country is intersected by several streams, of which, the Kanhan is the most considerable. Near the hills and along the streams are strips and patches of jungle ; the villages are usually surrounded with picturesque groves of tamarind, mango, and other shade-giving trees. The total population of the district, as ascertained by the census of 1872, is 159,116 males and 156,979 females; total 316,095, classified as follows : Hindus, 191,669; Muham- madans, 9747; Buddhists and Jains, 574; Christians, 105 ; " other denominations," consisting of aboriginal tribes, 114,000. The average density of the population is 80 72 per square mile. Three towns are returned as containing a population of upwards of 5000, viz. : Chhindwara, the administrative head-quarters of the district, population 8626; Lodhikera, population 5219; and Pandhurna, population 5218. Important discoveries of coal have been made here of late years; it is estimated that the area under which coal lies is over 250 square miles, some of the seams being as much as 18 feet in thickness. The forests of Chhindwara are very extensive, and lie principally on the southern slopes of the Satpuras. The total revenue of the district in 1873-74 amounted to 31,513, of which 21,687, or 68 8 per cent., was derived from the land-tax. For the protection of person and property, and administra tion of justice, the district contains 6 magisterial and 5 civil and revenue courts, together with a regular police of 361 men of all ranks, maintained at a cost of 5037. The cost of the district officials and police amounted to 10,514. Two charitable dispensaries are maintained for the relief of the sick. In the hill country the climate is temperate and healthy. In the cold season ice is frequently seen in the small tanks at an elevation of about 2000 feet. Until May the hot wind is little felt, while during the rains the weather is cool and agreeable. The average annual rain
fall amounts to 36 inches.
Chhindwárá, the principal town and administrative head-quarters of the district of the same name, situated on the banks of the Bodri ndld. The site of the town is 2200 feet above sea level, and is surrounded by ranges of low hills. The European station extends for nearly two miles in length, and is well wooded. It is con sidered very healthy, and forms a resort for European visitors from Nagpur and Kamthi during the hot weather. The conservancy arrangements are good, and the town is clean and cheerful. The population of the town in 1872 was returned as follows : Hindus, 6189 ; Muhamrnadans, 1865; Buddhists and Jains, 152; Christians, 105; others, 315 ; total, 8626.
CHIABRERA, Gabriello (1552-1637), the Italian Pindar, as he is sometimes called, was of patrician descent, and was born at Savona, a little town in the domain of the Genoese republic, twenty-eight years after the birth of Ronsard, with whom he has far more in common than with the great Greek whose echo he sought to make himself. As he has told in the pleasant fragment of autobiography prefixed to his works, in which, like Caesar, he speaks of himself in the third person, he was a posthumous child; he went to Rome at the age of nine years, under the care of his uncle Giovanni. There he read with a private tutor, suffered severely from two fevers in succession, and was sent at last, for the sake of society, to the Jesuits College, where he remained till his twentieth year, studying philo sophy, as he says, " pin per trattenimento che per appren- dere," rather for occupation than for learning s sake. Losing his uncle about this time, Chiabrera returned to Savona, " again to see his own and be seen by them." In a little while, however, he returned to Rome, and entered the household of a Cardinal Cameiiingo, where he remained for several years, frequenting the society of Paulus Manutius and of Sperone Speroni, the dramatist and critic of Tasso, and attending the lectures and hearing the conversation of Mureto. His revenge of an insult offered him obliged him to betake himself once more to Savona, where, to amuse himself, he read poetry, and particularly Greek. The poets of his choice were Pindar and Anacreon, and these he studied till it grew to be his ambition to reproduce in his own tongue their rhythms and structures, and so to enrich his country with a new form of verse,; in his own words, " like his countryman,. Columbus, to find a new world or drown." His reputation was made at once ; but he seldom quitted Savona, though often invited to do so, saving for journeys of pleasure,, in which he greatly delighted, and for occasional visits to the courts of princes, whither he was often summoned,, for his verse s sake, and in his capacity as a dramatist. At the ripe age of fifty he took to himself a wife, one Lelia Pavese, by whom he had no children. After a simple and blameless life, during which he produced a vast quantity of verse epic, tragic, pastoral, lyrical, and satirical he died in 1637, at the patriarchal age of eighty- five. .An epitaph was written for him in elegant Latin by Urban VIII. ; but on his tombstone- are graven two quaint Italian hexameters of his own, in which the gazer is warned from the poet s own example not to prefer Par nassus to Calvary.
A maker of odes in all their elaborate pomp of strophe and antistrophe, a master of new and complex rhythms, a coiner of ambitious words and composite epithets, an em ployer of audacious transpositions and inversions, and the inventorof a new system of poetic diction, it is not surpris ing that Chiabreva should have been compared with Ron- sard. Both were destined to suffer eclipse as great and sudden as had been their glory. Ronsard was succeeded by Malherbe and by French literature, properly so-called ; Chiabrera was the last of the great Italians, and after him literature languished till the second renaissance under Man- zoni. Chiabrera, however, was a man of merit, apart from that of the mere innovator. Setting aside his epics and dramas (one of the latter received the honours of transla tion at the hands of Nicolas Chretien, a sort of scenic Du Bartas), much of his work remains yet readable and plea sant. His grand Pindarics are dull, it is true, but some of his Canzonctte, like the anacreontics of Ronsard, are ex ceedingly elegant and graceful. His autobiographical sketch is also extremely interesting. The simple old poet, with his adoration of Greek (when a thing pleased him greatly he was wont to talk of it as " Greek Verse "), his delight in journeys and sight-seeing, his dislike for literary talk save with intimates and equals, his vanities and vengeances, his pride in the memory of favours bestowed on him by popes and princes, his " infiniia, marafiglia " over Virgil s versification and metaphor, his fondness for masculine rhymes and blank verse, his quiet Christianity, is a figure deserving perhaps of more study than is likely to be bestowed on that " new world " of art which it was his glory to fancy his own, by discovery and by conquest.
The best editions of Chiabrera are those of Rome, 1718, 3 vols. 8vo; of Venice, 1731, 4 vols. 8vo; of Leghorn, 1781, 5 vols. 12mo; and of Milan, 1807, 3 vols. 8vo. These only contain his lyric work ; all the rest he wrote has been long forgotten.
CHIARAMONTE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Syracuse, and 32 miles west from the city of that name. It is regularly built, with broad and straight streets. The view from the Capuchin convent is one of the finest in Sicily; and there is a well-preserved castle. The environs produce excellent wine. Population, 9300.
province of Brescia, and 12 miles west of the city of that name, near the left bank of the Oglio. It has several hurches, a hospital, and a public library, and manu
factures silk, cotton, and leather. In 1701 it was the scena
