Stabs of the abdomen are serious if they have penetrated the abdominal wall, as, at the time of injury, septic germs may have been introduced, or the bowel may have been wounded. In either case a fatal inflammation of the peritoneum may be set up. It is inadvisable to probe a wound in order to find out if the belly-cavity has been penetrated, as the probe itself might carry inwards septic germs. In case of doubt it is better to enlarge the wound in order to determine its depth, and to disinfect and close it if it be non-penetrating. If, however, the bellycavity has been opened, the neighbouring pieces of bowel should be examined, cleansed and, if need be, sutured. Should there have been an escape of the contents of the bowel the "toilet of the peritoneum'' would be duly made, and a drainage-tube would be left in. If the stab had injured a large blood-vessel either of the abdominal cavity, or of the hiver or of some other organ, the bleeding would be arrested by ligature or suture, and the extravasated blood sponged out. Before the days of antiseptic surgery, and of exploratory abdominal operations, these cases were generally allowed to drift to almost certain death, unrecognized and almost untreated: at the present time a large number of them are saved.

Intussusception.—-This is a terribly fatal disease of infants and children, in which a piece of bowel slips into, and is gripped by, the piece next below it. Formerly it was generally the custom to endeavour to reduce the invagination by passing air or water up the rectum under pressure—a speculative method of treatment which sometimes ended in a fatal rupture of the distended bowel, and often—-one might almost say generally—failed to do what was expected of it. The teaching of modern surgery is that a small incision into the abdomen and a prompt withdrawal of the invaginated piece of bowel can be trusted to do all that, and more than, infection can effect, without blindly risking a rupture of the bowel. It is certain that when the surgeon is unable to unravel the bowel with his fingers gently applied to the parts themselves, no speculative distension of the bowel could have been effective. But the outlook in these distressing cases, even when the operation is promptly resorted to, is extremely grave, because of the intensity of the shock which the intussusception and resulting strangulation entail. Still, every operation gives them by far the best chance.

Cancer of the Intestine.—-With the introduction of aseptic methods of operating, it has been found that the surgeon can reach the bowel through the peritoneum easily and safely. With the peritoneum opened, moreover, he can explore the diseased bowel and deal with it as circumstances suggest. If the cancerous mass is fairly movable the affected piece of bowel is excised and the cut ends are spliced together, and the continuity of the alimentary canal is permanently re-established. Thus in the case of cancer of the large intestine which is not too far advanced, the surgeon expects to be able not only to relieve the obstruction of the bowel, but actually to cure the patient of his disease. When the lowest part of the bowel was found to be occupied by a cancerous obstruction, the surgeon used formerly to secure an easy escape for the contents of the bowel by making an opening into the colon in the left loin. But in recent years this operation of lumbar colotomy has been almost entirely replaced by opening the colon in the left groin. This operation of iniguinal colotomy is usually divided into two stages: a loop of the large intestine is first drawn out through the abdominal wound and secured by stitches, and a few days afterwards, when it is firmly glued in place by adhesive inflammation, it is cut across, so that subsequently the motions can no longer find their way into the bowel below the artificial anus. If at the first stage of the operation symptoms of obstruction are urgent, one of the ingenious glass tubes with a rubber conduit, which Mr F. T. Paul has invented, may be forthwith introduced into the distended bowel, so that the contents may be allowed to escape without fear of soiling the peritoneum or even the surface-wound. (E. O.*)

ABDUCTION (Lat. abductio, abducere, to lead away), a law term denoting the forcible or fraudulent removal of a person, limited by custom to the case where a woman is the victim. In the case of men or children, it has been usual to substitute the term kidnapping (q.v.). The old English laws against abduction, generally contemplating its object as the possession of an heiress and her fortune, have been repealed by the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which makes it felony for any one from motives of lucre to take away or detain against her will with intent to marry or carnally know her, &c., any woman of any age who has any interest in any real or personal estate, or is an heiress presumptive, or co-heiress, or presumptive next of kin to any one having such an interest; or for any one to cause such a woman to be married or carnally known by any other person; or for any one with such intent to allure, take away, or detain any such woman under the age of twenty-one, out of the possession and against the will of her parents or guardians. By s. 54, forcible taking away or detention against her will of any woman of any age with like intent is felony. The same act makes abduction without eyen any such intent a misdemeanour, where an unmarried girl under the age of sixteen is unlawfully taken out of the possession and against the will of her parents or guardians. In such a case the girl's consent is immaterial, nor is it a defence that the person charged reasonably believed that the girl was sixteen or over. The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 made still more stringent provisions with reference to abduction by making the procuration or attempted procuration of any virtuous female under the age of twenty-one years a misdemeanour, as well as the abduction of any girl under eighteen years of age with the intent that she shall be carnally known, or the detaining of any female against her will on any premises, with intent to have, or that another person may have, carnal knowledge of her. In Scotland, where there is no statutory adjustment, abduction is similarly dealt with by practice.

