Chapter C: O. H. Cl. Br. I. S (3)

CHEN-HAI [CHINHAI], a district town of China, in the province of Cheh-kiang, at the mouth of the Yung-kiang, 12 m. N.E. of Ningpo, in 29 deg. 58' N., 121 deg. 45' E. It lies at the foot of a hill on a tongue of land, and is partly protected from the sea on the N. by a dike about 3 m. long, composed entirely of large blocks of hewn granite. The walls are 20 ft. high and 3 m. in circumference. The defences were formerly of considerable strength, and included a well-built but now dismantled citadel on a precipitous cliff, 250 ft. high, at the extremity of the tongue of land on which the town is built. In the neighbourhood an engagement took place between the English and Chinese in 1841.

CHENIER, ANDRE DE (1762-1794), French poet, was born at Constantinople on the 30th of October 1762. His father, Louis Chenier, a native of Languedoc, after twenty years of successful commerce in the Levant as a cloth-merchant, was appointed to a position equivalent to that of French consul at Constantinople. His mother, Elisabeth Santi-Lomaca, whose sister was grandmother of A. Thiers, was a Greek. When the poet was three years old his father returned to France, and subsequently from 1768 to 1775 served as consul-general of France in Morocco. The family, of which Andre was the third son, and Marie-Joseph (see below) the fourth, remained in France; and after a few years, during which Andre ran wild with "la tante de Carcasonne," he distinguished himself as a verse-translator from the classics at the College de Navarre (the school in former days of Gerson and Bossuet) in Paris. In 1783 he obtained a cadetship in a French regiment at Strassburg. But the glamour of the military life was as soon exhausted by Chenier as it was by Coleridge. He returned to Paris before the end of the year, was well received by his family, and mixed in the cultivated circle which frequented the salon of his mother, among them Lebrun-Pindare, Lavoisier, Lesueur, Dorat, Parmy, and a little later the painter David. He was already a poet by predilection, an idyllist and steeped in the classical archaism of the time, when, in 1784, his taste for the antique was confirmed by a visit to Rome made in the company of two schoolfellows, the brothers Trudaine. From Naples, after visiting Pompeii, he returned to Paris, his mind fermenting with poetical images and projects, few of which he was destined to realize. For nearly three years, however, he was enabled to study and to experiment in verse without any active pressure or interruption from his family--three precious years in which the first phase of his art as a writer of idylls and bucolics, imitated to a large extent from Theocritus, Bion and the Greek anthologists, was elaborated. Among the poems written or at least sketched during this period were _L'Oaristys_, _L'Aveugle_, _La Jeune Malade_, _Bacchus_, _Euphrosine_ and _La Jeune Tarentine_, the last a synthesis of his purest manner, mosaic though it is of reminiscences of at least a dozen classical poets. As in glyptic so in poetic art, the Hellenism of the time was decadent and Alexandrine rather than Attic of the best period. But Chenier is always far more than an imitator. _La Jeune Tarentine_ is a work of personal emotion and inspiration. The colouring is that of classic mythology, but the spiritual element is as individual as that of any classical poem by Milton, Gray, Keats or Tennyson. Apart from his idylls and his elegies, Chenier also experimented from early youth in didactic and philosophic verse, and when he commenced his _Hermes_ in 1783 his ambition was to condense the _Encyclopedie_ of Diderot into a poem somewhat after the manner of Lucretius. This poem was to treat of man's position in the Universe, first in an isolated state, and then in society. It remains fragmentary, and though some of the fragments are fine, its attempt at scientific exposition approximates too closely to the manner of Erasmus Darwin to suit a modern ear. Another fragment called _L'Invention_ sums Chenier's _Ars Poetica_ in the verse "Sur des pensers nouveaux, faisons des vers antiques." _Suzanne_ represents the torso of a Biblical poem on a very large scale, in six cantos.

In the meantime, Andre had published nothing, and some of these last pieces were in fact not yet written, when in November 1787 an opportunity of a fresh career presented itself. The new ambassador at the court of St James's, M. de la Luzerne, was connected in some way with the Chenier family, and he offered to take Andre with him as his secretary. The offer was too good to be refused, but the poet hated himself on the banks of the _fiere Tamise_, and wrote in bitter ridicule of

"Ces Anglais.
Nation toute a vendre a qui peut la payer.
De contree en contree allant au monde entier,
Offrir sa joie ignoble et son faste grossier."

He seems to have been interested in the poetic diction of Milton and Thomson, and a few of his verses are remotely inspired by Shakespeare and Gray. To say, however, that he studied English literature would be an exaggeration. The events of 1789 and the startling success of his younger brother, Marie-Joseph, as political playwright and pamphleteer, concentrated all his thoughts upon France. In April 1790 he could stand London no longer, and once more joined his parents at Paris in the rue de Clery.

The France that he plunged into with such impetuosity was upon the verge of anarchy. A strong constitutionalist, Chenier took the view that the Revolution was already complete and that all that remained to be done was the inauguration of the reign of law. Moderate as were his views and disinterested as were his motives, his tactics were passionately and dangerously aggressive. From an idyllist and elegist we find him suddenly transformed into an unsparing master of poetical satire. His prose _Avis au peuple francais_ (August 24, 1790) was followed by the rhetorical _Jeu de paume_, a somewhat declamatory moral ode addressed "a Louis David, peintre." In the meantime he orated at the Feuillants Club, and contributed frequently to the _Journal de Paris_ from November 1791 to July 1792, when he wrote his scorching _Iambes_ to Collot d'Herbois, _Sur les Suisses revoltes du regiment de Chateauvieux_. The 10th of August uprooted his party, his paper and his friends, and the management of relatives who kept him out of the way in Normandy alone saved him from the massacre of September. In the month following these events his democratic brother, Marie-Joseph, had entered the Convention. Andre's sombre rage against the course of events found vent in the line on the Maenads who mutilated the king's Swiss Guard, and in the _Ode a Charlotte Corday_ congratulating France that "Un scelerat de moins rampe dans cette fange." At the express request of Malesherbes he furnished some arguments to the materials collected for the defence of the king. After the execution he sought a secluded retreat on the Plateau de Satory at Versailles and took exercise after nightfall. There he wrote the poems inspired by Fanny (Mme Laurent Lecoulteux), including the exquisite _Ode a Versailles_, one of his freshest, noblest and most varied poems.

