ST. DENIS 188 ST. ETIENNE miles W. N. W. of Haverford-West sta- tion. The ancient Menevia, it is now a very small place; but in the Middle Ages its cathedral, with the shrine of its found- er, St. David, the patron saint of Wales, attracted many pilgrims, among them the Conqueror, Henry II., Edward I. and Queen Eleanor. Rebuilt between 1180 and 1522 that cathedral is a cruciform pile, measuring 298 feet by 120 across the transepts, with a central tower 116 feet high. Special features are the base of St. David's shrine, the tomb of Ed- mund Tudor, Henry VII. 's father, and the mosaics by Salviati. Little is known of the British bishops after St. David's death in 601; of the 72 since 1115 may be mentioned Archbishops Thoresby and Chichely, Barlow, Ferrar the Marian martyr, Middleton the forger, Arch- bishop Laud, Mainwaring, Bull, Lowth, Horsley, and Thirlwall. N. of the cathe- dral is the ruined college of St. Mary (1377), with a slender tower 70 feet high; and across the Alan are the stately re- mains of Bishop Gower's palace (1342). ST. DENIS. See Denis, St. ST. DIE, a town of France, depart- ment of the Vosges; on the Meurthe, 50 miles S. E. of Nancy. It has a Roman- esque-Gothic cathedral, a large seminary, and a museum, and carries on energeti- cally the weaving of cotton, the making of hosiery, paper, machinery, and iron goods. It is a convenient starting-point for excursions into the Vosges mountains. Pop. about 22,000. ST. DOMINGO. See Santo Domingo. ST. DOMINIC. See Dominic, Saint. SAINTE ANNE DE BEAUPRE, a village of Quebec, Canada, in Montmor- ency co., at the junction of the Ste. Anne and the St. Lawrence rivers. It is chiefly noted for the church of Ste. Anne, con- taining relics of Ste. Anne which are alleged to have miraculous powers. Thou- sands of pilgrims visit the shrine annu- ally. Ste. Anne was founded about 1620 and the first church was erected in 1658. It was restored in 1878 and still remains. Several picturesque falls are in the neigh- borhood. Pop. about 2,000. SAINTE-BEUVE, CHARLES ATT- GUSTIN, a French writer, and one of the greatest of modern critics; born in Boulogne, France, in 1804. He studied medicine at Paris, but abandoned that science in favor of literature, his first work of importance being on the French literature of the 16th century. In 1837 he delivered some lectures in the School of Port Royal at Lausanne, and these laid the foundation of his elaborate work, "History of Port Royal." In 1840 he was appointed conservator of the Mazarin Li- brary, and in 1845 admitted a member of the French Academy. After 1848 he con- tributed a number of critiques to the Mon- day numbers of the "Constitutional" and then of the "Moniteur" ("Monday Talks," 15 vols.; "New Mondays," 13 vols.). In 1852 he was appointed Professor of Latin Poetry in the College of France,, but his views in favor of Napoleon III. and im- perialism rendered him unacceptable to a large section of the students, and he re- signed; he also lectured for some years on French literature at the Ecole Normale Superieure. The cross of the Legion of Honor was bestowed on him in 1859, and the senatorship in 1865. Most of his crit- ical writings have been republished in various editions. He also wrote three volumes of poetry (1829-1837), under the pseudonym "Joseph Delorme," but these do not rank high. He died in Paris in 1869. ST. ELIAS, MOTTNT. See ELIAS, Saint. ST. ELIZABETH. See Elizabeth, Saint. ST. ELMO'S FIRE, a peculiar electri- cal phenomenon. Just preceding a storm the atmosphere often becomes charged with electricity which flows from the clouds. This makes itself visible in small, brush-like flames appearing on the sharp edges or points of different bodies. At sea, where it is a very common occur- rence, it has been regarded by sailors with superstitious awe and dread from the earliest times. The Romans called the lights Castor and Pollux. If one ap- peared, they said it was an omen of dan- ger ; if two, it was an assurance of safety. Italian mariners of the Middle Ages re- garded the light as a luminous emanation from the body of Christ, and the appear- ance is still called by the Portuguese Corpo Santo. In an account of the second voyage of Columbus they are described. Fournier, a writer of the 17th century, says the light was named after a saint, familiarly known as Saint Telme, but who was San Pedro Gonzales de Tuy, in Ga- licia, who had been a mariner, then was canonized, and became a patron saint of sailors. Galician sailors called the light San Pedro Gonzales. The phenomenon also has been known by the name of St. Hermes, St. Ermyn, St. Helen, St. Nich- olas, St. Peter, St. Anne, or, indeed, by that of any one of a hundred other saints. ST. ETIENNE, one of the most im- portant industrial towns in France, in the department of Loire, on a tributary of the Loire, 36 miles S. W. of Lyons and 312 S. S. E. of Paris. It is built in the midst of the second largest coal field of France.
