Allemande (a˙l-ma˙n˙d), a kind of slow, graceful dance, invented in France in the time of Louis XIV, and again in vogue in the time of the First Empire. The name is also given to pieces of music based on the dance movement. Bach and Handel have composed a great number of Allemandes, and Beethoven has written twelve for orchestra.
Allen, Bog of, the name applied to a series of bogs in Ireland (not to one continuous morass), dispersed, often widely apart, with extensive tracts of dry cultivated soil between, over a broad belt of land stretching across the centre of the country, the bogs being, however, all on the east side of the Shannon.
Allen, Ethan, an American revolutionary partisan and general; born 1737, died 1789. He surprised and captured Ticonderoga Fort (1775); attacked Montreal, and was captured and sent to England, being exchanged in 1778; wrote against Christianity, Reason, the only Oracle of Man (1784).—His younger brother, Ira (1751-1814), was also prominent in the revolutionary era.
Allen, Grant, writer on scientific subjects and novelist, was born at Kingston, Canada, 1848, died in 1899. His earlier education he received in America, but he also studied in France and graduated at Oxford with honours in 1870. From 1873 to 1879 he was connected with Queen's College, Jamaica, but afterwards resided chiefly in England, and became well known as an exponent of evolutionary science, and as a novelist. His first important work, Physiological Æsthetics, appeared in 1877; his other scientific or semi-scientific works include The Colour Sense; The Evolutionist at Large; Colin Clouts Calendar (the record of a summer); Vignettes from Nature; The Colours of Flowers; Flowers and their Pedigrees; and Force and Energy, a Theory of Dynamics. Other works by him are: Anglo-Saxon Britain; Charles Darwin; and The Evolution of the Idea of God. His novels, about thirty in number, include: The Devil's Die; The Woman Who Did, &c.
Allen, John, a Scottish political and historical writer; born in 1771, died in 1843. He studied medicine, and became M.D. of Edinburgh University. In 1801 he went abroad with Lord Holland and family, and henceforth he maintained this connection, being long an inmate of Holland House (London) and a member of the brilliant society that assembled there. He contributed many articles to the Edinburgh Review; and wrote An Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative in England; Vindication of the Ancient Independence of Scotland; &c.
Allen, Ralph, celebrated as a philanthropist, and as the friend of Pope, Fielding, and the elder
Pitt, was born in 1694, died in 1764. He lived mostly at Bath, where he made a large income as farmer of a system of posts and as owner of quarries. He is the prototype of Squire Allworthy in Fielding's Tom Jones; and after the novelist's death he took charge of his family. Pope, who received many kindnesses at his hands, referred to him in the lines:
Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
With Pitt he was on intimate terms, and left him £1000 in his will. Hurd, Sherlock, and Warburton were also his friends.