army. Germanicus Caesar made several unsuccessful attempts to bring them into subjection again. By the end of the 1st century the prestige of the Cherusci had declined through unsuccessful warfare with the Chatti. Their territory was eventually occupied by the Saxons.

Tacitus, Annals, i.2, 11, 12, 13; Germania, 36; Strabo, p. 291 f.; E. Devrient, in Neue Jahrb. f. d. klass. Alter. (1900), p. 517.



CHESELDEN, WILLIAM (1688-1752), English surgeon, was born at Somerby, Leicestershire, on the 19th of October 1688. He studied anatomy in London under William Cowper (1666-1709), and in 1713 published his Anatomy of the Human Body, which achieved great popularity and went through thirteen editions. In 1718 he was appointed an assistant surgeon at St Thomas's hospital (London), becoming full surgeon in the following year, and he was also chosen one of the surgeons to St George's hospital on its foundation in 1733. He retired from St Thomas's in 1738, and died at Bath on the 10th of April 1752. Cheselden is famous for his "lateral operation for the stone," which he first performed in 1727. He also effected a great advance in ophthalmic surgery by his operation of iridectomy, described in 1728, for the treatment of certain forms of blindness by the production of an "artificial pupil." He attended Sir Isaac Newton in his last illness, and was an intimate friend of Alexander Pope and of Sir Hans Sloane.



CHESHAM, a market town in the Aylesbury parliamentary division of Buckinghamshire, England, 26 m. W.N.W. of London by the Metropolitan railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7245. It is pleasantly situated in the narrow valley of the river Chess, closely flanked by low wooded hills. The church of St Mary is cruciform and mainly Perpendicular. Some ancient frescoes and numerous monuments are preserved. All sorts of small dairy utensils, chairs, malt-shovels, &c., are made of beech, the growth of which forms a feature of the surrounding country. Shoemaking is also carried on. In Waterside hamlet, adjoining the town, are flour-mills, duck farms, and some of the extensive watercress beds for which the Chess is noted, as it is also for its trout-fishing.



CHESHIRE, a north-western county of England, bounded N. by Lancashire, N.E. by Yorkshire and Derbyshire, S.E. by Staffordshire, S. by Shropshire, W. by Denbighshire and Flint, and N.W. by the Irish Sea. Its area is 1027.8 sq. m. The coast-line is formed by the estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey, which are separated by the low rectangular peninsula of Wirral. The estuary of the Dee is dry at low tide on the Cheshire shore, but that of the Mersey bears upon its banks the ports of Liverpool (in Lancashire) and Birkenhead (on the Wirral shore). The Dee forms a great part of the county boundary with Denbighshire and Flint, and the Mersey the boundary along the whole of the northern side. The principal river within the county is the Weaver, which crosses it with a north-westerly course, and, being joined by the Dane at Northwich, discharges into the estuary of the Mersey south of Runcorn. The surface of Cheshire is mostly low and gently undulating or flat; but the broken line of the Peckforton hills, seldom exceeding 600 ft. in height, runs north and south flanking the valley of the Weaver on the west. A low narrow gap in these hills is traversed by the small river Gowy, which rises to the east but has the greater part of its course to the west of them. Commanding this gap on the west, the Norman castle of Beeston stands on an isolated eminence. The northern part of the hills coincides approximately with the district still called Delamere Forest, formerly a chase of the earls of Chester, and finally disforested in 1812. In certain sequestered parts the forest has not wholly lost its ancient character. On the east Cheshire includes the western face of the broad belt of high land which embraces the Peak district of Derbyshire; these hills rise sharply to the east of Congleton, Macclesfield and Hyde, reaching a height of about 1800 ft. within Cheshire. Distributed over the county, but principally in the eastern half, are many small lakes or meres, such as Combermere, Tatton, Rostherne, Tabley, Doddington, Marbury and Mere, and it was a common practice among the gentry of the county to build their mansions on the banks of these waters. The meres form one of the most picturesque features of the county.