ABD-UL-AZIZ (1830-1876), sultan of Turkey, son of Sultan Mahmud II., was born on the 9th of February 1830, and succeeded his brother Abd-ul-Mejid in 1861. His personal interference in government affairs was not very marked, and extended to little more than taking astute advantage of the constant issue of State loans during his reign to acquire wealth, which was squandered in building useless palaces and in other futile ways: he is even said to have profited, by means of "bear'' sales, from the default on the Turkish debt in 1875 and the consequent fall in prices. Another source of revenue was afforded by Ismail Pasha, the khedive of Egypt, who paid heavily in bakshish for the firman of 1866, by which the succession to the khedivate was made hereditary from father to son in direct line and in order of primogeniture, as well as for the subsequent firmans of 1867, 1869 and 1872 extending the khedive's prerogatives. It is, however, only fair to add that the sultan was doubtless influenced by the desire to bring about a similar change in the succession to the Ottoman throne and to ensure the succession after him of his eldest son, Yussuf Izz-ed-din. Abd-ul-Aziz visited Europe in 1867, being the first Ottoman sultan to do so, and was made a Knight of the Garter by Queen Victoria. In 1869 he received the visits of the emperor of Austria, the Empress Eugenie and other foreign princes, on their way to the opening of the Suez Canal, and King Edward VII., while prince of Wales, twice visited Gonstantinople during his reign. The mis-government and financial straits of the country brought on the outbreak of Mussulman discontent and fanaticism which eventually culminated in the murder of two consuls at Salonica and in the "Bulgarian atrocities,'' and cost Abd-ul-Aziz his throne. His deposition on the 30th of May 1876 was hailed with joy throughout Turkey; a fortnight later he was found dead in the palace where he was confined, and trustworthy medical evidence attributed his death to suicide. Six children survived him: Prince Yussuf Izz-ed-din, born 1857; Princess Salina, wife of Kurd Ismall Pasha; Princess Nazime, wife of Khalid Pasha; Prince Abd-ul-Mejid, born 1869; Prince Self-ed-din, born 1876; Princess Emine, wife of Mahommed Bey; Prince Shefket, born 1872, died 1899.

ABD-UL-HAMID I.,(1725-1789), sultan of Turkey, son of Ahmed III., succeeded his brother Mustafa III. in 1773. Long confinement in the palace aloof from state affairs had left him pious, God-fearing and pacific in disposition. At his accession the financial straits of the treasury were such that the usual donative could not be given to the janissaries. War was, however, forced on him, and less than a year after his accession the complete defeat of the Turks at Kozluja led to the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji ( 21st July 1774), the most disastrous, especially in its after effects, that Turkey has ever been obliged to conclude. (See TURKEY.) Slight successes in Syria and the Morea against rebellious outbreaks there could not compensate for the loss of the Crimea, which Russia soon showed that she meant to absorb entirely. In 1787 war was again declared against Russia, joined in the following year by Austria, Joseph II. being entirely won over to Catherine, whom he accompanied in her triumohal progress in the Crimea. Turkey held her own against the Austrians, but in 1788 Ochakov fell to the Russians. Four months later, on the 7th of April 1789, the sultan died, aged sixty-four.

