STRANRAER (6), a royal burgh and seaport of Wigtownshire, finely situated at the southern extremity of Loch Ryan, 73 m.  W. of Dumfries; has an interesting 16th-century castle, and a handsome town-hall and court-house; there is some shipping in agricultural produce, and steamers ply daily between Stranraer and Larne, in Ireland.

STRAPAROLA, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO, author of a famous collection of stories after the style of Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” partly borrowed and partly genuine folk-stories, which ranks as an Italian classic, and has been translated into various European languages; flourished in the 16th century.

STRAP, HUGH, a simple-hearted friend and adherent of Roderick Random in Smollett’s novel of that name.

STRAPPADO, an obsolete military punishment by drawing a culprit to the top of a beam and then letting him drop the length of the rope.

STRASBURG (124), capital, since 1871, of Alsace-Lorraine, on the Ill, a few miles above its confluence with the Rhine, 89 m.  N. of Basel; a place of great strategical importance, and a fortress of the first class; is a city of Roman origin, and contains a magnificent Gothic cathedral (11th century) with a famous astronomical clock, an imperial palace, university, &c.; manufactures embrace beer, leather, cutlery, jewellery, &c.; there is also a busy transit trade; a free town of the German empire in the 13th century; fell into the hands of the French in 1681, and was captured by the Germans, after a seven weeks’ siege, on 28th September 1870, after which it became finally German, as it was originally, by the peace of Frankfort, May 1871.

STRATFORD (40), manufacturing town in Essex, on the Lee, 4 m.  NE. of London.

STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, SIR STAFFORD CANNING, FIRST VISCOUNT, a distinguished ambassador, born in London, son of a well-connected merchant, and cousin to Canning the statesman; passed from Cambridge to the Foreign Office in 1807 as a precis-writer to his cousin; in three years had risen to the post of minister-plenipotentiary at Constantinople, where he speedily gave evidence of his remarkable powers as a diplomatist by arranging unaided the treaty of Bucharest (1814) between Russia and Turkey, and so setting free the Russian army to fall upon Napoleon, then retreating from Moscow; as minister to Switzerland aided the Republic in drawing up its constitution, and in the same year (1815) acted as commissioner at the Congress of Vienna; was subsequently employed in the United States and various European capitals, but his unrivalled knowledge of the Turkish question brought him again, in 1842, to Constantinople as ambassador, where his remarkable power and influence over the Turks won him the title of “Great Elchi”; exerted in vain his diplomatic skill to prevent the rupture between Turkey and Russia, which precipitated the Crimean War; resigned his embassy in 1858; was raised to the peerage in 1852; sat in Parliament for several years previous to 1842, but failed to make his mark as a debater; ranks among the great ambassadors of England (1786-1880).