Geology.—With the exception of a small area of Carboniferous rocks on the eastern border, and a small patch of Lower Lias near Audlem, the whole country is occupied by Triassic strata. The great central plain is covered by red and mottled Keuper Marls. From these marls salt is obtained; there are many beds of rock-salt, mostly thin; two are much thicker than the others, being from 75 ft. to over 100 ft. thick. Thin beds and veins of gypsum are common in the marls. The striking features of the Peckforton Hills are due to the repeated faulting of the Lower Keuper Sandstone, which lies upon beds of Bunter Sandstone. Besides forming this well-marked ridge, the Lower Keuper Sandstones or "Waterstones" form several ridges north-west of Macclesfield and appear along most of the northern borders of the county and in the neighbourhood of New Brighton and Birkenhead. The Lower Keuper Sandstone is quarried near the last-named place, also at Storeton, Delamere and Manley. This is a good building stone and an important water-bearing stratum; it is often ripple-marked, and bears the footprints of the Cheirotherium. At Alderley Edge ores of copper, lead and cobalt are found. West of the Peckforton ridge, Bunter Sandstones and pebble beds extend to the border. They also form low foothills between Cheadle and Macclesfield. They fringe the northern boundary and appear on the south-eastern boundary as a narrow strip of hilly ground near Woore. The oldest rock exposed in the county is the small faulted anticline of Carboniferous limestone at Astbury, followed in regular succession eastward by the shale, and thin limestones and sandstones of the Pendleside series. These rocks extend from Congleton Edge to near Macclesfield, where the outcrop bends sharply eastward and runs up the Goyt valley. Some hard quartzites in the Pendleside series, known locally as "Crowstones," have contributed to the formation of the high Bosley Min and neighbouring hills. East of Bosley Min, on either side of the Goyt valley, are the Millstone Grits and Shales, forming the elevated moorland tracts. Cloud Hill, a striking feature near Congleton, is capped by the "Third Grit," one of the Millstone Grit series. From Macclesfield northward through Stockport is a narrow tongue of Lower and Middle Coal-Measures—an extension of the Lancashire coalfield. Coal is mined at Neston in the Wirral peninsula from beneath the Trias; it is a connecting link between the Lancashire and Flintshire coalfields. Glacial drift is thickly spread over all the lower ground; laminated red clays, stiff clay with northern erratics and lenticular sand masses with occasional gravels, are the common types. At Crewe the drift is over 400 ft. thick. Patches of Drift sand, with marine shells, occur on the high ground east of Macclesfield at an elevation of 1250 ft.

Agriculture and Industries.—The climate is temperate and rather damp; the soil is varied and irregular, but a large proportion is a thin-skinned clay. More than four-fifths of the total area is under cultivation. The crop of wheat is comparatively insignificant; but a large quantity of oats is grown, and a great proportion of the cultivated land is in permanent pasture. The vicinity of such populous centres as Liverpool and Manchester, as well as the several large towns within the county, makes cattle and dairy-farming profitable. Cheese of excellent quality is produced, the name of the county being given to a particular brand (see DAIRY). Potatoes are by far the most important green crop. Fruit-growing is carried on in some parts, especially the cultivation of stone fruit and, among these, damsons; while the strawberry beds near Farndon and Holt are celebrated. In the first half of the 19th century the condition of agriculture in Cheshire was notoriously backward; and in 1865-1866 the county suffered with especial severity from a visitation of cattle plague. The total loss of stock amounted to more than 66,000 head, and it was necessary to obtain from the Treasury a loan of L270,000 on the security of the county rate, for purposes of relief and compensation. The cheese-making industry naturally received a severe blow, yet to agriculture at large an ultimate good resulted as the possibility and even the necessity of new methods were borne in upon the farmers.

