ALAIN DE L'ISLE, a professor of theology in the University of Paris,
surnamed the _Doctor universel_ (1114-1203).


ALAINS. See ALANS.


ALAIS` (18), a town at the foot of the Cévennes, in the centre of a
mining district; once the stronghold of French Protestantism.


ALAMAN`NI, LUIGI, an Italian poet and diplomatist, born at Florence
(1495-1556).


ALAND ISLES, a group of 300 small islands in the Gulf of Bothnia, of
which 80 are inhabited; fortified by Russia.


ALANS, a barbarous horde from the East, who invaded W. Europe in the
4th and 5th centuries, but were partly exterminated and partly ousted by
the Visigoths.


ALAR`CON Y MENDO`ZA, JUAN RUIZ DE, a Spanish dramatist born in
Mexico, who, though depreciated by his contemporaries, ranks after 200
years of neglect among the foremost dramatic geniuses of Spain, next even
to Cervantes and Lope de Vega; he was a humpback, had an offensive air of
conceit, and was very unpopular; he wrote at least twenty dramas, some of
which have been translated into French; _d_. in 1639.