TOURNAI (Flem. Doornik), a town of Belgium, capital of an arrondissement in the province of Hainault, 53 miles by rail west-south-west from Brussels, is divided into two parts by the Scheldt, which is here spanned by seven bridges and lined with spacious tree-shaded quays. The older, which is also the busier and more important portion of the town, stands on the left bank; the new town is distinguished by its neat regular streets and modern architecture. The cathedral, which is a fine example of the Romanesque style, is a cruciform basilica, with a series of chapels and five towers. The nave was probably consecrated in 1171; the transepts date from the 13th century; and the (Gothic) choir was completed in 1338, at which time also the Romanesque façade was altered, and a porch in the Pointed style added. The sculptures in the porch range in date from the 13th to the 17th century, and deserve special notice, particularly those of later date by native artists. The general effect of the interior is harmonious and impressive. The capitals of the pillars are rich and varied; the passage round the choir contains several pictures of the Flemish school; the richly sculptured Renaissance roodloft dates from 1566; and most of the stained glass in the transept dates from about 1456. The adjacent belfry, dating originally from 1187, and partly rebuilt in 1391, was restored in 1852. In the Grande Place, not far from the cathedral, is the church of St Quentin, sometimes spoken of as “la petite cathedrale,” in the Transition style, and nearly of the same date as the cathedral. The church of St Jacques dates from the 13th and 14th centuries, and that of St Brice from the 12th. The buildings of the old monastery of St Martin, on the south-west side of the town, are now used as an ...

TOURNAMENTS. Tournaments and jousts were the chief military exercises and displays of the age of chivalry. Besides being the appropriate sports and pastimes of a warlike era and caste, they were intended to test the skill and exhibit the prowess of the knights and squires who took part in them. Considered under their more serious aspect, apart from their association with pomp and festivity, they were, practically speaking, the equivalents of the reviews and sham-fights of later times, and were designed as a preparation for the actual manoeuvres and real conflicts of the battlefield. Tournaments and jousts differed from one another principally in the circumstance that in the first several combatants on each side were engaged at once, and in the second the contention was between two combatants only. The former consisted of the mutual charges of equal troops of cavalry, while the latter consisted of a duel on horseback. Du Cange says that the French tournoi, English “tournament,” “was a general expression which comprehended all sorts of combats that were performed by way of exercise. But it more properly meant such as were performed by companies, where many were in conflict against the same number, representing the form of a battle. When those general combats were ended, then single ones commenced ; for all who were desirous of displaying their address, and attracting public notice for their valour, offered single combat with sword or lance against all who should present themselves”; and he adds that these combats were called by the old French writers “joustes,” which is the same word as the English “jousts.” But jousts were held far more frequently than, and quite independently of, regular tournaments throughout the period in which the customs of chivalry ...

TOURNEBOUT, a wind instrument of wood, in which a cylindrical column of air is set in vibration by a reed. The lower extremity is turned up in a half circle, and from this peculiarity it has gained the French names tournebout and cromorne,- —the latter a corruption of the German name Krummhorn. There appears to be no English equivalent. The reed of the tournebout, like that of the bassoon, is formed by two tongues of cane, adapted to the small end of a conical brass tube, the large end being inserted in the body of the instrument. It presents, however, this difference, that it is not, like that of the bassoon, in contact with the player’s mouth, but is covered again by a cap pierced with a hole in the upper part, through which opening the air is introduced which sets the reed in vibration, the reed being therefore subject to no pressure of the lips. The compass of the instrument is naturally limited to the simple fundamental sounds which the successive opening of the lateral holes gives rise to. The tournebouts have not much length for the deep sounds they produce, which arises from these instruments sounding, like all tubes of cylindrical bore provided with reeds, the same as the stopped pipes of an organ. That is to say, theoretically they require only half the lengths necessary for the open pipes of an organ, or for conical tubes provided with reeds, to produce notes of the same pitch. Moreover, when, to obtain a harmonic, the column of air is divided, the tournebout will not give the octave like the oboe and bassoon, but the twelfth, corresponding in this peculiarity with the clarinet and all stopped pipes or bourdons. With the ordinary boring of eight lateral holes, the tournebout possesses a limited scale embracing a ninth Sometimes, however, the deeper sounds ...

TOURNEFORT, Joseph Pitton de (1656-1708), a botanist of considerable reputation, was born at Aix, in Provence, in 1656. He studied in the convent of the Jesuits at Aix, and was destined for the church, but the death of his father left him free to follow his botanical inclinations. After a couple of years collecting, he studied medicine at Montpellier, but soon returned to his favourite pursuit, and was appointed professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes in 1683. By the king’s order he travelled through western Europe, where he made very extensive collections, and subsequently spent three years in Greece and Asia Minor (1700-1702). Of this journey a description in a series of letters was posthumously published in 3 vols. (Relation d’un Voyage du Levant, Lyons, 1717). His principal work is entitled Institutiones Rei Herbariae (3 vols., Paris, 1700), and upon this rests chiefly his claims to remembrance as one of the most eminent of the systematic botanists who prepared the way for Linnaeus. His exact position among these has been discussed at length by Sachs (Geschichte d. Botanik, Munich, 1875). He died December 28, 1708.

TOURNEUR, Cyril, a tragic poet of the first order, has left no record of his existence beyond the respective dates of his first and last extant works (1600-1613). An allegorical poem, worthless as art and incomprehensible as allegory, is the earliest of these; an elegy on the death of Prince Henry, son of James L, is the latest. The two plays on which his fame rests, and on which it will rest for ever, were published respectively in 1607 and 1611, but all students have agreed to accept the internal evidence which assures us that the later in date of publication must be the earlier in date of composition. His only other known work is an epicede on Sir Francis Vere, of no great merit as poetry, but of some value as conveying in a straightforward and masculine style the poet’s ideal conception of a perfect knight or “happy warrior,” comparable by those who may think fit to compare it with the more nobly realized ideals of Chaucer and of Wordsworth. But if Tourneur had left on record no more memorable evidence of his powers than might be supplied by the survival of his elegies, he could certainly have claimed no higher place among English writers than is now occupied by the Rev. Charles Fitzgeoffrey, whose voluminous and fervent elegy on Sir Francis Drake is indeed of more actual value, historic or poetic, than either or than both of Tourneur’s elegiac rhapsodies. The singular power, the singular originality, and the singular limitation of his genius are all equally obvious in The Atheist’s Tragedy, a dramatic poem no less crude and puerile and violent in action and evolution than simple and noble and natural in expression and in style. The executive faculty of the author is in the metrical parts of his first play so imperfect as to suggest either incompetence or ...