The industries of the county are various and important. The manufacture of cotton goods extends from its seat in Lancashire into Cheshire, at the town of Stockport and elsewhere in the north-east. Macclesfield and Congleton are centres of silk manufacture. At Crewe are situated the great workshops of the London & North-Western railway company, the institution of which actually brought the town in to being. Another instance of the modern creation of a town by an individual industrial corporation is seen in Port Sunlight on the Mersey, where the soap-works of Messrs Lever are situated. On the Mersey there are shipbuilding yards, and machinery and iron works. Other important manufactures are those of tools, chemicals, clothing and hats, and there are printing, bleaching and dye works, and metal foundries. Much sandstone is quarried, but the mineral wealth of the county lies in coal and salt. The second is a specially important product. Some rock-salt is obtained at Northwich and Winsford, but most of the salt is extracted from brine both here and at Lawton, Wheelock and Middlewich. At Northwich and other places in the locality curious accidents frequently occur owing to the sinking of the soil after the brine is pumped out; walls crack and collapse, and houses are seen leaning far out of the perpendicular. A little copper and lead are found.

Communications.—The county is well served with railways. The main line of the London & North-Western railway, passing north from Crewe to Warrington in Lancashire, serves no large town, but from Crewe branches diverge fanwise to Manchester, Chester, North Wales and Shrewsbury. The Great Western railway, with a line coming northward from Wrexham, obtains access through Cheshire to Liverpool and Manchester. These two companies jointly work the Birkenhead railway from Chester to Birkenhead. The heart of the county is traversed by the Cheshire Lines, serving the salt district, and reaching Chester from Manchester by way of Delamere Forest. In the east the Midland and Great Central systems enter the county, and the North Staffordshire line serves Macclesfield. The Manchester, South Junction & Altrincham and the Wirral railways are small systems serving the localities indicated by their names. The river Weaver is locked as far up as Winsford, and the transport of salt is thus expedited. The profits of the navigation, which was originally undertaken in 1720 by a few Cheshire squires, belong to the county, and are paid annually to the relief of the county rates. In the salt district through which the Weaver passes subsidence of the land has resulted in the formation of lakes of considerable extent, which act as reservoirs to supply the navigation. There are further means of inland navigation by the Grand Trunk, Shropshire Union and other canals, and many small steamers are in use. The Manchester Ship Canal passes through a section of north Cheshire, being entered from the estuary of the Mersey by locks near Eastham, and following its southern shore up to Runcorn, after which it takes a more direct course than the river.

Population and Administration.—The ancient county, which is a county palatine, has an area of 657,783 acres, with a population in 1891 of 730,058 and in 1901 of 815,099. Cheshire has been described as a suburb of Liverpool, Manchester and the Potteries of Staffordshire, and many of those whose business lies in these centres have colonized such districts as Bowdon, Alderley, Sale and Marple near Manchester, the Wirral, and Alsager on the Staffordshire border, until these localities have come to resemble the richer suburban districts of London. On the short seacoast of the Wirral are found the popular resorts of New Brighton and Hoylake. This movement and importance of its industries have given the county a vast increase of population in modern times. In 1871 the population was 561,201; from 1801 until that year it had increased 191%. The area of the administrative county is 654,825 acres. The county contains 7 hundreds. The municipal boroughs are Birkenhead (pop. 110,915), Chester (38,309), Congleton (10,707), Crewe (42,074), Dukinfield (18,929), Hyde (32,766), Macclesfield (34,624), Stalybridge (27,673), Stockport (92,832). Chester, the county town, is a city, county of a city, and county borough, and Birkenhead and Stockport are county boroughs. The other urban districts with their populations are as follows:—

