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ST LIZIER-DE-COUSERANS—ST LOUIS

After his death his will was missing, but his daughter, Miss Charlotte Sugden, was able to recollect the contents of a most intricate document, and in the action of Sugden v. Lord St Leonards (L.R. 1 P.D. 154) the court accepted her evidence and granted probate of a paper propounded as containing the provisions of the lost will. This decision established the proposition that the contents of a lost will may be proved by secondary evidence, even of a single witness.

Lord St Leonards was the author of various important legal publications, many of which have passed through several editions. Besides the treatise on purchasers already mentioned, they include Powers, Cases decided by the House of Lords, Gilbert on Uses, New Real Property Laws and Handybook of Property Laiw, Misrepresentations in Campbell's Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham, corrected by St Leonards. See The Times (30th of January 1875); E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904); J. R. Atlay, Lives of the Victorian Chancellors, vol. ii.

ST LIZIER-DE-COUSERANS, a village of south-western France in the department of Ariège on the right bank of the Salat, 1 m. N.N.W. of St Girons. Pop. (1906) 615; commune 1295. St Lizier, in ancient times one of the twelve cities of Novempopulania under the name of Lugdunum Consoranorum, was later capital of the Couserans and seat of a bishopric (suppressed at the Revolution) to the holders of which the town belonged. It has a cathedral of the 12th and 14th centuries with a fine Romanesque cloister and preserves remarkable remains of Roman ramparts. The old episcopal palace (17th century) and the adjoining church (14th and 17th centuries), once the cathedral with its fine chapter-hall (12th century), form part of a lunatic asylum. The Salat is crossed by a bridge of the 12th or 13th century. The town owes its name to its bishop Lycerius, who is said to have saved it from the Vandals in the 7th century. The chief event in its history was its devastation in 1130 by Bernard III., count of Comminges, a disaster from which it never completely recovered.

ST LÔ, a town of north-western France, capital of the department of Manche, 47½ m. W. by S. of Caen by rail. Pop. (1906) town 9379; commune, 12,181. St Lô is situated on a rocky hill on the right bank of the Vire. Its chief building is the Gothic church of Notre-Dame, dating mainly from the 16th century. The facade, flanked by two lofty towers and richly decorated, is impressive, despite its lack of harmony. There is a Gothic pulpit outside the choir. In the hôtel-de-ville is the “Torigni marble,” the pedestal of an ancient statue, the inscriptions on which relate chiefly to the annual assemblies of the Gallic deputies held at Lyons under the Romans. The modern church of Sainte-Croix preserves a Romanesque portal which belonged to the church of an ancient Benedictine abbey. St Lô is the seat of a prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a training college for masters, a school of drawing, a branch of the Bank of France, a chamber of arts and manufactures, and a government stud. The town has trade in grain, fat stock, troop-horses and farm produce, and carries on tanning, wool-spinning and bleaching and the manufacture of woollen and other fabrics.

St Lô, called Briovera in the Gallo-Roman period, owes its present name to St Lô (Laudus), bishop of Coutances (d. 568). In the middle ages St Lô became an important fortress as well as a centre for the weaving industry. It sustained numerous sieges, the last in 1574, when the town, which had embraced Calvinism, was stormed by the Catholics and many of its inhabitants massacred. In 1800 the town was made capital of its department in place of Coutances.

ST LOUIS, the chief city and a port of entry of Missouri, and the fourth in population among the cities of the United States, situated on the W. bank of the Mississippi river, about 20 m. below its confluence with the Missouri, 200 m. above the influx of the Ohio, and 1270 m. above the Gulf of Mexico, occupying a land area of 61.37 sq. m. in a commanding central position in the great drainage basin of the Mississippi system, the richest portion of the continent. Pop. (1880) 350,518, (1890) 451,770, (1900) 575,238, (1910) 687,029.