ABD-UL-HAMID II. (1842- ), sultan of Turkey, son of Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid, was born on the 21st of September 1842, and succeeded to the throne on the deposition of his brother Murad V., on the 31st of August 1876. He accompanied his uncle Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz on his visit to England and France in 1867. At his accession spectators were struck by the fearless manner in which he rode, practically unattended, on his way to be girt with the sword of Eyub. He was supposed to be of liberal principles, and the more conservative of his subjects were for some years after his accession inclined to regard him with suspicion as a too ardent reformer. But the circumstances of the country at his accession were ill adapted for liberal developments. Default in the public funds and an empty treasury, the insurrection in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, the war with Servia and Montenegro, the feeling aroused throughout Europe by the methods adopted in stamping out the Bulgarian rebellion, all combined to prove to the new sultan that he could expect little aid from the Powers. But, still clinging to the groundless belief, for which British statesmen had, of late at least, afforded Turkey no justification, that Great Britain at all events would support him, he obstinately refused to give ear to the pressing requests of the Powers that the necessary reforms should be instituted. The international Conference which met at Constantinople towards the end of 1876 was, indeed, startled by the salvo of guns heralding the promulgation of a constitution, but the demands of the Conference were rejected, in spite of the solemn warnings addressed to the sultan by the Powers; Midhat Pasha, the author of the constitution, was exiled; and soon afterwards his work was suspended, though figuring to this day on the Statute-Book. Early in 1877 the disastrous war with Russia followed. The hard terms, embodied in the treaty of San Stefano, to which Abd-ul-Hamid was forced to consent, were to some extent amended at Berlin, thanks in the main to British diplomacy (see EUROPE, History); but by this time the sultan had lost all confidence in England, and thought that he discerned in Germany, whose supremacy was evidenced in his eyes by her capital being selected as the meeting-place of the Congress, the future friend of Turkey. He hastened to employ Germans for the reorganization of his finances and his army, and set to work in the determination to maintain his empire in spite of the difficulties surrounding him, to resist the encroachments of foreigners, and to take gradually the reins of absolute power into his own hands, being animated by a profound distrust, not unmerited, of his ministers. Financial embarrassments forced him to consent to a foreign control over the Debt, and the decree of December 1881, whereby many of the revenues of the empire were handed over to the Public Debt Administration for the benefit of the bondholders, was a sacrifice of principle to which he could only have consented with the greatest reluctance. Trouble in Egypt, where a discredited khedive had to be deposed, trouble on the Greek frontier and in Montenegro, where the Powers were determined that the decisions of the Berlin Congress should be carried into effect, were more or less satisfactorily got over. In his attitude towards Arabi, the would-be saviour of Egypt, Abd-ul-Hamid showed less than his usual astuteness, and the resulting consolidation of England's hold over the country contributed still further to his estrangement from Turkey's old ally. The union in 1885 of Bulgaria with Eastern Rumelia, the severance of which had been the great triumph of the Berlin Congress, was another blow. Few people south of the Balkans dreamed that Bulgaria could be anything but a Russian province, and apprehension was entertained of the results of the union until it was seen that Russia really and entirely disapproved of it. Then the best was made of it, and for some years the sultan preserved towards Bulgaria an attitude skilfully calculated so as to avoid running counter either to Russian or to German wishes. Germany's friendship was not entirely disinterested, and had to be fostered with a railway or loan concession from time to time, until in 1899 the great object aimed at, the Bagdad railway, was conceded. Meanwhile, aided by docile instruments, the sultan had succeeded in reducing his ministers to the position of secretaries, and in concentrating the mhole administration of the country into his own hands at Yildiz. But internal dissension was not thereby lessened. Crete was constantly in turmoil, the Greeks were dissatisfied, and from about 1890 the Armenians began a violent agitation with a view to obtaining the reforms promised them at Berlin. Minor troubles had occurred in 1892 and 1893 at Marsovan and Tokat. In 1894 a more serious rebellion in the mountainous region of Sassun was ruthlessly stamped out; the Powers insistently demanded reforms, the eventual grant of which in the autumn of 1895 was the signal for a series of massacres, brought on in part by the injudicious and threatening acts of the victims, and extending over many months and throughout Asia Minor, as well as in the capital itself. The reforms became more or less a dead letter. Crete indeed profited by the grant of extended privileges, but these did not satisfy its turbulent population, and early in 1897 a Greek expedition salled to unite the island to Greece. War followed, in which Turkey was easily successful and gained a small rectification of frontier; then .a few months later Crete was taken over "en depot'' by the Four Powers—-Germany and Austria not participating,—-and Prince George of Greece was appointed their mandatory. In the next year the sultan received the visit of the German emperor and empress.

