Volunteers, of which he was made lieutenant-colonel in 1863, and which he commanded in the siege of Vicksburg. In August 1863 he resigned his commission and resumed his law practice. He was professor of law in the university of Wisconsin in 1868-85, and again in 1889-92, and in 1875-78 was a member of the commission which revised the statutes of Wisconsin. From 1876 to 1886 he was a member of the National Democratic Committee, and virtually the leader of his party in his state; he was a delegate to the National Democratic Conventions of 1876, 1880 and 1884, and was permanent chairman of the last. In 1885 he was a member of the state Assembly. He was postmaster-general in President Grover Cleveland's cabinet from March 1885 until January 1888, and was then secretary of the interior until March 1889. From 1891 until 1897 he was a member of the United States Senate, in which, during President Cleveland's second term, he was recognized as the chief defender of the Administration, and he was especially active in securing the repeal of the silver-purchase clause of the Sherman Act. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1896, but withdrew after the adoption of the free-silver plank. He then became one of the chief organizers of the National (or Gold) Democratic party, attended the convention at Indianapolis, and was chairman of its committee on resolutions. In 1881–85 and in 1898–1905 he was a regent of the university of Wisconsin; and he was a member (1897–1903) of the commission which had charge of the erection of the State Historical Library at Madison, and in 1906-8 of the commission for the construction of the new state capitol. He died at Madison on the 27th of August 1908.
With E. E. Bryant he edited vols. i. to xx., except vol. v., of the Reports of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
VILL, the Anglicized form of the word villa, used in Latin documents to translate the Anglo-Saxon tun, township, “the unit of the constitutional machinery, the simplest form of social organization” (Stubbs, Const. Hist. § 39). The word did not always and at all times have this meaning in Latin-English documents, but “vill” and “township” were ultimately, in English law, treated as convertible terms for describing a village community, and they remained in use in legal nomenclature until the ecclesiastical parishes were converted into areas for civil administration under the Poor Law Acts. This technical sense is derived from the late Latin use of villa for vicus, a village. Thus Fleta (vi. c. 51), writing in the time of Edward I., distinguishes the villa, as a collection of habitations and their appurtenances, from the mansio, a single house, nulli vicina, and the manor, which may embrace one or more villae. In classical Latin villa had meant “country-house,” “farm,” “villa” (see Villa); but the word was probably an abbreviation of vicula, diminutive of vicus, and in the sense of vicus it is used by Apuleius in the 2nd century. Later it even displaced civitas, for city; thus Rutilius Numatianus in his Itinerarium speaks of villae ingentes, oppida parva; whence the French ville (see Du Cange, Glossarium lat. s.v. Villa). In the Frankish empire villa was also used of the royal and imperial palaces or seats with their appurtenances. In the sense of a small collection of habitations the word came into general use in England in the French form “village.” From villa, too, are derived villein and villeinage (q.v.) (see also Village Communities).
VILLA, the Latin word (diminutive of vicus, a village) for a country-house. This term, which in England is usually given to a small country-house detached or semi-detached in the vicinity of a large town, is being gradually superseded by such expressions as “country” or “suburban house,” “bungalow,” &c., but in Italy it is still retained as in Roman times and means a summer residence, sometimes being of great extent. References to the villa are constantly made by Roman writers. Cicero is said to have possessed no less than seven villas, the oldest of which was near Arpinum, which he inherited. Pliny the younger had three or four, of which the example near Laurentium is the best known from his descriptions. There is too wide a divergence in the various conjectural restorations to make them of much value, but the remains of the villa of Hadrian at Tivoli, which covered an area over seven miles long and in which reproductions were made of all the most celebrated buildings he had seen during his travels, those in Greece seeming to have had the most attraction for him, and the villas of the 16th century on similar sites, such as the Villa d'Este near Tivoli, enable one to form some idea of the exceptional beauty of the positions selected and of the splendour of the structures which enriched them. According to Pliny, there were two kinds of villas, the villa urbana, which was a country seat, and the villa rustica, the farm-house, occupied by the servants who had charge generally of the estate. The Villa Boscoreale near Pompeii, which was excavated in 1893-94, was an example of the villa rustica, in which the principal room was the kitchen, with the bakery and stables beyond and room for the wine presses, oil presses, hand mill, &c. The villas near Rome were all built on hilly sites, so that the laying out of the ground in terraces formed a very important element in their design, and this forms the chief attraction of the Italian villas of the 16th century, among which the following are the best known: the Villa Madama, the design of which, attributed to Raphael, was carried out by Giulio Romano in 1520; the Villa Medici (1540); the Villa Albani, near the Porta Salaria; the Borghese; the Doria Pamphili (1650); the Villa di Papa Giulio (1550), designed by Vignola; the Aldobrandini (1592); the Falconieri and the Montdragon Villas at Frascati, and the Villa d'Este near Tivoli, in which the terraces and staircases are of great importance. In the proximity of other towns in Italy there are numerous villas, of which the example best known is that of the Villa Rotunda or Capra near Vicenza, which was copied by Lord Burlington in his house at Chiswick.
The Italian villas of the 16th and 17th century, like those of Roman times, included not only the country residence, but the whole of the other buildings on the estate, such as bridges, casinos, pavilions, small temples, rectangular or circular, which were utilized as summer-houses, and these seem to have had a certain influence in England, which may account for the numerous examples in the large parks in England of similar erections, as also the laying out of terraces, grottos and formal gardens. In France the same influence was felt, and at Fontainebleau, Versailles, Meudon and other royal palaces, the celebrated Le Nôtre transformed the parks surrounding them and introduced the cascades, which in Italy are so important a feature, as at St Cloud near Paris. (R. P. S.)
VILLACH, a town in Carinthia, Austria, 24 m. W. of Klagenfurt by rail. Pop. (1900) 9690. It is situated on the Drave, near its confluence with the Gail, in a broad fertile basin at the foot of the Dobratsch or Villacher Alp (7107 ft.). The parish church is an interesting Gothic edifice of the 15th century. The principal industry of Villach consists in the fabrication of various lead wares, and is mostly dependent on the lead mines of Bleiberg, which is situated about 9 m. to the west. This village (pop. 3435) is one of the richest lead-mining centres in Europe. The ores found here comprise silver-free galena, sulphate of zinc and calamine. The mines were already worked during the middle ages. Warmbad Villach, a watering-place with hot sulphur baths, and Mittewald, a favourite summer resort, whence the ascent of the Dobratsch can be made, arc in the neighbourhood of Villach. Some of the prettiest Carinthian lakes are to be found near Villach, as the Ossiacher-see, on whose southern shore stands the ruined castle of Landskron, dating from the middle of the 16th century, the Wörther-see and the small but lovely Faaker-see.
Villach is an old town, which was given by Heinrich II. to the bishopric of Bamberg in 1007. During the middle ages it was an important centre of commerce between Germany and Italy. With the advent of new trade routes at the beginning of modern times the town lost its importance, and in 1745 the citizens nearly decided to emigrate en masse. Its trade revived during the French occupation of 1809–13, and it
