CONNELLSYILL E —O ONSCIENCE 7 and 16. In 1899 there were 1546 public schools, 76 high schools, 77 kindergartens, and 19 evening schools ; also 177 private schools, with 30,083 registered scholars. The State furnishes $200 to establish, and up to $100 a year to maintain, a free public library in any town that will contribute an equal sum. In 1899, 6 years after the passage of the law, 51 towns had established free libraries under its provision, and there were 40 others, making 91 free public libraries in the State, with 566,706 volumes and a yearly circulation of 1,609,788 volumes. There were also 43 “travelling libraries,” which move from one town to another, the gifts of individuals or associations. (c. H. Cl.) Connellsville, a borough of Fayette county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., situated in the south-western part of the state, on Youghiogheny river and on branches of the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio Railways, at an altitude of 915 feet. It is the centre of the well-known Connellsville coking coal region, in which most of the coking coal used in iron-smelting in the United States is produced. Out of 47,142 coking ovens in the United States in 1899, 19,294 are in this district; while of the total amount of coke produced in the Union (19,640,798 tons), not less than 10,389,335 tons were made in this district. Population (1880), 3609; (1890), 5629; (1900), 7160. Connersville, capital of Fayette county, Indiana, U.S.A., situated on Whitewater river, in the eastern part of the state, at an altitude of 828 feet. It is at the intersection of the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St Louis, and the Fort Wayne, Cincinnati, and Louisville Railways. Population (1880), 3228; (1890), 4548; (1900), 6836. Conscience, Hendrik (1812-1883), the most eminent of modern Flemish writers, was born at Antwerp on the 3rd of December 1812. Although he invariably signed his name Hendrik, his baptismal name was Henri. He was the son of a Frenchman, Pierre Conscience, from Besancon, who had been chef de timonerie in the navy of Napoleon, and who was appointed under-harbourmaster at Antwerp in 1811, when that city formed part of France. Hendrik’s mother was a Fleming, Cornelia Balieu. When, in 1815, the French abandoned Antwerp after the Congress of Vienna, they left Pierre Conscience behind them. He was a very eccentric person, and he took up the business of buying and breaking-up worn-out vessels, of which the port of Antwerp was full after the peace. The child grew up in an old shop stocked with marine stores, to which the father afterwards added a collection of unsaleable books; among them were old romances which inflamed the fancy of the child. His mother died in 1820, and the boy and his younger brother had no other companion than their grim and somewhat sinister father. In 1826 Pierre Conscience married again, this time a widow much younger than himself, Anna Catherina Bogaerts. Hendrik had long before this developed an insatiable passion for reading, and revelled all day long among the ancient, torn, and dusty tomes which passed through the garret of “The Green Corner” on their way to destruction. Soon after his second marriage Pierre took a violent dislike to the town, sold the shop, and retired to that Kempen or Campine which Hendrik Conscience so often describes in his books—the desolate flat land that stretches between Antwerp and Venloo. Here Pierre bought a little farm, with a great garden round it, and here, while their father was buying ships in distant havens, the boys would spend weeks, and even months, with no companion but their stepmother. At the age of seventeen Hendrik left the paternal house in Kempen to become a tutor in Antwerp, and to prosecute his studies, which were soon broken in upon by the revolution of 1830. He volunteered as a private in the new Belgian army, and served in barracks at Venloo, and afterwards at Dendermonde, until 1837, when he retired with the grade of sergeant-major.
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Thrown in this way with Flemings of every class, and made a close observer of their mental habits, the young man formed the idea of writing in the despised idiom of the country, an idiom .which was then considered too vulgar to be spoken, and much less written in, by educated Belgians. Although, close by, across the Scheldt, the Dutch possessed a rich and honoured literature, many centuries old, written in a language scarcely to be distinguished from Flemish, a foolish prejudice denied recognition to the language of the Flemish provinces of Belgium. As a matter of fact, nothing had been written in it for many years, when the separation in 1831 served to make the chasm between the nations and the languages one which could never be bridged over. It was therefore with the foresight of a prophet that Conscience wrote, in 1830 itself, “ I do not know how it is, but I confess I find in the real Flemish something indescribably romantic, mysterious, profound, energetic, even savage. If I ever gain the power to write, I shall throw myself head over ears into Flemish composition.” His poems, however, written while he was a soldier, were all in French. He received no pension when he was discharged, and going back idle to his father’s house, he determined to do the impossible, and write a Flemish book for sale. A passage in Guicciardini fired his fancy, and straightway he wrote off that series of scenes in the war of Dutch Independence which lives in Belgian literature under the title of In’t Wonderjaar 1566) this was published in Ghent in 1837. His father thought it so vulgar of his son to write a book in Flemish that he turned him out of doors, and the celebrated novelist of the future started for Antwerp, with a fortune which was strictly confined to two francs and a bundle of clothes. An old schoolfellow found him in the street and took him to his home; and soon various people of position, amongst them the eminent painter, Wappers, interested themselves in the brilliant and unfortunate young man. Wappers even gave him a suit of clothes, and presented him to the King, who expressed a wish, which was not immediately carried out in consequence, of some red tape, that the Wonder jaar should be added to the library of every Belgian school. But it was under the patronage of Leopold I. that Conscience published his second work^ Fantasy, in the same year, 1837. A small appointment in the Provincial Archives relieved him from the actual pressure of want, and in 1838 he made his first great success with the historical romance called The Lion of Flanders, which still holds its place as one of his masterpieces. To this followed Haw to become a Painter, 1843; What a Mother can Suffer, 1843; Siska van Roosemael, 1844; Lambrecht Hensmans, 1847; Jacob van Artevelde, 1849; and The Conscript, 1850. During these years he lived a variegated existence, for some thirteen months actually as an under-gardener in a country house, but finally as Secretary to the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. It was long before the sale of his books, greatly praised but seldom bought, made him in any degree independent. His ideas, however, began to be generally accepted. At a Flemish Congress which met at Ghent so early as 1841, the writings of Conscience were mentioned as the seed which was most likely to yield a crop of national literature. Accordingly the patriotic party undertook to encourage their circulation, and each fresh contribution from the pen of Conscience was welcomed as an honour to Belgium. In 1845 Conscience was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold. To write in Flemish had now ceased to be regarded as a proof of vulgarity; on the contrary, the tongue of the common people became almost fashionable. The poet K. L. Ledeganck (1805—1849), who celebrated the “Three Sister-Cities” of Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp, was the