His solitary life at Versailles lasted nearly a year. On the 7th of March 1794 he was taken at the house of Mme Piscatory at Passy. Two obscure agents of the committee of public safety were in search of a marquise who had flown, but an unknown stranger was found in the house and arrested on suspicion. This was Andre, who had come on a visit of sympathy. He was taken to the Luxembourg and afterwards to Saint-Lazare. During the 140 days of his imprisonment there he wrote the marvellous _Iambes_ (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables), which hiss and stab like poisoned bullets, and which were transmitted to his family by a venal gaoler. There he wrote the best known of all his verses, the pathetic _Jeune captive_, a poem at once of enchantment and of despair. Suffocating in an atmosphere of cruelty and baseness, Chenier's agony found expression almost to the last in these murderous _Iambes_ which he launched against the Convention. Ten days before the end, the painter J.B. Suvee executed the well-known portrait. He might have been overlooked but for the well-meant, indignant officiousness of his father. Marie-Joseph had done his best to prevent this, but he could do nothing more. Robespierre, who was himself on the brink of the volcano, remembered the venomous sallies in the _Journal de Paris_. At sundown on the 25th of July 1794, the very day of his condemnation on a bogus charge of conspiracy, Andre Chenier was guillotined. The record of his last moments by La Touche is rather melodramatic and is certainly not above suspicion.

Incomplete as was his career--he was not quite thirty-two--his life was cut short in a crescendo of all its nobler elements. Exquisite as was already his susceptibility to beauty and his mastership of the rarest poetic material, we cannot doubt that Chenier was preparing for still higher flights of lyric passion and poetic intensity. Nothing that he had yet done could be said to compare in promise of assured greatness with the _Iambes_, the _Odes_ and the _Jeune Captive_. At the moment he left practically nothing to tell the world of his transcendent genius, and his reputation has had to be retrieved from oblivion page by page, and almost poem by poem. During his lifetime only his _Jeu de paume_ (1791) and _Hymne sur les Suisses_ (1792) had been given to the world. The _Jeune Captive_ appeared in the _Decade philosophique_, Jan. 9, 1795; _La Jeune Tarentine_ in the _Mercure_ of March 22, 1801. Chateaubriand quoted three or four passages in his _Genie du christianisme_. Fayette and Lefeuvre-Deumier also gave a few fragments; but it was not until 1819 that a first imperfect attempt was made by H. de la Touche to collect the poems in a substantive volume. Since the appearance of the _editio princeps_ of Chenier's poems in La Touche's volume, many additional poems and fragments have been discovered, and an edition of the complete works of the poet, collated with the MSS. bequeathed to the Bibliotheque Nationale by Mme Elisa de Chenier in 1892, has been edited by Paul Dimoff and published by Delagrave. During the same period the critical estimates of the poet have fluctuated in a truly extraordinary manner. Sainte-Beuve in his _Tableau_ of 1828 sang the praises of Chenier as an heroic forerunner of the Romantic movement and a precursor of Victor Hugo. Chenier, he said, had "inspired and determined" Romanticism. This suggestion of modernity in Chenier was echoed by a chorus of critics who worked the idea to death; in the meantime, the standard edition of Chenier's works was being prepared by M. Becq de Fouquieres and was issued in 1862, but rearranged and greatly improved by the editor in 1872. The same patient investigator gave his New Documents on Andre Chenier to the world in 1875.

In the second volume of _La Vie litteraire_ Anatole France contests the theory of Sainte-Beuve. Far from being an initiator, he maintains that Chenier's poetry is the last expression of an expiring form of art. His matter and his form belong of right to the classic spirit of the 18th century. He is a contemporary, not of Hugo and Leconte de Lisle, but of Suard and Morellet. M. Faguet sums up on the side of M. France in his volume on the 18th century (1890). Chenier's real disciples, according to the latest view, are Leconte de Lisle and M. de Heredia, _mosaistes_ who have at heart the cult of antique and pagan beauty, of "pure art" and of "objective poetry." Heredia himself reverted to the judgment of Sainte-Beuve to the effect that Chenier was the first to make modern verses, and he adds, "I do not know in the French language a more exquisite fragment than the three hundred verses of the _Bucoliques_." Chenier's influence has been specially remarkable in Russia, where Pushkin imitated him, Kogloff translated _La Jeune Captive_, _La jeune Tarentine_ and other famous pieces, while the critic Vesselovsky pronounces "Il a retabli le lyrisme pur dans la poesie francaise." The general French verdict on his work is in the main well summed by Morillot, when he says that, judged by the usual tests of the Romantic movement of the 'twenties (love for strange literatures of the North, medievalism, novelties and experiments), Chenier would inevitably have been excluded from the _cenacle_ of 1827. On the other hand, he exhibits a decided tendency to the world-ennui and melancholy which was one of the earlier symptoms of the movement, and he has experimented in French verse in a manner which would have led to his excommunication by the typical performers of the 18th century. What is universally admitted is that Chenier was a very great artist, who like Ronsard opened up sources of poetry in France which had long seemed dried up. In England it is easier to feel his attraction than that of some far greater reputations in French poetry, for, rhetorical though he nearly always is, he yet reveals something of that quality which to the Northern mind has always been of the very essence of poetry, that quality which made Sainte-Beuve say of him that he was the first great poet "personnel et reveur" in France since La Fontaine. His diction is still very artificial, the poetic diction of Delille transformed in the direction of Hugo, but not very much. On the other hand, his descriptive power in treating of nature shows far more art than the Trianin school ever attained. His love of the woodland and his political fervour often remind us of Shelley, and his delicate perception of Hellenic beauty, and the perfume of Greek legend, give us almost a foretaste of Keats. For these reasons, among others, Chenier, whose art is destined to so many vicissitudes of criticism in his own country, seems assured among English readers of a place among the Dii Majores of French poetry.