Abd-ul-Hamid had always resisted the pressure of the European Powers to the last moment, in order to seem to yield only to overwhelming force, while posing as the champion of Islam against aggressive Christendom. The Panislamic propaganda was encouraged; the privileges of foreigners in the Ottoman Empire-often an obstacle to government—were curtailed; the new railway to the Holy Places was pressed on, and emissaries were sent to distant countries preaching Islam and the caliph's supremacy. This appeal to Moslem sentiment was, however, powerless against the disaffection due to perennial misgovernment. In Mesopotamia and Yemen disturbance was endemic; nearer home, a semblance of loyalty was maintained in the army and among the Mussulman population by a system of delation and espionage, and by wholesale arrests; while, obsessed by terror of assassination, the sultan withdrew himself into fortified seclusion in the palace of Yildiz.

The national humiliation of the situation in Macedonia (q.v.), together with the resentment in the army against the palace spies and informers, at last brought matters to a crisis. The remarkable revolution associated with the names of Niazi Bey and Enver Bey, the young Turk leaders, and the Committee of Union and Progress is described elsewhere (see TURKEY: History); here it must suffice to say that Abd-ul-Hamid, on learning of the threat of the Salonica troops to march on Constantinople (July 23), at once capitulated. On the 24th an irade announced the restoration of the suspended constitution of 1875; next day, further irades abolished espionage and the censorship, and ordered the release of political prisoners. On the 10th of December the sultan opened the Turkish parliament with a speech from the throne in which he said that the first parliament had been "temporarily dissolved until the education of the people had been brought to a sufficiently high level by the extension of instruction throughout the empire.''

The correct attitude of the sultan did not save him from the suspicion of intriguing with the powerful reactionary elements in the state, a suspicion confirmed by his attitude towards the counter-revolution of the 13th of April, when an insurrection of the soldiers and the Moslem populace of the capital overthrew the committee and the ministry. The comittee, restored by the Salonica troops, now decided on Abdul-Hamid's deposition, and on the 27th of April his brother Reshid Effendi was proclaimed sultan as Mahommed V. The ex-sultan was conveyed into dignified captivity at Salonica.

ABD-UL-MEJID (1823-.1861), sultan of Turkey, was born on the 23rd of April 1823, and succeeded his father Mahmud II. on the 2nd of July 1839. Mahmud appears to have been unable to effect the reforms he desired in the mode of educating his children, so that his son received no better education than that given, according to use and wont, to Turkish princes in the harem. When Abd-ul-Mejid succeeded to the throne, the affairs of Turkey were in an extremely critical state. At the very time his father died, the news was on its way to Constantinople that the Turkish army had been signally defeated at Nezib by that of the rebel Egyptian viceroy, Mehemet Ali; and the Turkish fleet was at the same time on its way to Alexandria, where it was handed over by its commander, Ahmed Pasha, to the same enemy, on the pretext that the young sultan's advisers were sold to Russia. But through the intervention of the European Powers Mehemet Ali was obliged to come to terms, and the Ottoman empire was saved. (See MEHEMET ALI.) In compliance with his father's express instructions, Abd-ul-Mejid set at once about carrying out the reforms to which Mahmud had devoted himself. In November 1839 was proclaimed an edict, known as the Hatt-i-sherif of Dulhane, consolidating and enforcing these reforms, which was supplemented at the close of the Crimean war by a similar statute issued in February 1856. By these enactments it was provided that all classes of the sultan's subjects should have security for their lives and property; that taxes should be fairly imposed and justice impartially administered; and that all should have full religious liberty and equal civil rights. The scheme met with keen opposition from the Mussulman governing classes and the ulema, or privileged religious teachers, and was but partially put in force, especially in the remoter parts of the empire; and more than one conspiracy was formed against the sultan's life on account of it. Of the other measures of reform promoted by Abd-ul-Mejid the more important were—-the reorganization of the army (1843-1844), the institution of a council of public instruction (1846), the abolition of an odious and unfairly imposed capitation tax, the repression of slave trading, and various provisions for the better administration of the public service and for the advancement of commerce. For the public history of his times—the disturbances and insurrections in different parts of his dominions throughout his reign, and the great war successfully carried on against Russia by Turkey, and by England, France and Sardinia, in the interest of Turkey(1853-1856)— see TURKEY, and CRIMEAN WAR. When Kossuth and others sought refuge in Turkey, after the failure of the Hungarian rising in 1849, the sultan was called on by Austria and Russia to surrender them, but boldly and determinedly refused. It is to his credit, too, that he would not allow the conspirators against his own life to be put to death. He bore the character of being a kind and honourable man, if somewhat weak and easily led. Against this, however, must be set down his excessive extravagance, especially towards the end of his life. He died on the 25th of June 1861, and was succeeded by his brother, Abd-ul-Aziz, as the oldest survivor of the family of Osman. He left several sons, of whom two, Murad V. and Abd-ul-Hamid II., eventually succeeded to the throne. In his reign was begun the reckless system of foreign loans, carried to excess in the ensuing reign, and culminating in default, which led to the alienation of European sympathy from Turkey and, indirectly, to the dethronement and death of Abd-ul-Aziz.