Alderley Edge (a) 2,856 Alsager 2,597 Altrincham (a) 16,831 Ashton-upon-Mersey (a) 5,563 Bollington (a) 5,245 Bowdon (a) 2,788 Bredbury and Romiley (a) 7,087 Bromborough (b) 1,891 Buglawton (Congleton) 1,452 Cheadle and Gatley (a) 7,916 Compstall (a) 875 Ellesmere Port and Whitby (b) 4,082 Hale (a) 4,562 Handforth (a) 911 Hazel Grove and Bramhall (a) 7,934 Higher Bebington (b) 1,540 Hollingworth (a) 2,447 Hoole (Chester) 5,341 Hoylake and West Kirkby (b) 10,911 Knutsford (a) 5,172 Lower Bebington (b) 8,398 Lymm (a) 4,707 Marple (a) 5,595 Middlewich 4,669 Mottram-in-Longdendale (a) 3,128 Nantwich 7,722 Neston and Parkgate (b) 4,154 Northwich 17,611 Runcorn 16,491 Sale (a) 12,088 Sandbach 5,558 Tarporley 2,644 Wallasey (b) 53,579 Wilmslow (a) 7,361 Winsford 10,382 Yeardsley-cum-Whaley (a) 1,487

Of the townships in this table, those marked (a) are within a radius of about 15 m. from Manchester (Knutsford being taken as the limit), while those marked (b) are in the Wirral. The localities of densest population are thus clearly illustrated.

The county is in the North Wales and Chester circuit, and assizes are held at Chester. It has one court of quarter sessions, and is divided into fourteen petty sessional divisions. The boroughs already named, excepting Dukinfield, have separate commissions of the peace, and Birkenhead and Chester have separate courts of quarter sessions. There are 464 civil parishes. Cheshire is almost wholly in the diocese of Chester, but small parts are in those of Manchester, St Asaph or Lichfield. There are 268 ecclesiastical parishes or districts wholly or in part within the county. There are eight parliamentary divisions, namely, Macclesfield, Crewe, Eddisbury, Wirral, Knutsford, Altrincham, Hyde and Northwich, each returning one member; the county also includes the parliamentary borough of Birkenhead returning one member, and parts of the borough of Stockport, which returns two members, and of Ashton-under-Lyne, Chester, Stalybridge, and Warrington, which return one member each.

History.—The earliest recorded historical fact relating to the district which is now Cheshire is the capture of Chester and destruction of the native Britons by the Northumbrian king Aethelfrith about 614. After a period of incessant strife between the Britons and their Saxon invaders the district was subjugated by Ecgbert in 830 and incorporated in the kingdom of Mercia. During the 9th century. Aethelwulf held his parliament at Chester, and received the homage of his tributary kings from Berwick to Kent, and in the 10th century Aethelflaed rebuilt the city, and erected fortresses at Eddisbury and Runcorn. Edward the Elder garrisoned Thelwall and strengthened the passages of the Mersey and the Irwell. On the splitting up of Mercia in the 10th century the dependent districts along the Dee were made a shire for the fortress of Chester. The shire is first mentioned in the Abingdon Chronicle, which relates that in 980 Cheshire was plundered by a fleet of Northmen. At the time of the Domesday Survey the county was divided into twelve hundreds, exclusive of the six hundreds between the Ribble and the Mersey, now included in Lancashire, but then a part of Cheshire. These divisions have suffered great modification, both in extent and in name, and of the seven modern hundreds Bucklow alone retains its Domesday appellation. The hundreds of Atiscross and Exestan have been transferred to the counties of Flint and Denbigh, with the exception of a few townships now in the hundred of Broxton. The prolonged resistance of Cheshire to the Conqueror was punished by ruthless harrying and sweeping confiscations of property, and no Englishman retained estates of importance after the Conquest. In order that the shire might be relieved of all obligations beyond the ever-pressing necessity of defending its borders against the inroads of hostile neighbours, it was constituted a county palatine which the earl of Chester "held as freely by his sword as the king held England by his crown." The County had its independent parliament consisting of the barons and clergy, and courts, and all lands except those of the bishop were held of the earl. The court of exchequer was presided over by a chamberlain, a vice-chamberlain, and a baron of the exchequer. It was principally a court of revenue, but probably a court of justice also, before that of the justiciary was established, and had besides the functions of a chancery court, with an exclusive jurisdiction in equity. Other officers of the palatinate were the constable, high-steward and the Serjeants of the peace and of the forests. The abbots of St Werburgh and Combermere and all the eight barons held courts, in any of which cases of capital felony might be tried.