The Chenier literature of late years has become enormous. His fate has
been commemorated in numerous plays, pictures and poems, notably in
the fine epilogue of Sully Prudhomme, the _Stello_ of A. de Vigny, the
delicate statue by Puech in the Luxembourg, and the well-known
portrait in the centre of the "Last Days of the Terror." The best
editions are still those of Becq de Fouquieres (Paris, 1862, 1872 and
1881), though these are now supplemented by those of L. Moland (2
vols., 1889) and R. Guillard (2 vols., 1899). (T. SE.)

CHENIER, MARIE-JOSEPH BLAISE DE (1764-1811), French poet, dramatist and politician, younger brother of Andre de Chenier, was born at Constantinople on the 11th of February 1764.[1] He was brought up at Carcassonne, and educated in Paris at the College de Navarre. Entering the army at seventeen, he left it two years afterwards; and at nineteen he produced _Azemire_, a two-act drama (acted in 1786), and _Edgar, ou le page suppose_, a comedy (acted in 1785), which were failures. His _Charles IX_ was kept back for nearly two years by the censor. Chenier attacked the censorship in three pamphlets, and the commotion aroused by the controversy raised keen interest in the piece. When it was at last produced on the 4th of November 1789, it achieved an immense success, due in part to its political suggestion, and in part to Talma's magnificent impersonation of Charles IX. Camille Desmoulins said that the piece had done more for the Revolution than the days of October, and a contemporary memoir-writer, the marquis de Ferriere, says that the audience came away "ivre de vengeance et tourmente d'une soif de sang." The performance was the occasion of a split among the actors of the Comedie Francaise, and the new theatre in the Palais Royal, established by the dissidents, was inaugurated with _Henri VIII_ (1791), generally recognized as Chenier's masterpiece; _Jean Calas, ou l'ecole des juges_ followed in the same year. In 1792 he produced his _Caius Gracchus_, which was even more revolutionary in tone than its predecessors. It was nevertheless proscribed in the next year at the instance of the Montagnard deputy Albitte, for an anti-anarchical hemistich (_Des lois et non du sang!_); _Fenelon_ (1793) was suspended after a few representations; and in 1794 his _Timoleon_, set to Etienne Mehul's music, was also proscribed. This piece was played after the fall of the Terror, but the fratricide of Timoleon became the text for insinuations to the effect that by his silence Joseph de Chenier had connived at the judicial murder of Andre, whom Joseph's enemies alluded to as _Abel_. There is absolutely nothing to support the calumny, which has often been repeated since. In fact, after some fruitless attempts to save his brother, variously related by his biographers, Joseph became aware that Andre's only chance of safety lay in being forgotten by the authorities, and that ill-advised intervention would only hasten the end. Joseph Chenier had been a member of the Convention and of the Council of Five Hundred, and had voted for the death of Louis XVI.; he had a seat in the tribunate; he belonged to the committees of public instruction, of general security, and of public safety. He was, nevertheless, suspected of moderate sentiments, and before the end of the Terror had become a marked man. His purely political career ended in 1802, when he was eliminated with others from the tribunate for his opposition to Napoleon. In 1801 he was one of the educational jury for the Seine; from 1803 to 1806 he was inspector-general of public instruction. He had allowed himself to be reconciled with Napoleon's government, and _Cyrus_, represented in 1804, was written in his honour, but he was temporarily disgraced in 1806 for his _Epitre a Voltaire_. In 1806 and 1807 he delivered a course of lectures at the Athenee on the language and literature of France from the earliest years; and in 1808 at the emperor's request, he prepared his _Tableau historique de l'etat et du progres de la litterature francaise depuis 1789 jusqu'a 1808_, a book containing some good criticism, though marred by the violent prejudices of its author. He died on the 10th of January 1811. The list of his works includes hymns and national songs--among others, the famous _Chant du depart_; odes, _Sur la mort de Mirabeau_, _Sur l'oligarchie de Robespierre_, &c.; tragedies which never reached the stage, _Brutus et Cassius_, _Philippe deux_, _Tibere_; translations from Sophocles and Lessing, from Gray and Horace, from Tacitus and Aristotle; with elegies, dithyrambics and Ossianic rhapsodies. As a satirist he possessed great merit, though he sins from an excess of severity, and is sometimes malignant and unjust. He is the chief tragic poet of the revolutionary period, and as Camille Desmoulins expressed it, he decorated Melpomene with the tricolour cockade.

See the _Oeuvres completes de Joseph Chenier_ (8 vols., Paris,
1823-1826), containing notices of the poet by Arnault and Daunou;
Charles Labitte, _Etudes litteraires_ (1846); Henri Welschinger, _Le
Theatre revolutionnaire, 1789-1799_ (1881); and A. Lieby, _Etude sur
le theatre de Marie-Joseph Chenier_(1902).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This is the date given by G. de Chenier in his _La Verite sur la
famille de Chenier_ (1844).

CHENILLE (from the Fr. _chenille_, a hairy caterpillar), a twisted velvet cord, woven so that the short outer threads stand out at right angles to the central cord, thus giving a resemblance to a caterpillar. Chenille is used as a trimming for dress and furniture.

