CHALONS-SUR-SAONE (24), a trading centre some 80 m.  N. of Lyons; manufactures machinery, glass, paper, and chemicals.

CHAINS, chief town of the French dep. of Haute Vienne, where Richard Coeur de Lion was mortally wounded in 1199 by a shot with an arrow.

CHAM, the pseudonym of the French caricaturist Amedee de Noe, famous for his humorous delineations of Parisian life (1819-1884).

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, an association of merchants to promote and protect the interests of trade, particularly of the town or the district to which they belong.

CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, a French legislative assembly, elected now by universal suffrage.

CHAMBERLAIN, RIGHT HON.  JOSEPH, born in London, connected as a business man with Birmingham; after serving the latter city in a municipal capacity, was elected the parliamentary representative in 1876; became President of the Board of Trade under Mr. Gladstone in 1880, and chief promoter of the Bankruptcy Bill; broke with Mr. Gladstone on his Home Rule measure for Ireland, and joined the Liberal-Unionists; distinguished himself under Lord Salisbury as Colonial Secretary; b. 1836.

CHAMBERS, EPHRAIM, an English writer, born in Kendal, author of a cyclopaedia which bears his name, and which formed the basis of subsequent ones, as Johnson confessed it did of his Dictionary (1680-1750).

CHAMBERS, GEORGE, an English marine painter, born at Whitby; d. 1840.

CHAMBERS, ROBERT, brother of the succeeding and in the same line of life, but of superior accomplishments, especially literary and scientific, which served him well in editing the publications issued by the firm; was the author of a great many works of a historical, biographical, and scientific, as well as literary interest; wrote the “Vestiges of Creation,” a book on evolutionary lines, which made no small stir at the time of publication, 1844, and for a time afterwards, the authorship of which he was slow to own (1802-1871).

CHAMBERS, SIR WILLIAM, born at Peebles; apprenticed to a bookseller in Edinburgh, and commenced business on his own account in a small way; edited with his brother the “Gazetteer of Scotland”; started, in 1832, Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal to meet a demand of the time for popular instruction in company with his brother founded a great printing and publishing establishment, from which there has issued a number of valuable works in the interest especially of the propagation of useful knowledge of all kinds; was a distinguished Edinburgh citizen, and did much for the expansion and improvement of the city (1800-1883)

CHAMBERS, SIR WILLIAM, architect, born at Stockholm, of Scotch origin; architect of Somerset House; was of the Johnson circle of wits (1726-1796)

CHAMBERY (19), chief town of dep. of Savoy, in a beautiful district; is the ancient capital, and contains the castle, of the dukes of Savoy; manufactures cloth, wines, soap, and textile fabrics; is also a summer resort.