m. falls by a delta
with 200 mouths into the Caspian Sea; it is navigable almost throughout,
providing Russia with 7200 m. of water-carriage, and has extensive
fisheries, especially of salmon and sturgeon.

VOLNEY, French philosopher, born at Craon; travelled in Egypt and
Syria; wrote an account of his travels in his "Voyage"; was imprisoned
during the Reign of Terror; patronised and promoted to honour by
Napoleon, and by the Bourbons on their return; his principal work,
"LES RUINES, OU MEDITATIONS SUR LES REVOLUTIONS DES EMPIRES," was
an embodiment of 18th-century enlightenment (q. v.) (1757-1820).

VOLSUNGS, a race figuring in Norse and German legend of the 12th
century, and with the fate in whose history it is so widely occupied, and
that of its heroes.

VOLTA, ALESSANDRINO, Italian physicist, born at Como; professor of
Physics at Pavia; made electrical discoveries which laid the foundation
of what is called after him voltaic electricity; volt, the unit of
electric motive force, being a term among sundry others in electric
science similarly derived (1745-1827).

VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY, a current of electricity generated by chemical
action between metals and different liquids as arranged in a voltaic
battery.

VOLTAIRE, FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE, great French "persifleur" and
"Coryphaeus of Deism," born in Paris, son of a lawyer; trained to scoff at
religion from his boyhood, and began his literary career as a satirist
and in the production of lampoons which cost him twice over imprisonment
in the Bastille, on his release from which he left France in 1726 and
went to England, where he stayed three years, and got acquainted with the
free-thinking class there; on his return to Paris he engaged in some
profitable commercial speculations and published his "Charles XII.,"
which he had written in England, and retired to the chateau of Cirey,
where he lived five years with Madame du Chatelet, engaged in study and
diligent with his pen, with whom he left France and went to Poland, after
her death paying his famous visit to Frederick the Great, with whom
before three years were out he quarrelled, and from whom he was glad to
escape, making his head-quarters eventually within the borders of France
at Ferney, from which he now and again visited Paris, where on his last
visit he was received with such raptures of adulation that he was quite
overcome, and had to be conveyed home to die, giving up the ghost exactly
two