CHENONCEAUX, a village of central France, in the department of Indre-et-Loire, on the right bank of the Cher, 20 m. E. by S. of Tours on the Orleans railway. Pop. (1906) 216. Chenonceaux owes its interest to its chateau (see ARCHITECTURE: _Renaissance Architecture in France_), a building in the Renaissance style on the river Cher, to the left bank of which it is united by a two-storeyed gallery built upon five arches, and to the right by a drawbridge flanked by an isolated tower, part of an earlier building of the 15th century. Founded in 1515 by Thomas Bohier (d. 1523), financial minister in Normandy, the chateau was confiscated by Francis I. in 1535. Henry II. presented it to his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who on his death was forced to exchange it for Chaumont-sur-Loire by Catherine de' Medici. The latter built the gallery which leads to the left bank of the Cher. Chenonceaux passed successively into the hands of Louise de Vaudemont, wife of Henry III., the house of Vendome, and the family of Bourbon-Conde. In the 18th century it came into the possession of the farmer-general Claude Dupin (1684-1769), who entertained the most distinguished people in France within its walls. In 1864 it was sold to the chemist Theophile Pelouze, whose wife executed extensive restorations. It subsequently became the property of the Credit Foncier, and again passed into private occupancy.

CHENOPODIUM, or GOOSE-FOOT, a genus of erect or prostrate herbs (natural order Chenopodiaceae), usually growing on the seashore or on waste or cultivated ground. The green angular stem is often striped with white or red, and, like the leaves, often more or less covered with mealy hairs. The leaves are entire, lobed or toothed, often more or less deltoid or triangular in shape. The minute flowers are bisexual, and borne in dense axillary or terminal clusters or spikes. The fruit is a membranous one-seeded utricle often enclosed by the persistent calyx. Ten species occur in Britain, one of which, _C. Bonus-Henricus_, Good King Henry, is cultivated as a pot-herb, in lieu of asparagus, under the name mercury, and all-good.

CHEOPS, in Herodotus, the name of the king who built the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Following on a period of good rule and prosperity under Rhampsinitus, Cheops closed the temples, abolished the sacrifices and made all the Egyptians labour for his monument, working in relays of 100,000 men every three months (see PYRAMID). Proceeding from bad to worse, he sacrificed the honour of his daughter in order to obtain the money to complete his pyramid; and the princess built herself besides a small pyramid of the stones given to her by her lovers. Cheops reigned 50 years and was succeeded by his brother, Chephren, who reigned 56 years and built the second pyramid. During these two reigns the Egyptians suffered every kind of misery and the temples remained closed. Herodotus continues that in his own day the Egyptians were unwilling to name these oppressors and preferred to call the pyramids after a shepherd named Philition, who pastured his flocks in their neighbourhood. At length Mycerinus, son of Cheops and successor of Chephren, reopened the temples and, although he built the Third Pyramid, allowed the oppressed people to return to their proper occupations.

Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus are historical personages of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, in correct order, and they built the three pyramids attributed to them here. But they are wholly misplaced by Herodotus. Rhampsinitus, the predecessor of Cheops, appears to represent Rameses III. of the twentieth dynasty, and Mycerinus in Herodotus is but a few generations before Psammetichus, the founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty. Manetho correctly places the great Pyramid kings in Dynasty IV. In Egyptian the name of Cheops (Chemmis or Chembis in Diodorus Siculus, Suphis in Manetho) is spelt Hwfw (Khufu), but the pronunciation, in late times perhaps Khoouf, is uncertain. The Greeks and Romans generally accepted the view that Herodotus supplies of his character, and moralized on the uselessness of his stupendous work; but there is nothing else to prove that the Egyptians themselves execrated his memory. Modern writers rather dwell on the perfect organization demanded by his scheme, the training of a nation to combined labour, the level attained here by art and in the fitting of masonry, and finally the fact that the Great Pyramid was the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world and now alone of them survives. It seems that representations of deities, and indeed any representations at all, were rare upon the polished walls of the great monuments of the fourth dynasty, and Petrie thinks that he can trace a violent religious revolution with confiscation of endowments at this time in the temple remains at Abydos; but none the less the wants of the deities were then attended to by priests selected from the royal family and the highest in the land. Khufu's work in the temple of Bubastis is proved by a surviving fragment, and he is figured slaying his enemy at Sinai before the god Thoth. In late times the priests of Denderah claimed Khufu as a benefactor; he was reputed to have built temples to the gods near the Great Pyramids and Sphinx (where also a pyramid of his daughter Hentsen is spoken of), and there are incidental notices of him in the medical and religious literature. The funerary cult of Khufu and Khafr[=e] was practised under the twenty-sixth dynasty, when so much that had fallen into disuse and been forgotten was revived. Khufu is a leading figure in an ancient Egyptian story (Papyrus Westcar), but it is unfortunately incomplete. He was the founder of the fourth dynasty, and was probably born in Middle Egypt near Beni Hasan, in a town afterwards known as "Khufu's Nurse," but was connected with the Memphite third dynasty. Two tablets at the mines of Wadi Maghara in the peninsula of Sinai, a granite block from Bubastis, and a beautiful ivory statuette found by Petrie in the temple at Abydos, are almost all that can be definitely assigned to Khufu outside the pyramid at Giza and its ruined accompaniments. His date, according to Petrie, is 3969-3908 B.C., but in the shorter chronology of Meyer, Breasted and others he reigned (23 years) about a thousand years later, c. 2900 B.C.

See Herodotus ii. 124; Diodorus Siculus i. 64; Sethe in
Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_, s.v.; W.M.F. Petrie, _History of
Egypt_, vol. i., and _Abydos_, part ii. p. 48; J.H. Breasted,
_History_. (F. LL. G.)

