Aleardi (a˙-lā-a˙r′dē), Aleardo, a distinguished Italian lyrical and political poet and patriot, born 1812, died 1878; he was a member of the Italian board of higher education and a senator. His best work is his poem Il Monte Circello (1844).
Ale-conner, formerly an officer in England appointed to assay ale and beer, and to take care that they were good and wholesome, and sold at a proper price. The duty of the ale-conners of London was to inspect the measures used in public-houses, to prevent frauds in selling liquors. Four of these were chosen annually by the liverymen, in common hall, on Mid-summer's Day.
Ale-cost. See Costmary.
Alec′to, in Greek mythology, one of the Furies (q.v.).
Aleman (a˙-le-ma˙n′), Mateo, a Spanish novelist, born about the middle of the sixteenth century, died in 1610. His fame rests on his Life and Adventures of the Rogue Guzman de Alfarache (translated into French in 1600 and into English in 1623), one of the best of the picaresque or rogue novels, which give such a lively picture of the shady classes of society in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The hero becomes in succession stable-boy, beggar, porter, thief, man of fashion, soldier, valet, merchant, student, robber, galley-slave, and lastly his own biographer.
Aleman′ni, or Alamanni, a confederacy of several German tribes which, at the commencement of the third century after Christ, lived near the Roman territory, and came then and subsequently into conflict with the imperial troops. Caracalla first fought with them in 213, but did not conquer them; Severus was likewise unsuccessful. About 250 they began to cross the Rhine westwards, and in 255 they overran Gaul along with the Franks. In 259 a body of them was defeated in Italy at Milan, and in the following year they were driven out of Gaul by Postumus. But the Alemanni did not desist from their incursions, notwithstanding the numerous defeats they suffered at the hands of the Roman troops. In the fourth century they crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul, but were severely defeated by the Emperor Julian and driven back. Subsequently they occupied a considerable territory on both sides of the Rhine; but at last Clovis broke their power in 496 and deprived them of a large portion of their possessions. Part of their territory was formed into a duchy called Alemannia or Swabia, this name being derived from Suevi or Swabians, the name which they gave themselves. It is from the Alemanni that the French have derived their names for Germans and Germany in general, namely, Allemands and Allemagne, though strictly speaking only the modern Swabians and northern Swiss are the proper descendants of that ancient race.
Alembert (a˙-la˙n˙-bār), Jean le Rond d', a French mathematician and philosopher, born in Paris, 16th Nov., 1717, and died there 29th Oct., 1783. He was the illegitimate son of Madame de Tencin and Chevalier Destouches, and was exposed at the Church of St. Jean le Rond (hence his name) soon after birth. He was brought up by the wife of a poor glazier, and with her he lived for more than forty years. His parents never publicly acknowledged him, but his father settled upon him an income of 1200 livres. He showed much quickness in learning, entered the College Mazarin at the age of twelve, and studied mathematics with enthusiasm and success, but received little encouragement from his teachers. Having left college he studied law and became an advocate, but did not practise, and long
continued to occupy himself with mathematics, in which he made immense advances by his own efforts, often arriving at results that other mathematicians had previously arrived at unknown to him. A pamphlet on the motion of solid bodies in a fluid, and another on the integral calculus, which he laid before the Academy of Sciences in 1739 and 1740, showed him in so favourable a light that the Academy received him in 1741 into the number of its members. He soon after published his famous work on dynamics, Traité de Dynamique (1743) and another work dealing with fluids, Traité des Fluides. His Réflexion sur la cause générale des vents was also a work that added to D'Alembert's reputation. He also took a part in the investigations which completed the discoveries of Newton respecting the motion of the heavenly bodies, and published at intervals various important astronomical dissertations—on the perturbations of the planets, for instance, and on the precession of the equinoxes—as well as on other subjects. He also took part, with Diderot and others, in the celebrated Encyclopédie in 33 vols., for which he wrote the Discours Préliminaire, as well as many philosophical and almost all the mathematical articles. Literature, history, and philosophy also received attention from him, and his Éléments de Philosophie (1759), in which he agrees with the theories of Condillac and Locke, was a work of much value. His great philosophical aim seems to have been the idea of secularizing morality upon a rational basis. Among his miscellaneous works are Mélanges de Philosophie, d'Histoire, et de Littérature; Traduction de quelques Morceaux choisis de Tacite; Sur la Destruction des Jésuites; Histoire des Membres de l'Académie Française; Éléments de Musique théorique et pratique. He received an invitation from the Russian empress Catherine II to go to St. Petersburg (now Petrograd) as tutor to her son, a very large sum being offered; and Frederick the Great invited him to settle in Berlin, but in vain. From Frederick, however, he accepted a pension, and he also paid a visit to Berlin. There was an intimate friendship between him and Voltaire. He never married, but he was on terms of the closest friendship with Madame L'Espinasse, and they occupied the same house for a number of years. He was held in high esteem by David Hume, who left him a legacy of £200.
Alem′bic, a simple apparatus sometimes used by chemists for distillation, and consisting of three main parts, body, head, and receiver. The cucurbit, or body, contains the substance to be distilled, and is usually somewhat like a bottle, bulging below and narrowing towards the top; the head, of a globular form, with a flat under-ring, fits on to the neck of the cucurbit, condenses the vapour from the heated liquid, and receives the distilled liquid on the ring enclosing the neck of the lower vessel, and thus causes it to find egress by a discharging-pipe into the third section, called the receiver. See Distillation.
Alemtejo (a˙-lān˙-tā′zhō; 'beyond the Tagus'), the largest province of Portugal, and the most southern except Algarve; area, 9219 sq. miles; pop. 478,584. The capital is Evora. It has about 30 miles of coast, but no good harbour and no navigable river. Large areas are devoted to pasturage, and the cultivated portions are comparatively limited, though in the east there are fertile valleys where grain, fruits, &c., are cultivated. There are valuable cork forests in this portion also. Excellent horses are reared. Copper and iron mines are worked; but on the whole this province is in a backward condition, and is the most thinly inhabited in the country.