free public library erected, and municipal drainage works
and water works executed. The town has important corn
markets and horse fairs. Area of borough, 730 acres.
Population in 1881, 6755; in 1891, 6557; in 1901, 6480.
Abo, city and seaport of Finland, Russia, capital of the Abo-Bjorneborg province; 381 miles by rail from St Petersburg, via Tavastehus; in regular steamer communication with St Petersburg, Wasa, and Stockholm. Shipbuilding has considerably developed lately, warships being built for the Russian navy. This city is only second in Finland to Helsingfors for its trade. Its harbour (Bornholm, on Hyrvinsala Island) is entered yearly by from 700 to 800 ships, of about 200,000 tons. Population, 18,109 in 1867 ; 34,339 in 1897.
Abo-Björneborg, a province occupying the S.W. corner of Finland, and including the Aland islands. Its population reached 413,351 in 1897, of whom 12 per cent, lived in towns. It occupies the first rank in Finland for its manufactures of cottons, sugar refinery, wooden goods, metals, machinery, paper, &c. Its chief towns are —Abo, Marienhaven (759), Nodendal (654), Nystad (4023), and Raumo (4111).
Aborney. See DAHOMEY.
About, Edmond Francois Valentin
taking his seat. Dust has accumulated on the mass of About’s work. His journalism—of which specimens in his earlier and later manners will be found in the two series of Lettres Pun bon jeune homme a sa Cousine Madeleine (1861 and 1863) and Le Dix-neuvieme Siede (1892)—was of its nature ephemeral. So were the pamphlets, great and small. His political economy was that of an orthodox popularizer, and in no sense epoch-making. His dramas are negligible. His more serious novels, Maddon, L’Infdme, the three that form the series of the Vieille Roche, and Le Roman Pun brave homme—a kind of counterblast to the view of the French workman presented in M. Zola’s Assommoir—contain striking and amusing scenes no doubt, but scenes which are often suggestive of the stage, while description, dissertation, explanation too frequently take the place of life. His best work after all is to be found in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez Pun notaire, Le Roi des Montagues, L’Homme a Voreille cassee, Trente et quarante, Le Cas de M. Guerin. Here
his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play. “ You will never be more than a little Voltaire,” said one of his masters when he was a lad at school. It was a true prophecy. (F. T. M.)
Abrudbanya, a corporate town of S.E. Hungary, (1828-1885), French novelist, publicist, and journalist, was on the slope of the Erczhegyseg (Ore Mountains), the son of a grocer, and was born on the 14th of February situated 45 miles S.W. by S. of Klausenburg (LLung. Kolozsvar). 1828, at Dieuze, in Lorraine. The boy’s school career was In Roman times it was the site of a town where resided brilliant. In 1848 he entered the Pcole Nor male, taking the procurator aurarium of Dacia, and gold ore is still the second place in the annual competition for admission, Taine being first. Among his college contemporaries were mined in the villages on the neighbouring mountains. The Taine, Paul Albert, Weiss, Assolant, Sarcey, Challemel- annual produce of these mines is about 34,400 oz. troy of Lacour, the ill-starred Prevost-Paradol. Of them all fine gold. Considerable secondary products are silver, iron, About was, according to Sarcey (Souvenirs de Jeunesse), the copper, lead, and lignite. The ore raised from the mines most highly vitalized, exuberant, brilliant, and “undis- belonging to the mine-captaincy of Falatna (to which ciplined. At the end of his college career he joined the AbrudbAnya belongs) in 1899 represented a total value of I rench school in Athens, but if we may believe his own £972,292. Population (1891), 2992; (1901) 3370; of account, it had never been his intention to follow the pro- recent years it has become joined to the village of Abrudfessorial career, for which the Ecole Normale was a pre- falva with (1901) 4978 inhabitants. It contains good paration, and in 1853 he returned to France and frankly state schools and many handsome buildings. Abruzzi e Molise, a territorial division of Italy, gave himself to literature and journalism. A book on Greece, La.Grece contemporaine (1855), which did not a mountainous region embracing the middle Apennines spare Greek susceptibilities, had an immediate success. and reaching down to the Adriatic on the E. It comprises Tolla, which remains one of his best novels, appeared the provinces of Aquila, Chieti, Teramo, and Campobasso, shortly after, and during the next few years, with inde- with an area of 6567 sq. miles, and includes a population fatigable energy, and generally with full public recognition, of (1881) 1,317,215, (1901) 1,442,365. The first three he wrote novels, stories, a play—which failed—a book- provinces correspond to the former Neapolitan districts pamphlet on the Roman question, many pamphlets on of Abruzzo, and Campobasso to the former Neapolitan proother subjects of the day, newspaper articles innumerable, vince of Molise. The mountains are in great part covered some art criticisms, rejoinders to the attacks of his enemies^ with forests, and the wealth of the people consists prinand popular manuals of political economy, Z’A B C du cipally in cattle, sheep, and pigs. Some wheat, wine, Travailleur, Le Progres. About’s attitude towards the olives, and figs are grown in the valleys. Beyond the empire was that of a candid friend. He believed in its rearing of silkworms and silk-spinning, the industries are unprovability, greeted the Liberal ministry of Emile unimportant. The towns are mostly of small size, the Olivier at the beginning of 1870 with delight, and wel- chief of them being Chieti, Teramo, Aquila, Campobasso, comed the Franco-German war. That day of enthusiasm and Solmona. had a terrible morrow. For his own personal part he lost
Abt, Franz (1819-1885), German composer, was the loved home, near Saverne in Alsatia, which he had born 22nd December 1819 at Eilenburg, Saxony, and died purchased in 1858, out of the fruits of his earlier literary at Wiesbaden, 31st March 1885. The best of his popular successes. A ith the fall of the empire he became a songs have become part of the recognized folk-music of Republican, and, always an inveterate anti-clerical he Germany; his vocal works, solos, part-songs, Ac., enjoyed threw himself with ardour into the battle against’ the an extraordinary vogue all over Europe in the middle of conservative reaction which made head during 5 the first the 19th century, but in spite of their facile tunefulness years of the Republic. From 1872 onwards for some five have few qualities of lasting beauty. He was Kapellmeister or six years his paper, the XIXe Siecle, of which he was the at Bernburg, 1841, at Zurich in the same year, and at heart and soul, became a power in the land. But the Re- Brunswick, 1852-82, when he retired to Wiesbaden. publicans never quite forgave the tardiness of his conver Abu, a mountain of India, in the Sirohi state of sion, and no place rewarded his later zeal. On the 23rd January 1884 he was elected a member of the French Rajputana, being an isolated spur of the Aravalli range. It is situated in 24° 35' N. lat. and 72° 45' E. Academy, but died on the 26th January 1885, before long., 16 miles from the Abu road station of the Raj-