CHEPSTOW, a market town and river-port in the southern parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, on the Wye, 2 m. above its junction with the Severn, and on the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3067. It occupies the slope of a hill on the western (left) bank of the river, and is environed by beautiful scenery. The church of St Mary, originally the conventual chapel of a Benedictine priory of Norman foundation, has remains of that period in the west front and the nave, but a rebuilding of the chancel and transepts was effected in the beginning of the 19th century. The church contains many interesting monuments. The castle, still a magnificent pile, was founded in the 11th century by William Fitz-Osbern, earl of Hereford, but was almost wholly rebuilt in the 13th. There are, however, parts of the original building in the keep. The castle occupies a splendid site on the summit of a cliff above the Wye, and covers about 3 acres. The river is crossed by a fine iron bridge of five arches, erected in 1816, and by a tubular railway bridge designed by Sir Isambard Brunel. There is a free passage on the Wye for large vessels as far as the bridge. From the narrowness and depth of the channel the tide rises suddenly and to a great height, forming a dangerous bore. The exports are timber, bark, iron, coal, cider and millstones. Some shipbuilding is carried on.

As the key to the passage of the Wye, Chepstow (_Estrighorel_, _Striguil_) was the site successively of British, Roman and Saxon fortifications. Domesday Book records that the Norman castle was built by William Fitz-Osbern to defend the Roman road into South Wales. On the confiscation of his son's estates, the castle was granted to the earls of Pembroke, and after its reversion to the crown in 1306, Edward II. in 1310 granted it to his half-brother Thomas de Brotherton. On the latter's death it passed, through his daughter Margaret, Lady Segrave, to the dukes of Norfolk, from whom, after again reverting to the crown, it passed to the earls of Worcester. It was confiscated by parliament and settled on Oliver Cromwell, but was restored to the earls in 1660. The borough must have grown up between 1310, when the castle and vill were granted to Thomas de Brotherton, and 1432, when John duke of Norfolk died seised of the castle, manor and borough of Struguil. In 1524 Charles, first earl of Worcester and then lord of the Marches, granted a new charter of incorporation to the bailiffs and burgesses of the town, which had fallen into decay. This was sustained until the reign of Charles II., when, some dispute arising between the earl of Bridgwater and the burgesses, no bailiff was appointed and the charter lapsed. Chepstow was afterwards governed by a board of twelve members. A port since early times, when the lord took dues of ships going up to the forest of Dean, Chepstow had no ancient market and no manufactures but that of glass, which was carried on for a short time within the ruins of the castle.

CHEQUE, or CHECK, in commercial law, a bill of exchange drawn on a banker and signed by the drawer, requiring the banker to pay on demand a certain sum in money to or to the order of a specified person or to bearer. In this, its most modern sense, the cheque is the outcome of the growth of the banking system of the 19th century. For details see BANKS AND BANKING: _Law_, and BILL OF EXCHANGE. The word check,[1] of which "cheque" is a variant now general in English usage, signified merely the counterfoil or indent of an exchequer bill, or any draft form of payment, on which was registered the particulars of the principal part, as a check to alteration or forgery. The check or counterfoil parts remained in the hands of the banker, the portion given to the customer being termed a "drawn note" or "draft." From the beginning of the 19th century the word "cheque" gradually became synonymous with "draft" as meaning a written order on a banker by a person having money in the banker's hands, to pay some amount to bearer or to a person named. Ultimately, it entirely superseded the word "draft," and has now a statutory definition (Bills of Exchange Act 1882, s. 73)--" a bill of exchange drawn on a banker payable on demand." The word "draft" has come to have a wider meaning, that of a bill drawn by one person on another for a sum of money, or an order (whether on a banker or other) to pay money. The employment of cheques as a method of payment offering greater convenience than coin is almost universal in Great Britain and the United States. Of the transactions through the banks of the United Kingdom between 86 and 90% are conducted by means of cheques, and an even higher proportion in the United States. On the continent of Europe the use of cheques, formerly rare, is becoming more general, particularly in France, and to some extent in Germany.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The original meaning of "check" is a move in the game of chess
which directly attacks the king; the word comes through the Old Fr.
_eschec_, _eschac_, from the Med. Lat. form _scaccus_ of the Persian
_shah_, king, i.e. the king in the game of chess; cf. the origin of
"mate" from the Arabic _shah-mat_, the king is dead. The word was
early used in a transferred sense of a stoppage or rebuff, and so is
applied to anything which stops or hinders a matter in progress, or
which controls or restrains anything, hence a token, ticket or
counterfoil which serves as a means of identification, &c.

CHER, a department of central France, embracing the eastern part of the ancient province of Berry, and parts of Bourbonnais, Nivernais and Orleanais, bounded N. by the department of Loiret, W. by Loir-et-Cher and Indre, S. by Allier and Creuse, and E. by Nievre. Pop. (1906) 343,484. Area 2819 sq. m. The territory of the department is elevated in the south, where one point reaches 1654 ft., and in the east. The centre is occupied by a wide calcareous table-land, to the north of which stretches the plain of Sologne. The principal rivers, besides the Cher and its tributaries, are the Grande Sauldre and the Petite Sauldre on the north, but the Loire and Allier, though not falling within the department, drain the eastern districts, and are available for navigation. The Cher itself becomes navigable when it receives the Arnon and Yevre, and the communications of the department are greatly facilitated by the Canal du Berry, which traverses it from east to west, the lateral canal of the Loire, which follows the left bank of that river, and the canal of the Sauldre. The climate is temperate, and the rainfall moderate. Except in the Sologne, the soil is generally fertile, but varies considerably in different localities. The most productive region is that on the east, which belongs to the valley of the Loire; the central districts are tolerably fertile but marshy, being often flooded by the Cher; while in the south and south-west there is a considerable extent of dry and fertile land. Wheat and oats are largely cultivated, while hemp, vegetables and various fruits are also produced. The vine flourishes chiefly in the east of the arrondissement of Sancerre. The department contains a comparatively large extent of pasturage, which has given rise to a considerable trade in horses, cattle, sheep and wool for the northern markets. Nearly one-fifth of the whole area consists of forest. Mines of iron are worked, and various sorts of stone are quarried. Brick, porcelain and glassworks employ large numbers of the inhabitants. There are also flour-mills, distilleries, oil-works, saw-mills and tanneries. Bourges and Vierzon are metallurgical and engineering centres. Coal and wine are leading imports, while cereals, timber, wool, fruit and industrial products are exported. The department is served by the Orleans railway, and possesses in all more than 300 m. of navigable waterways. It is divided into three arrondissements (29 cantons, 292 communes) cognominal with the towns of Bourges, Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, and Sancerre, of which the first is the capital, the seat of an archbishop and of a court of appeal and headquarters of the VIII. army-corps. The department belongs to the _academie_ (educational division) of Paris. Bourges, Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, Vierzon and Sancerre (q.v.) are the principal towns. Mehun-sur-Yevre (pop. 5227), a town with an active manufacture of porcelain, has a Romanesque church and a chateau of the 14th century. Among the other interesting churches of the department, that at St Satur has a fine choir of the 14th and 15th centuries; those of Dun-sur-Auron, Plaimpied, Aix d'Angillon and Jeanvrin are Romanesque in style, while Aubigny-Ville has a church of the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries and a chateau of later date. Drevant, built on the site of a Roman town, preserves ruins of a large theatre and other remains. Among the megalithic monuments of Cher, the most notable is that at Villeneuve-sur-Cher, known as the Pierre-de-la-Roche.

