, and cousin to Canning the statesman; passed from Cambridge to
the Foreign Office in 1807 as a precis-writer to his cousin; in three
years had risen to the post of minister-plenipotentiary at
Constantinople, where he speedily gave evidence of his remarkable powers
as a diplomatist by arranging unaided the treaty of Bucharest (1814)
between Russia and Turkey, and so setting free the Russian army to fall
upon Napoleon, then retreating from Moscow; as minister to Switzerland
aided the Republic in drawing up its constitution, and in the same year
(1815) acted as commissioner at the Congress of Vienna; was subsequently
employed in the United States and various European capitals, but his
unrivalled knowledge of the Turkish question brought him again, in 1842,
to Constantinople as ambassador, where his remarkable power and influence
over the Turks won him the title of "Great Elchi"; exerted in vain his
diplomatic skill to prevent the rupture between Turkey and Russia, which
precipitated the Crimean War; resigned his embassy in 1858; was raised to
the peerage in 1852; sat in Parliament for several years previous to
1842, but failed to make his mark as a debater; ranks among the great
ambassadors of England (1786-1880).

STRATFORD-ON-AVON (8), a pleasant old market-town of Warwickshire,
on the right bank of the Avon, 8 m. SW. of Warwick and 110 m. NW. of
London; forever famous as the birth and burial place of Shakespeare, with
whom all that is of chief interest in the town is associated, the house
he was born in, his old school, Anne Hathaway's cottage on the
outskirts, the fine Early English church (14th century), where he lies
buried, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, museum, &c.; is Visited
annually by some 20,000 pilgrims; a thriving agricultural centre.

STRATHCLYDE or NORTHERN CUMBRIA, an ancient kingdom of the
Britons, which originated in the 8th century, and comprised the W. side
of Scotland between the Solway and the Clyde; Alclyde or Dumbarton was
the capital; was permanently annexed to Scotland in 1124 under David I.

STRATHFIELDSAYE, an estate in Hampshire with a fine Queen Anne
mansion, 7 m. NE. of Basingstoke, purchased by Parliament for L263,000,
and presented to the Duke of Wellington in 1817.

STRATHMORE ("Great Valley"), the great plain of Scotland stretching
for 100 m. (5 to 10 m. broad), in a north-easterly direction from
Dumbartonshire to Stonehaven, in Kincardineshire, between the great
mountain