TOULOUSE (anc. Tolosa), an important city in the s. of France, capital of the dep. of the Haute-Garonne, is situated in a broad and pleasant plain, on the right bank of the river Garonne, 160 m. by railway s.e. of Bordeaux. Pop. '76, 120,208. The canal du Midi sweeps round its eastern and northern sides. The Garonne is here crossed by a beautiful bridge upward of 810 ft. in length, and 72 broad,which connects Toulouse with the suburb of St. Cyprien. The city, with the exception of the southern faubourg, is not particularly handsome (though the broad quays have rather an imposing appearance), and there are few fine public buildings. One may note, however, the cathedral, gontaining the tombs of the counts of Toulouse; the capitole, or town-hall; the church of St. Sernin (1090 A.D.); the musee, with its interesting collection of antiquities, forming an almost uninterrupted chain in the histqry of art, from the Gallo-Roman to the renaissance period. Toulouse is the seat of an archbishop, has a university academy, an academy of "floral games" (societe des jeux floraux), pretending to derive its origin from the contests of the ancient troubadours, academies of arts, sciences, antiquities, etc., schools of law, and medicine, and artillery, a national college, an observatory, a museum. botanic garden, and a public library of 50,000 volumes. Toulouse manufactures woolens, silks, leather, cannon, steam-engines, tobacco, brandy. etc., and carries on a great trade with Spain. Its duck-liver and truffle pies are celebrated throughout the s. of France. i
Ilistrwy.—Tolosa was, in Cmsar's time, a city within the limits of the Roman provincia, and had been originally the capital of the Votem Tectosages, a Gallic tribe noted for its wealth and consequence. Under the empire its importance continued. Ansobius describes it as surrounded by a brick wall of great circuit, and so populous that it had founded four colonies. In 412 A.D. the Visigoths made it the capital of their kingdom; and after the time of Charlemagne, it was under the sway of counts, who made themselves inde pendent about 920, but in 1271 the " county of Toulouse" was reunited to the crown of France by Philippe is Mardi. Its literary celebrity reaches as fa? back as the Roman empire. Ausonius speaks of the toga of "Palladian" Tolosa, and the favorite deities of the city were Jupiter. Minerva, and Apollo. At a little village close by, which still bears the name of Viel Toulouse, a multitude of cinerary tuns, statuettes, Phenician. Celt iberian, Gallic, Greek, and Roman medals, fragments of buildings, and an entire paved street have been discovered. Early in the middle ages, under the counts of Toulouse, it became a seat of provencal poetry, and was the center of the papal crusade against the Albigenses, conducted by Simon de Montfort. The parliament of Toulouse had also a great reputation, but unhappily it is likely to be best remembered by one of its most iniquitous ckeisions, that delivered in the case of the Caine (q.v.) family.