CHERAT, a hill cantonment and sanatorium in the Peshawar district of the North-West Frontier Province, India, 34 m. S.E. of Peshawar. It is situated at an elevation of 4500 ft, on the west of the Khattak range, which divides the Peshawar from the Kohat district. It was first used in 1861, and since then has been employed during the hot weather as a health station for the British troops quartered in the hot and malarious vale of Peshawar.

CHERBOURG, a naval station, fortified town and seaport of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Manche, on the English Channel, 232 m. W.N.W. of Paris on the Ouest-Etat railway. Pop. (1906) town, 35,710; commune, 43,827. Cherbourg is situated at the mouth of the Divette, on a small bay at the apex of the indentation formed by the northern shore of the peninsula of Cotentin. Apart from a fine hospital and the church of La Trinite dating from the 15th century, the town has no buildings of special interest. A rich collection of paintings is housed in the hotel de ville. A statue of the painter J.F. Millet, born near Cherbourg, stands in the public garden, and there is an equestrian statue of Napoleon I. in the square named after him. Cherbourg is a fortified place of the first class, headquarters of one of the five naval arrondissements of France, and the seat of a sub-prefect. It has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a lycee and a naval school. The chief industries of the town proper are fishing, saw-milling, tanning, leather-dressing, ship-building, iron and copper-founding, rope-making and the manufacture of agricultural implements. There are stone quarries in the environs, and the town has trade in farm produce.

Cherbourg derives its chief importance from its naval and commercial harbours, which are distant from each other about half a mile. The former consists of three main basins cut out of the rock, and has an area of 55 acres. The minimum depth of water is 30 ft. Connected with the harbour are dry docks, the yards where the largest ships in the French navy are constructed, magazines, rope walks, and the various workshops requisite for a naval arsenal of the first class. The works and town are carefully guarded on every side by redoubts and fortifications, and are commanded by batteries on the surrounding hills. There is a large naval hospital close to the harbour. The commerical harbour at the mouth of the Divette communicates with the sea by a channel 650 yds. long. It consists of two parts, an outer and tidal harbour 17-1/2 acres in extent, and an inner basin 15 acres in extent, with a depth on sill at ordinary spring tide of 25 ft. Outside these harbours is the triangular bay, which forms the roadstead of Cherbourg. The bay is admirably sheltered by the land on every side but the north. On that side it is sheltered by a huge breakwater, over 2 m. in length, with a width of 650 ft. at its base and 30 ft. at its summit, which is protected by forts, and leaves passages for vessels to the east and west. These passages are guarded by forts placed on islands intervening between the breakwater and the mainland, and themselves united to the land by breakwaters. The surface within these barriers amounts to about 3700 acres. Cherbourg is a port of call for the American, North German Lloyd and other important lines of transatlantic steamers. The chief exports are stone for road-making, butter, eggs and vegetables; the chief imports are coal, timber, superphosphates and wine from Algeria. Great Britain is the principal customer.

Cherbourg is supposed by some investigators to occupy the site of the Roman station of _Coriallum_, but nothing definite is known about its origin. The name was long regarded as a corruption of _Caesaris Burgus_ (Caesar's Borough). William the Conqueror, under whom it appears as _Carusbur_, provided it with a hospital and a church; and Henry II. of England on several occasions chose it as his residence. In 1295 it was pillaged by an English fleet from Yarmouth; and in the 14th century it frequently suffered during the wars against the English. Captured by the English in 1418 after a four months' siege, it was recovered by Charles VII. of France in 1450. An attempt was made under Louis XIV. to construct a military port; but the fortifications were dismantled in 1688, and further damage was inflicted by the English in 1758. In 1686 Vauban planned harbour-works which were begun under Louis XVI. and continued by Napoleon I. It was left, however, to Louis Philippe, and particularly to Napoleon III., to complete them, and their successful realization was celebrated in 1858, in the presence of the queen of England, against whose dominions they had at one time been mainly directed. At the close of 1857, L8,000,000, of which the breakwater cost over L2,500,000, had been expended on the works; in 1889 a further sum of L680,000 was voted by the Chamber of Deputies for the improvement of the port.

