Chapter 51

the advance on Le Mans and the battle at that place on the 12th of January 1871. At the close of the war Alvensleben received the oak-leaves of the order pour le merite, the first class of the Iron Cross and a grant of 100,000 thalers. He became full general of infantry in 1873 and retired immediately afterwards. In 1889 the emperor William II. ordered that the 52nd infantry regiment (one of the distinguished regiments of Vionville) should thereafter bear Alvensleben's name, and in 1892, on the anniversary of the battle of Le Mans, the old general received the order of the Black Eagle. He died on the 28th of March 1892 at Berlin.

His brother, GUSTAV VON ALVENSLEBEN (1803-1881), Prussian general of infantry, was born at Eichenbarleben on the 30th of September 1803, entered the Guard infantry in 1821, and took part as a general staff officer in the suppression of the Baden insurrection of 1849. He became a major-general in 1858, aide-de-camp to the king in 1861, and lieutenant-general in 1863, and in the campaign of 1866 performed valuable military and political services. He was promoted general of infantry in 1868. In the war of 1870 he commanded the IV army corps, which took a conspicuous part in the action of Beaumont and afterwards served in the siege of Paris. He received the Iron Cross, the order pour le merite, and a money grant, as a reward for his services, and retired in 1872. He died at Gernrode in the Harz on the 30th of June 1881.

Another brother, ALBRECHT, COUNT von ALVENSLEBEN (1794- 1858), was a distinguished Prussian statesman.

ALVEOLATE (from Lat. alveolus), honeycombed, a word used technically in biology, &c., to mean pitted like a honeycomb.

ALVERSTONE, RICHARD EVERARD WEBSTER, IST BARON (1842- ), lord chief justice of England, was born on the 22nd of December 1842, being the second son of Thomas Webster, Q.C. He was educated at King's College and Charterhouse schools, and Trinity College, Cambridge; was called to the bar in 1868, and became Q.C. only ten years afterwards. His practice was chiefly in commercial, railway and patent cases until (June 1885) he was appointed attorney-general in the Conservative Government in the exceptional circumstances of never having been solicitor-general, and not at the time occupying a seat in parliament. He was elected for Launceston in the following month, and in November exchanged this seat

for the Isle of Wight, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the House of Lords. Except under the brief Gladstone administration of 1886, and the Gladstone-Rosebery cabinet of 1892-1895, Sir Richard Webster was attorney-general from 1885 to 1900. In 1890 he was leading counsel for The Times in the Parnell inquiry; in 1893 he represented Great Britain in the Bering Sea arbitration; in 1898 he discharged the same function in the matter of the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela; and in 1903 was one of the members of the Alaska Boundary Commission. He was well known as an athlete in his earlier years, having represented his university as a runner, and his interest in cricket and foot-racing was kept up in later life. In the House of Commons, and outside it, he was throughout his political career prominently associated with church work; and his speeches were distinguished for gravity and earnestness. In 1900 he succeeded Sir Nathaniel Lindley as Master of the Rolls, being raised to the peerage as Baron Alverstone, and in October of the same year he was elevated to the office of lord chief justice upon the death of Lord Russell of Killowen.

ALWAR, or ULWAR, a native state of India in the Rajputana agency. It is bounded on the E. by the state of Bharatpur and the British district of Gurgaon, on the N. by Gurgaon district and the state of Patiala, on the W. by the states of Nabha and Jaipur, and on the S. by the state of Jaipur. Its configuration is irregular, the greatest length from north to south being about 80 m., and breadth from east to west about 60 m., with a total area of 3141 sq.