the classics have pronounced judgment we must of course submit.” In the whole treatise not one example is given from Palestrina or any other master who handled as a living language what are now the forms of contrapuntal discipline. As a dead language Cherubini brought counterpoint up to date by abandoning the church modes; but in true severity of principle, as in educational stimulus, his treatise shows a deplorable falling off from the standard set a hundred years before in Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum with its delightful dialogues between master and pupil and its continual appeal to artistic experience. Whatever may have been Cherubini’s success in imparting facility and certainty to his light-hearted pupils who established 19th-century French opera as a refuge from the terrors of serious art, there can be no doubt that his career as a teacher did more harm than good. In it the punishment drill of an incompetent schoolmaster was invested with the authority of a great composer, and by it the false antithesis between the “classical” and the “romantic” was erected into a barrier which many critics still find an insuperable obstacle to the understanding of the classical spirit. And yet as a composer Cherubini was no pseudo-classic but a really great artist, whose purity of style, except at rare moments, just failed to express the ideals he never lost sight of, because in his love of those ideals there was top much fear.
His principal works are summarized by Fetis as thirty-two operas, twenty-nine church compositions, four cantatas and several instrumental pieces, besides the treatise on counterpoint and fugue.
Good modern full scores of the two Requiems and of Les Deux Journées(the latter unfortunately without the dialogue, which, however, is accessible in its fairly good German translation in the Reclam Bibliothek), and also of ten opera overtures, are current in the Peters edition. Vocal scores of some of the other operas are not difficult to get. The great Credo is in the Peters edition, but is becoming scarce. The string quartets are in Payne’s Miniature Scores.It is very desirable that the operas, from Démophon onwards, should be republished in full score.
See also E. Bellasis, Cherubini (1874); and an article with personal reminiscences by the composer Ferdinand Hiller, in Macmillan’s Magazine(1875). A complete catalogue of his compositions (1773–1841) was edited by Bottée du Toulmon. (D. F. T.)
CHÉRUEL, PIERRE ADOLPHE (1800–1891), French historian, was born at Rouen on the 17th of January 1809. He was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, and became a fellow (agrégé) in 1830. His early studies were devoted to his native town. His Histoire de Rouen sous la domination anglaise au XVe siècle (1840) and Histoire de Rouen pendant l’époque comunale, 1150–1382 (Rouen, 1843–1844), are meritorious productions for a time when the archives were neither inventoried nor classified, and contain useful documents previously unpublished. His theses for the degree of doctor, De l’administration de Louis XIV d’après les Mémoires inédits d’Olivier d’Ormesson and De Maria Stuarta et Henrico III. (1849), led him to the study of general history. The former was expanded afterwards under the title Histoire de l’administration monarchique en France depuis l’avènement de Philippe-Auguste jusqu’à la mort de Louis XIV (1855), and in 1855 he also published his Dictionnaire historique des institutions, mœurs et coutumes de la France, of which many editions have appeared. These works may still be consulted for the 17th century, the period upon which Chéruel concentrated all his scientific activity. He edited successively the Journal d’Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson (1860–1862), interesting for the history of the parlement of Paris during the minority of Louis XIV.; Lettres du cardinal Mazarin pendant son ministère (6 vols., 1870–1891), continued by the vicomte G. d’Avenel; and Memoires du duc de Saint-Simon, published for the first time according to the original MSS. (2 editions, 1856–1858 and 1878–1881). To Saint-Simon also he devoted two critical studies, which are acute but not definitive: Saint-Simon considéré comme historien de Louis XIV (1865) and Notice sur la vie et sur les mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon (1876). The latter may be considered as an introduction to the famous Mémoires. Among his later writings may be mentioned the Histoire de la France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (4 vols., 1880) and Histoire de la France sous le ministère de Mazarin (3 vols., 1882–1883). These two works are valuable for abundance of facts, precision of details, and clear and intelligent arrangement, but are characterized by a slightly frigid style. In their compilation Chéruel used a fair number of unpublished documents. To the student of the second half of the 17th century in France the works of Chéruel are a mine of information. He died in Paris on the 1st of May 1891.