During the 12th and 13th centuries the county was impoverished by the constant inroads of the Welsh. In 1264 the castle and city of Chester were granted to Simon de Montfort, and in 1267 the treaty of Shrewsbury procured a short interval of peace. Richard II., in return for the loyal support furnished him by the county, made it a principality, but the act was revoked in the next reign. In 1403 Cheshire was the headquarters of Hotspur, who roused the people by telling them that Richard II. was still living. At the beginning of the Wars of the Roses Margaret collected a body of supporters from among the Cheshire gentry, and Lancastrian risings occurred as late as 1464. At the time of the Civil War feeling was so equally divided that an attempt was made to form an association for preserving internal peace. In 1643, however, Chester was made the headquarters of the royalist forces, while Nantwich was garrisoned for the parliament, and the county became the scene of constant skirmishes until the surrender of Chester in 1646 put an end to the struggle.

From the number of great families with which it has been associated Chester has been named "the mother and nurse of English gentility." Of the eight baronies of the earldom none survives, but the title of that of Kinderton was bestowed in 1762 on George Venables-Vernon, son of Anne, sister of Peter Venables, last baron of Kinderton, from whom the present Lord Vernon of Kinderton is descended. Other great Domesday proprietors were William FitzNigel, baron of Halton, ancestor of the Lacys; Hugh de Mara, baron of Montalt, ancestor of the Ardens; Ranulph, ancestor of the Mainwarings; and Hamo de Massey. The Davenports, Leighs and Warburtons trace their descent back to the 12th century, and the Grosvenors are descended from a nephew of Hugh Lupus.

In the reign of Henry VIII. the distinctive privileges of Cheshire as a county palatine were considerably abridged. The right of sanctuary attached to the city of Chester was abolished; justices of the peace were appointed as in other parts of the kingdom, and in 1542 it was enacted that in future two knights for the shire and two burgesses for the city of Chester should be returned to parliament. After the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned four members from two divisions, and Macclesfield and Stpckport returned two members each. Birkenhead secured representation in 1859. From 1868 until the Redistribution Act of 1885 the county returned six members from three divisions.

From earliest times the staple products of Cheshire have been salt and cheese. The salt-pits of Nantwich, Middlewich and Northwich were in active operation at the time of Edward the Confessor, and at that date the mills and fisheries on the Dee also furnished a valuable source of revenue. Twelfth century writers refer to the excellence of Cheshire cheese, and at the time of the Civil War three hundred tons at L33 per ton were ordered in one year for the troops in Scotland. The trades of tanners, skinners and glove-makers existed at the time of the Conquest, and the export trade in wool in the 13th and 14th centuries was considerable. The first bed of rock-salt was discovered in 1670. Weaving and wool-combing were introduced in 1674.

Antiquities.—The main interest in the architecture of the county lies in the direction of domestic buildings rather than ecclesiastical. Old half-timbered houses are common in almost every part of the county; many of these add to the picturesqueness of the streets in the older towns, as in the case of the famous Rows in Chester, while in the country many ancient manor-houses remain as farm-houses. Among the finest examples are Bramhall Hall, between Stockport and Macclesfield, and Moreton Old Hall, near Congleton (see HOUSE, Plate IV., fig. 13). The first, occupying three sides of a quadrangle (formerly completed by a fourth side), dates from the 13th and 14th centuries, and contains a splendid panelled hall and other rooms. Of Moreton Hall, which is moated, only three sides similarly remain; its date is of the 16th century. Other buildings of the Elizabethan period are not infrequent, such as Brereton and Dorfold Halls, while more modern mansions, set in fine estates, are numerous. Crewe Hall is a modern building on an ancient site, and Vale Royal near Winsford incorporates fragments of a Cistercian monastery founded in 1277. A noteworthy instance of the half-timbered style applied to an ecclesiastical building is found in the church of Lower Peover near Knutsford, of which only the tower is of stone. The church dates from the 13th century, and was carefully restored in 1852. Cheshire has no monastic remains of importance, save those attached to the cathedral of Chester, nor are its village churches as a rule of special interest. There is, however, a fine late Perpendicular church (with earlier portions) at Astbury near Congleton, and of this style and the Decorated the churches of Bunbury and Malpas may be noticed as good illustrations. In Chester, besides the cathedral, there is the massive Norman church of St John; and St Michael's church and the Rivers chapel at Macclesfield are noteworthy. No more remarkable religious monuments remain in the county than the two sculptured Saxon crosses in the market-place at Sandbach. Ruins of two Norman castles exist in Beeston and Halton.