CHERBULIEZ, CHARLES VICTOR (1829-1899), French novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 19th of July 1829, at Geneva, where his father, Andre Cherbuliez (1795-1874), was a classical professor at the university. He was descended from a family of Protestant refugees, and many years later Victor Cherbuliez resumed his French nationality, taking advantage of an act passed in the early days of the Revolution. Geneva was the scene of his early education; thence he proceeded to Paris, and afterwards to the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He returned to his native town and engaged in the profession of teaching. After his resumption of French citizenship he was elected a member of the Academy (1881), and having received the Legion of Honour in 1870, he was promoted to be officer of the order in 1892. He died on the 1st of July 1899. Cherbuliez was a voluminous and successful writer of fiction. His first book, originally published in 1860, reappeared in 1864 under the title of _Un Cheval de Phidias_: it is a romantic study of art in the golden age of Athens. He went on to produce a series of novels, of which the following are the best known:--_Le Comte Kostia_ (1863), _Le Prince Vitale_ (1864), _Le Roman d'une honnete femme_ (1866), _L'Aventure de Ladislas Bolski_ (1869), _Miss Ravel_ (1875), _Samuel Brohl et Cie_ (1877), _L'Idee de Jean Teterol_ (1878), _Noirs et rouges_ (1881), _La Vocation du Comte Ghislain_ (1888), _Une Gageure_ (1890), _Le Secret du precepteur_ (1893), _Jacquine Vanesse_ (1898), &c. Most of these novels first appeared in the _Revue des deux mondes_, to which Cherbuliez also contributed a number of political and learned articles, usually printed with the pseudonym G. Valbert. Many of these have been published in collected form under the titles _L'Allemagne politique_ (1870), _L'Espagne politique_ (1874), _Profils etrangers_ (1889), _L'Art et la nature_ (1892), &c. The volume _Etudes de litterature et d'art_ (1873) includes articles for the most part reprinted from _Le Temps_. The earlier novels of Cherbuliez have been said with truth to show marked traces of the influence of George Sand; and in spite of modification, his method was that of an older school. He did not possess the sombre power or the intensely analytical skill of some of his later contemporaries, but his books are distinguished by a freshness and honesty, fortified by cosmopolitan knowledge and lightened by unobtrusive humour, which fully account for their wide popularity in many countries besides his own. His genius was the reverse of dramatic, and attempts to present two of his stories on the stage have not succeeded. His essays have all the merits due to liberal observation and thoroughness of treatment; their style, like that of the novels, is admirably lucid and correct. (C.)

CHERCHEL, a seaport of Algeria, in the arrondissement and department of Algiers, 55 m. W. of the capital. It is the centre of an agricultural and vine-growing district, but is commercially of no great importance, the port, which consists of part only of the inner port of Roman days, being small and the entry difficult. The town is chiefly noteworthy for the extensive ruins of former cities on the same site. Of existing buildings the most remarkable is the great Mosque of the Hundred Columns, now used as a military hospital. The mosque contains 89 columns of diorite, surmounted by a variety of capitals brought from other buildings. The population of the town in 1906 was 4733; of the commune of which Cherchel is the centre 11,088.

Cherchel was a city of the Carthaginians, who named it Jol. Juba II. (25 B.C.) made it the capital of the Mauretanian kingdom under the name of Caesarea. Juba's tomb, the so-called Tombeau de la Chretienne (see ALGERIA), is 7-1/2 m. E. of the town. Destroyed by the Vandals, Caesarea regained some of its importance under the Byzantines. Taken by the Arabs it was renamed by them Cherchel. Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa captured the city in 1520 and annexed it to his Algerian pashalik. In the early years of the 18th century it was a commercial city of some importance, but was laid in ruins by a terrible earthquake in 1738. In 1840 the town was occupied by the French. The ruins suffered greatly from vandalism during the early period of French rule, many portable objects being removed to museums in Paris or Algiers, and most of the monuments destroyed for the sake of their stone. Thus the dressed stones of the ancient theatre served to build barracks; the material of the hippodrome went to build the church; while the portico of the hippodrome, supported by granite and marble columns, and approached by a fine flight of steps, was destroyed by Cardinal Lavigerie in a search for the tomb of St Marciana. The fort built by Arouj Barbarossa, elder brother of Khair-ed-Din, was completely destroyed by the French. There are many fragments of a white marble temple. The ancient cisterns still supply the town with water. The museum contains some of the finest statues discovered in Africa. They include colossal figures of Aesculapius and Bacchus, and the lower half of a seated Egyptian divinity in black basalt, bearing the cartouche of Tethmosis (Thothmes) I. This statue was found at Cherchel, and is held by some archaeologists to indicate an Egyptian settlement here about 1500 B.C.

See AFRICA, ROMAN, and the description of the museum by P. Gauckler in
the _Musees et collections archeologiques de l'Algerie_.

CHERCHEN, a town of East Turkestan, situated at the northern foot of the Altyn-tagh, a range of the Kuen-lun, in 85 deg. 35' E., and on the Cherchen-darya, at an altitude of 4100 ft. It straggles mostly along the irrigation channels that go off from the left side of the river, and in 1900 had a population of about 2000. The Cherchen-darya, which rises in the Arka-tagh, a more southerly range of the Kuen-lun, in 87 deg. E. and 36 deg. 20' N., flows north until it strikes the desert below Cherchen, after which it turns north-east and meanders through a wide bed (300-400 ft.), beset with dense reeds and flanked by older channels. It is probable that anciently it entered the disused channel of the Ettek-tarim, but at present it joins the existing Tarim in the lake of Kara-buran, a sort of lacustrine "ante-room" to the Kara-koshun (N.M. Przhevalsky's Lop-nor). At its entrance into the former lake the Cherchen-darya forms a broad delta. The river is frozen in its lower course for two to three months in the winter. From the foot of the mountains to the oasis of Cherchen it has a fall of nearly 4000 ft., whereas in the 300 m. or so from Cherchen to the Kara-buran the fall is 1400 ft. The total length is 500-600 m., and the drainage basin measures 6000-7000 sq. m.

See Sven Hedin, _Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia,
1899-1902_, vols. i. and ii. (1905-1906); also TAKLA-MAKAN.

