CHARLES’S WAIN, the constellation of Ursa Major, a wagon without a wagoner.

CHARLESTON (56), the largest city in S. Carolina, and the chief commercial city; also a town in Western Virginia, U.S., with a spacious land-locked harbour; is the chief outlet for the cotton and rice of the district, and has a large coasting trade.

CHARLET, NICOLAS TOUSSAINT, a designer and painter, born in Paris; famous for his sketches of military subjects and country life, in which he displayed not a little humour (1792-1845).

CHARLEVILLE (17), a manufacturing and trading town in the dep. of Ardennes, France; exports iron, coal, wines, and manufactures hardware and beer.

CHARLEVOIX, a Jesuit and traveller, born at St. Quentin, explored the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi (1682-1761).

CHARLOTTE, PRINCESS, daughter and only child of George IV. of England, married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, afterwards king of Belgium; died after giving birth to a still-born boy, to the great grief of the whole nation (1796-1817).

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH OF BAVARIA, second wife of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., called the Princess Palatine (1652-1722).

CHARLOTTENBURG (76), a town on the Spree, 3 m.  W. of Berlin, with a palace, the favourite residence of Sophie Charlotte, the grandmother of Frederick the Great, and so named by her husband Frederick I. after her death; contains the burial-place of William I., emperor of Germany.

CHARLOTTETOWN (13), the capital of Prince Edward Island.

CHARMETTES, a picturesque hamlet near Chambery, a favourite retreat of Rousseau’s.

CHARNAY, a French traveller; a writer on the ancient civilisation of Mexico, which he has made a special study; b. 1828.

CHARON, in the Greek mythology the ferryman of the ghosts of the dead over the Styx into Hades, a grim old figure with a mean dress and a dirty beard, peremptory in exacting from the ghosts he ferried over the obolus allowed him for passage-money.

CHARONDAS, a Sicilian law-giver, disciple of Pythagoras; is said to have killed himself when he found he had involuntarily broken one of his own laws (600 B.C.).

CHARRON, PIERRE, a French moralist and theologian, as well as pulpit orator, born in Paris; author of “Les Trois Verites,” the unity of God, Christianity the sole religion, and Catholicism the only Christianity; and of a sceptical treatise “De la Sagesse”; a friend and disciple of Montaigne, but bolder as more dogmatic, with less bonhommie and originality, and much of a cynic withal (1541-1603).

CHARTERHOUSE, a large London school, originally a Carthusian monastery, and for a time a residence of the dukes of Norfolk.

CHARTIER, ALAIN, an early scholarly French poet and prose writer of note, born at Bayeux; secretary to Charleses V., VI., and VII. of France, whom Margaret, daughter of James I. of Scotland and wife of Louis XI., herself a poetess, once kissed as he lay asleep for the pleasure his poems gave her; was a patriot, and wrote as one (1390-1458).