AUTHORITIES.—Sir John Doddridge, History of the Ancient and Modern State of the Principality of Wales, Duchy of Cornwall, and Earldom of Chester (London, 1630; 2nd ed., 1714); D. King, The Vale-Royall of England, or the County Palatine of Cheshire Illustrated, 4 parts (London, 1656); D. and S. Lysons, Magna Britannia, vol. ii. pt. ii. (London, 1810); J. H. Hanshall, History of the County Palatine of Chester (Chester, 1817-1823); J.O. Halliwell, Palatine Anthology (London, 1850); G. Ormerod, History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (London, 1819; new ed., London, 1875-1882); J.P. Earwaker, East Cheshire (2 vols., London, 1877); R. Wilbraham, Glossary (London, 1820; 2nd ed., London, 1826); and Glossary founded on Wilbraham by E. Leigh (London, 1877); J. Croston, Historic Sites of Cheshire (Manchester, 1883); and County Families of Cheshire (Manchester, 1887); W.E.A. Axon, Cheshire Gleanings (Manchester, 1884); Holland, Glossary of Words used in the County of Cheshire (London, 1884-1886); N.G. Philips, Views of Old Halls in Cheshire (London, 1893); Victoria County History, Cheshire. See also various volumes of the Chetham Society and of the Record Society of Manchester, as well as the Proceedings of the Cheshire Antiquarian Society, and Cheshire Notes and Queries.



CHESHUNT, an urban district in the Hertford parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, on the Lea, 14 m. N. of London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1891) 9620; (1901) 12,292. The church of St Mary is Perpendicular and has been enlarged in modern times. A college was founded, for the education of young men to the ministry of the Connexion, by Selina countess of Huntingdon in 1768 at Trevecca-isaf near Talgarth, Brecknockshire. In 1792 it was moved to Cheshunt, and became known as Cheshunt College. In 1904, as it was felt that the college was unable properly to carry on its work under existing conditions, it was proposed to amalgamate it with Hackney College, but the Board of Education refused to sanction any arrangement which would set aside the requirements of the deed of foundation, namely that the officers and students of Cheshunt College should subscribe the fifteen articles appended to the deed, and should take certain other obligations. In 1905 it was decided by the board to reorganize the college and remove it to Cambridge.

Nursery and market gardening, largely under glass, brick-making and saw-mills are the chief industries of Cheshunt. Roman coins and other remains have been found at this place, and an urn appears built into the wall of an inn. A Romano-British village or small town is indicated. There was a Benedictine nunnery here in the 13th century. Of several interesting mansions in the vicinity one, the Great House, belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and a former Pengelly House was the residence of Richard Cromwell the Protector after his resignation. Theobalds Park was built in the 18th century, but the original mansion was acquired by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in 1561; being taken in 1607 by James I. from Robert Cecil, first earl of Salisbury, in exchange for Hatfield House. James died here in 1625, and Charles I. set out from here for Nottingham in 1642 at the outset of the Civil War. One of the entrances to Theobalds Park is the old Temple Bar, removed from Fleet Street, London, in 1878.