COUPON —COURLAND rather than a manufacturing, city. In 1890 its capital invested in manufactures was $1,292,283, and the value of its products was $2,527,388. Population (1880), 18,063; (1900), 25,802, including 240 negroes. Coupon, a certificate entitling its owner to some payment, share, or other benefit; more specifically, one of a series of interest certificates or dividend warrants attached to a bond running for a number of years. The word coupon (a piece cut off) possesses an etymological meaning so comprehensive that, while on the Stock Exchange it is only used to denote such an interest certificate or a certificate of stock of a joint-stock company, it may be as suitably, and elsewhere is perhaps more frequently, applied to tickets sold by tourist agencies and others. The coupons by means of which the interest on a bond or debenture is collected are generally printed at the side or foot of that document, to be cut off and presented for payment at the bank or agency named on them as they become due. They pass by delivery, and are as a rule exempt from stamp duty. Coupons for the payment of dividends are also attached to the share warrants to bearer issued by some joint-stock companies. The coupons on the bonds of most of the principal foreign loans are payable in London in sterling as well as abroad. (s. d. h.) Courbet, Gustave (1819-1877), French painter, was born at Ornans (Doubs) on the 10th June 1819. He went to Paris in 1839, and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse; but his independent spirit did not allow him to remain there long, as he preferred to work out his own way by the study of Spanish, Flemish, and French painters. His first works, an “ Odalisque,” suggested by Victor Hugo, and a “Lelia,” illustrating George Sand, were literary .subjects; but these he soon abandoned for the study of real life. Among other wTorks he painted his own portrait with his dog, and “ The Man with a Pipe,” both of which were rqjected by the jury of the Salon; but the younger school of critics, the neo-romantics and realists, loudly sang the praises of Courbet, who by 1849 began to be famous, producing such pictures as “After Dinner at Ornans” and “The Valley of the Loire.” The Salon of 1850 found him triumphant with the “Burial at Ornans,” the “Stone-Breakers,” and the “Peasants of Flazey.” His style still gained in individuality, as in “Village Damsels” (1852), the “Wrestlers,” “Bathers,” and “A Girl Spinning” (1852). Though Courbet’s realistic work is not devoid of importance, it is as a landscape and sea painter that he will be most honoured by posterity. Sometimes, it must be owned, his realism is rather coarse and brutal, but when he paints the forests of Franche-Comte, the '“ Stag-Fight,” “ The Wave,” or the “ Haunt of the Does,” he is inimitable. When Courbet had made a name as an artist he grew ambitious of other glory; he tried to promote democratic and social science, and under the Empire he wrote essays and dissertations. His refusal of the Cross of the Legion of Honour, offered to him by Napoleon III., made him immensely popular, and in 1871 he was elected, under the Commune, to the Chamber. Thus it happened that he was responsible for the destruction of the Vendome column. A council of war, before which he was tried, condemned him to pay the cost of restoring the column, 300,000 francs (£1200). To escape the necessity of working to the end of his days at the orders of the State in order to pay this sum, Courbet went to Switzerland in 1873, and died at La Tour du Peilz, 31st December 1877, of a disease of the liver aggravated by intemperance. An exhibition of his works was held in 1882 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. See Champfleury. Zes grandes figures d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Paris, 1861.—Mantz. “G. Courbet,” Gaz. des Beaux-Arts. Paris,
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1878.—Zola. Mes Haines. Paris, 1879.—G. Lemonnier. Les Peintres de la Vie, Paris, 1888. (h. Fr.) Courhevoie, a town in the arrondissement of St Denis, department of Seine, France, 5 miles west-north-west of Paris, on railway to Versailles. It is a residential suburb of Paris, and has a fine avenue opening on the Neuilly Bridge, and forming with it a continuation of the Champs Elysees. It has manufactures of waggons and awnings. Port traffic, 1899, amounted to 88,074 tons. Population (1881), 13,094; (1901), 25,330. Courcelles, a town of Belgium, in the province of Hainaut, 21 miles east of Mons by rail. It has a coalmining industry, and manufactures linen and articles of iron. Population (1880), 11,190; (1890), 12,654; (1897), 14,494. Couriand, one of the Baltic provinces of Russia, bounded by the Baltic on the W., the Gulf of Riga and the Western Duna (Livonia and Vitebsk) on the N.E., and Kovno on the S. The Mitau Plain divides it into two parts, of which the western is fertile and thickly inhabited, excepting in the north, where there is another patch of lowlands, while the eastern is much less so. It is undulating elsewhere, and covered with spurs of the plateau of Lithuania, a hilly and picturesque tract of land which separates the Duna from the Aa, and is known as Upper Courland. Another range of heights stretches along the Windau. Neither exceeds 600 feet in altitude. The province consists mainly of Devonian rocks, besides Jurassic as far as Windau, both thickly covered with glacial dejDOsits. Large parts are occupied by marshes, often clothed with forests, and they are sandy tracts and downs on the seashore. The marshes are drained, and the sands covered with plantations of trees. Nearly onethird of the surface is still forest, watered by nearly a hundred rivers, of which only the Dima, the Aa below Mitau, and the Windau are navigable. They all flow north-westwards and enter the Baltic Sea. The seacoast is poor in harbours, and the only ports are Libau, Windau, and Polangen, there being none on the Courland coast of the Gulf of Riga. Population (1897), 672,634 (345,756 women), of whom, according to Rittich, 8 per cent, only are Germans, the remainder being Letts (49 per cent.), Coures (30 per cent.), Jews (6 per cent.), Russians (2 per cent.), Poles, Lithuanians, and Lives. Urban population, 148,134. The land laws in the Baltic provinces being different from those of Russia, the land is mostly in private ownership, and 2,616,740 acres belong to 535 landlords, mostly nobles, two-fifths of whom own estates of more than 2700 acres each ; 2,356,800 acres are owned or held by the peasants ; and 1,354,560 acres belong to the Crown. In 1863 special laws were issued in order to enable the Letts to acquire the farms which they held, and special banks were founded. With their aid nearly 12,000 farms were bought by the peasants settled on landlords’ estates, but it is estimated that nearly 300,000 Letts remain landless, and are hired labourers (knechts) on the farms and estates, occupying a very low position in the social scale. Agriculture reaches a high degree of perfection on the landlords’ estates, and although the wet climate of Courland prevents droughts, artificial irrigation from artesian wells (about 200) is resorted to. 1,660,000 acres are arable land, of these 918,000 being under corn crops, 351,000 under flax, 67,500 under potatoes ; and 2,078,000 under meadows and pasturages. Cattlebreeding is on a small scale, but excellent breeds of horned cattle, sheep, and swine are kept; also 141,100 horses. The factories numbered 315 in 1893, employing 6000 persons, and yielding returns of about £1,300,000, Libau and Mitau being the main industrial centres. There are also ironworks, agricultural machinery, tanneries, glass and soap works. Flax spinning is yet in the stage of a domestic industry. Navigation on the Diina and Aa is important for export, and still more the traffic on the railways which lead from Central Russia to Riga and Libau, the latter being one of the chief Russian ports. The Government is well provided with schools, and education is obligatory. The chief towns of the ten districts are :—Mitau