CHEREMISSES, or TCHEREMISSES, a Finnish people living in isolated groups in the governments of Kazan, Viatka, Novgorod, Perm, Kostroma and Ufa, eastern Russia. Their name for themselves is Mori or Mari (people), possibly identifiable with the ancient Merians of Suzdalia. Their language belongs to the Finno-Ugrian family. They number some 240,000. There are two distinct physical types: one of middle height, black-haired, brown skin and flat-faced; the other short, fair-haired, white skinned, with narrow eyes and straight short noses. Those who live on the right bank of the Volga are sometimes known as Hill Cheremis, and are taller and stronger than those who inhabit the swamps of the left bank. They are farmers and herd horses and cattle. Their religion is a hotchpotch of Shamanism, Mahommedanism and Christianity. They are usually monogamous. The chief ceremony of marriage is a forcible abduction of the bride. The women, naturally ugly, are often disfigured by sore eyes caused by the smoky atmosphere of the huts. They wear a head-dress, trimmed with glass jewels, forming a hood behind stiffened with metal. On their breasts they carry a breastplate formed of coins, small bells and copper disks.

See Smirinov, _Mordres et Tcheremisses_ (Paris, 1895); J. Abercromby,
_Pre- and Proto-historic Finns_ (London, 1898).

CHERIBON, a residency of the island of Java, Dutch East Indies, bounded S. and W. by the Preanger regencies, N.W. by Krawang, N. by the Java Sea, and E. by the residencies of Tegal and Banyumas. Pop. (1897) 1,577,521, including 867 Europeans, 21,108 Chinese, and 2016 Arabs and other Asiatic foreigners. The natives consist of Middle Javanese in the north and Sundanese in the south. Cheribon has been for many centuries the centre of Islamism in western Java, and is also the seat of a fanatical Mahommedan sect controlled from Mecca. The native population is on the whole orderly and prosperous. The northern half of the residency is flat and marshy in places, especially in the north-western corner, while the southern half is mountainous. In the middle stands the huge volcano Cherimai, clad with virgin forest and coffee plantations, and surrounded at its foot by rice fields. South-south-west of Cherimai on the Preanger border is the Sawal volcano, at whose foot is the beautiful Penjalu lake. Sulphur and salt springs occur on the slopes of Cherimai, and near Palimanan there is a cavernous hole called Guwagalang (or Payagalang), which exhales carbonic acid gas, and is considered holy by the natives and guarded by priests. There is a similar hole in the Preanger. The principal products of cultivation are sugar, coffee, rice and also tea and pulse (_rachang_), the plantations being for the most part owned by Europeans. The chief towns are Cheribon, a seaport and capital of the residency, the seaport of Indramaya, Palimanan, Majalengka, Kuningan and Chiamis. Cheribon has a good open roadstead. The town is very old and irregularly built, and the climate is unhealthy; nevertheless it has a lively export trade in sugar and coffee and is a regular port of call. In 1908 the two descendants of the old sultans of Cheribon still resided there in their respective _Kratons_ or palaces, and each received an annual income of over L1500 for the loss of his privileges. A country residence belonging to one of the sultans is situated close to Cheribon and is much visited on account of its fantastic architecture. Indramaya was a considerable trading place in the days of the early Portuguese and Dutch traders. Kuningan is famous for a breed of small but strong horses.

CHERKASY (Polish, _Czerkasy_), a town of Russia, in the government of Kiev, 96 m. S.E. of Kiev, on the right bank of the Dnieper. Pop. (1883) 15,740; (1897) 26,619. The inhabitants (Little Russians) are mostly employed in agriculture and gardening; but sugar and tobacco are manufactured and spirits distilled. Cherkasy was an important town of the Ukraine in the 15th century, and remained so, under Polish rule, until the revolt of the Cossack _hetman_ Chmielnicki (1648). It was annexed by Russia in 1795.

CHERNIGOV, a government of Little Russia, on the left bank of the Dnieper, bounded by the governments of Mogilev and Smolensk on the N., Orel and Kursk on the E., Poltava on the S., and Kiev and Minsk on the W. Area, 20,233 sq. m. Its surface is an undulating plain, 650 to 750 ft. high in the north and 370 to 600 ft. in the south, deeply grooved by ravines and the valleys of the rivers. In the north, beyond the Desna river, about one-third of the area is under forest (rapidly disappearing), and marshes occur along the courses of the rivers; while to the south of the Desna the soil is dry and sometimes sandy, and gradually it assumes the characters of a steppe-land as one proceeds southward. The government is drained by the Dnieper, which forms its western boundary for 180 m., and by its tributary the Desna. The latter, which flows through Chernigov for nearly 350 m., is navigable, and timber is brought down its tributaries. The climate is much colder in the wooded tracts of the north than in the south; the average yearly temperature at the city of Chernigov is 44.4 deg. F. (January, 23 deg.; July 68.5 deg.).

The population reached 1,996,250 in 1883, 2,316,818 in 1897, and 2,746,300 (estimate) in 1906. It is chiefly Little Russian (85.6%); but Great Russians (6.1%), mostly Raskolniks, i.e. nonconformists, and White Russians (5.6%) inhabit the northern districts. There are, besides, some Germans, as well as Greeks, at Nyezhin. Agriculture is the principal occupation; in the north, however, many of the inhabitants are engaged in the timber trade, and in the production of tar, pitch, wooden wares, leather goods and so forth. Cattle-breeding is carried on in the central districts. Beet is extensively cultivated. The cultivation of tobacco is increasing. Hemp is widely grown in the north, and the milder climate of the south encourages gardening. Bee-keeping is extensively carried on by the Raskolniks. Limestone, grindstones, china-clay and building-stone are quarried. Manufactures have begun to develop rapidly of late, the most important being sugar-works, distilleries, cloth-mills and glass-works. The government is divided into fifteen districts, their chief towns being Chernigov (q.v.), Borzna (pop. 12,458 in 1897), Glukhov (14,856), Gorodnya (4197), Konotop (23,083), Kozelets (5160), Krolevets (10,375), Mglin (7631), Novgorod-Syeversk (9185), Novozybkov (15,480), Nyezhin (32,481), Oster (5384), Sosnitsa (2507), Starodub (12,451) and Surazh (4004).