ABDUR RAHMAN KHAN, amir of Afghanistan (c. 1844-1901), was the son of Afzul Khan, who was the eldest son of Dost Mahomed Khan, the famous amir, by whose success in war the Barakzai family established their dynasty in the rulership of Afghanistan. Before his death at Herat, 9th June 1863, Dost Mahomed had nominated as his successor Shere Ali, his third son, passing over the two elder brothers, Afzul Khan and Azim Khan; and at first the new amir was quietly recognized. But after a few months Afzul Khan raised an insurrection in the northern province, between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Oxus, where he had been governing when his father died; and then began a fierce contest for power among the sons of Dost Mahomed, which lasted for nearly five years. In this war, which resembles in character, and in its striking vicissitudes, the English War of the Roses at the end of the 15th century, Abdur Rahman soon became distinguished for ability and daring energy. Although his father, Afzul Khan, who had none of these qualities, came to terms with the Amir Shere Ali, the son's behaviour in the northern province soon excited the amir's suspicion, and Abdur Rahman: when he was summoned to Kabul, fled across the Oxus into Bokhara. Shere Ali threw Afzul Khan into prison, and a serious revolt followed in south &fghanistan; but the amir had scarcely suppressed it by winning a desperate battle, when Abdur Rahman's reapearance in the north was a signal for a mutiny of the troops stationed in those parts and a gathering of armed bands to his standard. After some delay and desultory fighting, he and his uncle, Azim Khan, occupied Kabul (March 1866). The amir Shere All marched up against them from Kandahar; but in the battle that ensued at Sheikhabad on 10th May he was deserted by a large body of his troops, and after his signal defeat Abdur Rahman released his father, Afzul Elian, from prison in Ghazni, and installed him upon the throne as amir of Afghanistan. Notwithstanding the new amir's incapacity, and some jealousy between the real leaders, Abdur Rahman and his uncle, they again routed Shere All's forces, and occupied Kandahar in 1867; and when at the end of that year Afzul Khan died, Azim Khan succeeded to the rulership, with Abdur Rahman as his governor in the northern province. But towards the end of 1868 Shere Ali's return, and a general rising in his favour, resulting in their defeat at Tinah Khan on the 3rd of January 1869, forced them both to seek refuge in Persia, whence Abdur Rahman proceeded afterwards to place himself under Russian protection at Samarkand. Azim died in Persia in October 1869.

This brief account of the conspicuous part taken by Abdur Rahman in an eventful war, at the beginning of which he was not more than twenty years old, has been given to show the rough school that brought out his qualities of resource and fortitude, and the political capacity needed for rulership in Afghanistan. He lived in exile for eleven years, until on the death, in 1879, of Shere Ali, who had retired from Kabul when the British armies entered Afghanistan, the Russian governorgeneral at Tashkent sent for Abdur Rahman, and pressed him to try his fortunes once more across the Oxus. In March 1880 a report reached India that he was in northern Afghanistan; and the governor-general, Lord Lytton, opened communications with him to the effect that the British government were prepared to withdraw their troops, and to recognize Abdur Rahman as amir of Afghanistan, with the exception of Kandahar and some districts adjacent. After some negotiations, an interview took place between him and Mr (afterwards Sir) Lepel Griffin, the diplomatic representative at Kabub of the Indian government, who described Abdur Rahman as a man of middle height, with an exceedingly intelligent face and frank and courteous manners, shrewd and able in conversation on the business in hand. At the durbar on the 22nd of July 1880, Abbdur Rahman was officially recognized as amir, granted assistance in arms and money, and promised, in case of unprovoked foreign aggression, such further aid as might be necessary to repel it, provided that he followed British advice in regard to his external relations. The evacuation of Afghanistan was settled on the terms proposed, and in 1881 the British troops also made over Kandahar to the new amir; but Ayub Khan, one of Shere Ali's sons, marched upon that city from Herat, defeated Abdur Rahman's troops, and occupied the place in July. This serious reverse roused the amir, who had not at first displayed much activity. He led a force from Kabul, met Ayub's army close to Kandahar, and the complete victory which he there won forced Ayub Khan to fly into Persia. From that time Abdur Rahman was fairly seated on the throne at Kabul, and in the course of the next few years he consolidated his dominion over all Afghanistan, suppressing insurrections by a sharp and relentless use of his despotic authority. Against the severity of his measures the powerful Ghilzai tribe revolted, and were crushed by the end of 1887. In that year Ayub Khan made a,fruitless inroad from Persia; and in 1888 the amir's cousin, Ishak Khan, rebelled against him in the north; but these two enterprises came to nothing.