CHERUSCI, an ancient German tribe occupying the basin of the Weser to the north of the Chatti. Together with the other tribes of western Germany they submitted to the Romans in 11–9 B.C., but in A.D. 9 Arminius, one of their princes, rose in revolt, and defeated and slew the Roman general Quintilius Varus with his whole army. Germanicus Caesar made several unsuccessful attempts to bring them into subjection again. By the end of the 1st century the prestige of the Cherusci had declined through unsuccessful warfare with the Chatti. Their territory was eventually occupied by the Saxons.
Tacitus, Annals, i. 2, 11, 12, 13; Germania, 36; Strabo, p. 291 f.; E. Devrient, in Neue Jahrb. f. d. klass. Alter. (1900), p. 517.
CHESELDEN, WILLIAM (1688–1752), English surgeon, was born at Somerby, Leicestershire, on the 19th of October 1688. He studied anatomy in London under William Cowper (1666–1709), and in 1713 published his Anatomy of the Human Body, which achieved great popularity and went through thirteen editions. In 1718 he was appointed an assistant surgeon at St Thomas’s hospital (London), becoming full surgeon in the following year, and he was also chosen one of the surgeons to St George’s hospital on its foundation in 1733. He retired from St Thomas’s in 1738, and died at Bath on the 10th of April 1752. Cheselden is famous for his “lateral operation for the stone,” which he first performed in 1727. He also effected a great advance in ophthalmic surgery by his operation of iridectomy, described in 1728, for the treatment of certain forms of blindness by the production of an “artificial pupil.” He attended Sir Isaac Newton in his last illness, and was an intimate friend of Alexander Pope and of Sir Hans Sloane.
CHESHAM, a market town in the Aylesbury parliamentary division of Buckinghamshire, England, 26 m. W.N.W. of London by the Metropolitan railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7245. It is pleasantly situated in the narrow valley of the river Chess, closely flanked by low wooded hills. The church of St Mary is cruciform and mainly Perpendicular. Some ancient frescoes and numerous monuments are preserved. All sorts of small dairy utensils, chairs, malt-shovels, &c., are made of beech, the growth of which forms a feature of the surrounding country. Shoemaking is also carried on. In Waterside hamlet, adjoining the town, are flour-mills, duck farms, and some of the extensive watercress beds for which the Chess is noted, as it is also for its trout-fishing.
CHESHIRE, a north-western county of England, bounded N. by Lancashire, N.E. by Yorkshire and Derbyshire, S.E. by Staffordshire, S. by Shropshire, W. by Denbighshire and Flint, and N.W. by the Irish Sea. Its area is 1027.8 sq. m. The coast-line is formed by the estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey, which are separated by the low rectangular peninsula of Wirral. The estuary of the Dee is dry at low tide on the Cheshire shore, but that of the Mersey bears upon its banks the ports of Liverpool (in Lancashire) and Birkenhead (on the Wirral shore). The Dee forms a great part of the county boundary with Denbighshire and Flint, and the Mersey the boundary along the whole of the northern side. The principal river within the county is the Weaver, which crosses it with a north-westerly course, and, being joined by the Dane at Northwich, discharges into the estuary of the Mersey south of Runcorn. The surface of Cheshire is mostly low and gently undulating or flat; but the broken line of the Peckforton hills, seldom exceeding 600 ft. in height, runs north and south flanking the valley of the Weaver on the west. A low narrow gap in these hills is traversed by the small river Gowy, which rises to the east but has the greater part of its course to the west of them. Commanding this gap on the west, the Norman castle of Beeston stands on an isolated eminence. The northern part of the hills coincides approximately with the district still called Delamere Forest, formerly a chase of the earls of Chester, and finally disforested in 1812.