The central site is marked by an abrupt terraced rise from the river to an easily sloping tableland, 4 or 5 m. long and somewhat less than 1 m. broad, behind which are rolling hills. The length of the river-front is about 19 m. The average elevation of the city is more than 425 ft.; and the recorded extremes of low and high water on the river are 379 and 428 ft. (both established in 1844). The higher portions of the city lie about 200 ft. above the river level, and in general the site is so elevated that there can be no serious interruption of business except by extraordinary floods. The natural drainage is excellent, and the sewerage system, long very imperfect, has been made adequate. The street plan is approximately rectilinear. The stone-paved wharf or river-front, known as the Levee or Front Street, is 3.7 m. long. Market Street, running E. and W., is regarded as the central thoroughfare; and the numbering of the streets is systematized with reference to this line and the river. Broadway (or Fifth Street, from the river) and Olive Street are the chief shopping centres; Washington Avenue, First (or Main) and Second Streets are devoted to wholesale trade; and Fourth Street is the financial centre. The most. important public buildings are the Federal building, built of Maine granite; the county court house (1839-1862, $1,199,872),—a semi-classic, plain, massive stone structure, the Four Courts (1871, $755,000), built of cream-coloured Joliet stone, and a rather effective city hall (1890-1904, $2,000,000), in Victorian Gothic style in brick and stone. The chief slave market before the Civil War was in front of the Court House. The City Art Museum, a handsome semi-classic structure of original design, and the Tudor-Gothic building of the Washington University, are perhaps the most satisfying structures in the city architecturally. Among other noteworthy buildings are the Public Library, the Mercantile Library, the Mercantile, the Mississippi Valley, the Missouri-Lincoln, and the St Louis Union Trust Company buildings; the German-Renaissance home of the Mercantile Club; the florid building of the St Louis Club; the Merchants' Exchange; the Missouri School for the Blind; the Coliseum, built in 1897 for conventions, horse shows, &c., torn down in 1907 and rebuilt in Tefferson Avenue, and the Union Station, used by all the railways entering the city. This last was opened in 1894, and cost, including the site, $6,500,000; has a train-shed with thirty-two tracks, covers some eleven acres, and is one of the largest and finest railway stations in the world. The city owns a number of markets. In 1907 a special architectural commission, appointed to supervise the construction of new municipal buildings, purchased a site adjacent to the City Hall, for new city courts and jail, which were begun soon afterwards.

The valley of Mill Creek (once a lake bed, “Chouteau Pond,” and afterwards the central sewer) traverses the city from W. to E. and gives entry to railways coming from the W. into the Union Station. The terminal system for connecting Missouri with Illinois includes, in addition to the central passenger station, vast centralized freight warehouses and depots; an elevated railway along the levee; passenger and freight ferries across the Mississippi with railway connexions; two bridges across the river; and a tunnel-leading to one of them under the streets of the city along the river front. The Merchants' Bridge (1887-1890, $3,000,000), used solely by the railways, is 1366.5 ft. long in channel span, with approaches almost twice as long. The Eads Bridge (1868-1874; construction cost $6,536,730, total cost about $10,000,000) is 3 m. farther down the river; it carries both wagon ways and railway tracks, is 1627 ft. clear between shore abutments, and has three spans. Built entirely of steel above the piers, it is a happy combination of strength and grace, and was considered a marvel when erected.

St Louis has exceptionally fine residential streets that are accounted among the handsomest in the World. The most notable are Portland Place, Westmoreland Place, Vandeventer Place, Kingsbury Place, &c., in the neighbourhood of Forest Park: broad parked avenues, closed with ornamental gateways, and flanked by large houses in fine grounds. The park system of the city is among the finest in the country, containing in 1910 2641.5 acres (cost to 1909, $6,417,745). Forest Park (1372 acres), maintained mainly in a natural, open-country state, is the largest single member of the system. In one end of it was held the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. Tower Grove Park (277 acres) and the Missouri Botanical Gardens