CORCORAN ART GALLERY 



1578 



CORDOBA 



grim." Corbels were especially prominent in 

 (lotliic architecture. 



CORCORAN, kaier'koran, ART GALLERY, 

 one of the beautiful buildings in Washington, 

 D. C., near the White House, the home of a 

 famous collection of the finest sculptures and 

 paintings in America. A free school of art 

 is also maintained in the institution. Biennial 

 exhibitions of American paintings of the day 

 add interest to the gallery. Two works of 

 sculpture exhibited there are of special merit 

 Powers' Greek Slave, of which there are many 

 replicas, and Dying Napoleon, the most famous 

 work of Vela. This gallery of art was founded 

 by William W. Corcoran, and endowed by him 

 with a fund of $900,000. 



William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), a 

 wealthy American banker and philanthropist, 

 was born in Georgetown, D. C., now a part 

 of Washington. From 1828 to 1836 he was the 

 real estate agent in the District of Columbia 

 for the United States Bank. In 1837 his career 

 as a banker and broker in Washington began, 

 and during the Mexican War he amassed a 

 great fortune. Retiring from business in 1854, 

 he devoted much of his time to philanthropy, 

 and established the art gallery described above. 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY IN PRISON 

 From a painting by Miiller. 



CORDAY D'ARMONT, kohrdeh' darmahN' 

 MARIE ANNE CHARLOTTE (1768-1793), was one 

 of the most courageous and contradictory char- 



acters of the French Revolution, for she was . 

 both a patriot and an assassin. She was born 

 and educated in Normandy, and in spjte of 

 her noble birth she found herself completely in 

 sympathy with the people at the outbreak of 

 the Revolution. However, when Marat, their 

 leader, incited them to hideous cruelty and 

 massacres, she became a member of the party 

 which supported neither nobility nor peasantry 

 and was hated by both (see GIRONDISTS). She 

 became obsessed with the idea that Marat's 

 death would mean the relief of France, so she 

 journeyed to Paris, and on the 13th of July, 

 1793, forced her way into the presence of 

 Marat, who was bathing to relieve a fever 

 which tormented him. Under pretense of giv- 

 ing him Girondist information, she stabbed 

 him. She was condemned to die on the guillo- 

 tine, and went to her death with the same lack 

 of fear which had marked the planning and 

 execution of Marat's murder. See MARAT, JEAN 

 PAUL. 



CORDILLERA, kawr d U ' ya ra, or kawrdil' 

 era, or CORDILLERAS, a term somewhat in- 

 discriminately applied to the mountain systems 

 which extend along the western coast of North 

 and South America from Alaska to Cape Horn. 

 The name is Spanish, meaning a cord or 

 string, hence its applicability to what is usually 

 called a chain of mountains. In the geograph- 

 ical term Cordilleras are now included the 

 Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas and the 

 Coast and Cascade ranges in the United States ; 

 the British Columbia and Alaska chains; and 

 the Andes and their connecting systems. 



CORDITE, kaivr'dite, a smokeless gunpow- 

 der used in the British army and navy. The 

 name has no reference to its composition, but 

 refers to the cordlike shape in- which it is 

 made, instead of the granulated form usually 

 adopted. It is composed of a combination of 

 nitroglycerine, nitrocellulose and vaseline. 

 Constant experiments have resulted in modifi- 

 cations of the formula. The original formula 

 was fifty-eight parts of nitroglycerine, thirty- 

 seven parts of nitrocellulose and five parts of 

 vaseline. The cordite now used contains over 

 eighty per cent of nitrocellulose and only fif- 

 teen per cent of nitroglycerine. Cordite burns 

 slowly when ignited, but explodes when sub- 

 jected to the pressure resulting from striking 

 its mark after firing. It is used in both cannon 

 and small arms. 



CORDOBA, or 'CORDOVA, kawrdoh'va, 

 capital of a province of the same name in the 

 north-central section of Argentina, in South 



