STRATFORD-ON-AVON (8), a pleasant old market-town of Warwickshire, on the right bank of the Avon, 8 m.  SW. of Warwick and 110 m.  NW. of London; forever famous as the birth and burial place of Shakespeare, with whom all that is of chief interest in the town is associated, the house he was born in, his old school, Anne Hathaway’s cottage on the outskirts, the fine Early English church (14th century), where he lies buried, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, museum, &c.; is Visited annually by some 20,000 pilgrims; a thriving agricultural centre.

STRATHCLYDE or NORTHERN CUMBRIA, an ancient kingdom of the Britons, which originated in the 8th century, and comprised the W. side of Scotland between the Solway and the Clyde; Alclyde or Dumbarton was the capital; was permanently annexed to Scotland in 1124 under David I.

STRATHFIELDSAYE, an estate in Hampshire with a fine Queen Anne mansion, 7 m.  NE. of Basingstoke, purchased by Parliament for L263,000, and presented to the Duke of Wellington in 1817.

STRATHMORE ("Great Valley"), the great plain of Scotland stretching for 100 m. (5 to 10 m. broad), in a north-easterly direction from Dumbartonshire to Stonehaven, in Kincardineshire, between the great mountain barrier of the Highlands, the Grampians, and the Southern Lennox, Ochil, and Sidlaw Hills; in a more restricted sense denotes the plain between Perth and Brechin.

STRATHPEFFER, a watering-place in Ross and Cromarty, 5 m.  W. of Dingwall, a great health-resort, and much frequented on account of its mineral waters and bracing air and other attractions.

STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH, German theological and biblical critic, born at Ludwigsburg, in Wuertemberg; studied in the Theological Institute of Tuebingen under Baur, was ordained in 1830, and went in 1834 to Berlin to attend the lectures of Hegel and Schleiermacher, and returning to Tuebingen gave lectures on Hegel in 1832, he the while maturing his famous theory which, published in 1835, made his name known over the whole theological world; this was his “Leben Jesu,” the first volume of which appeared that year, in which he maintained that, while the life of Christ had a historical basis, all the supernatural element in it and the accounts of it were simply and purely mythical, and the fruit of the idea of His person as Divine which at the foundation of the Christian religion took possession of the mind of the Church; the book proved epoch-making, and the influence of it, whether as accepted or as rejected, affected, as it still does, the whole theology of the Church; the effect of it was a shock to the whole Christian world, for it seemed as if with the denial of the supernatural the whole Christian system fell to pieces; and its author found the entire Christian world opposed to him, and he was cast out of the service of the Church; this, however, did not daunt his ardour, for he never abandoned the ground he had taken up; his last work was entitled “Der Alte und der Neue Glaube,” in which he openly repudiates the Christian religion, and assigns the sovereign authority in spiritual matters to science and its handmaid art.  In a spiritual reference the whole contention of Strauss against Christianity is a tissue of irrelevancies, for the spirit of it, which is its life and essence, is true whatever conclusion critics in their seraphic wisdom may come to regarding the facts (1808-1874).