In 1885, at the moment when (see AFGHANISTAN) the amir was in conference with the British viceroy, Lord Dufferin, in India, the news came of a collision between Russian and Afghan troops at Panjdeh, over a disputed point in the demarcation of the north-western frontier of Afghanistan. Abdur Rahman's attitude at this critical juncture is a good example of his political sagacity. To one who had been a man of war from his youth up, who had won and lost many fights, the rout of a detachment and the forcible seizure of some debateable frontier lands was an untoward incident; but it was no sufficent reason for calling upon the British, although they had guaranteed his territory's integrity, to vindicate his rights by hostilities which would certainly bring upon him a Russian invasion from the north, and would compel his British allies to throw an army into Afghanistan from the south-east. His interest lay in keeping powerful neighbours, whether friends or foes, outside his kingdom. He knew this to be the only policy that would be supported by the Afghan nation; and although for some time a rupture with Russia seemed imminent, while the Indian government made ready for that contingency, the amir's reserved and circumspect tone in the consultations with him helped to turn the balance between peace and war, and substantially conduced towards a pacific solution. Abdur Rahman left on those who met him in India the impression of a clear-headed man.of action, with great self-reliance and hardihood, not without indications of the implacable severity that too often marked his administration. His investment with the insignia of the highest grade of the Order of the Star of India appeared to give him much pleasure.

From the end of 1888 the amir passed eighteen months in his northern provinces bordering upon the Oxus, where he was engaged in pacifying the country that had been disturbed by revolts, and in punishing with a heavy hand all who were known or suspected to have taken any part in rebellion. Shortly afterwards (1892) he succeeded in finally beating down the resistance of the Hazara tribe, who vainly attempted to defend their immemorial independence, within their highlands, of the central authority at Kabul.

In 1893 Sir Henry Durand was deputed to Kabul by the government of India for the purpose of settling an exchange of territory required bu the demarcation of the boundary between north-eastern Afghanistan and the Russian possessions, and in order to discuss with the amir other pending questions. The amir showed his usual ability in diplomatic argument, his tenacity where his own views or claims were in debate, with a sure underlying insight into the real situation. The territorial exchanges were amicably agreed upon; the relations between the Indian and Afghan governments, as previously arranged, were confirmed; and an understanding was reached upon the important and difficult subject of the border line of Afghanistan on the east, towards India. In 1895 the amir found himself unable, by reason of ill-health, to accept an invitation from Queen Victoria to visit England; hut his second son Nasrullah Khan went in his stead.

Abdur Rahman died on the 1st of October 1901, being succeeded by his son Habibullah. He had defeated all enterprises by rivals against his throne; he had broken down the power of local chiefs, and tamed the refractory tribes; so that his orders were irresistible throughout the whole dominion. His government was a military despotism resting upon a well-appointed army; it was administered through officials absolutely subservient to an inflexible will and controlled by a widespread system of espionage; while the exercise of his personal authority was too often stained by acts of unnecessary cruelty. He held open courts for the receipt of petitioners and the dispensation of justice; and in the disposal of business he was indefatigable. He succeeded in imposing an organized government upon the fiercest and most unruly population in Asia; he availed himself of European inventions for strengthening his armament, while he sternly set his face against all innovations which, like railways and telegraphs, might give Europeans a foothold within his country. His adventurous life, his forcible character, the position of his state as a barrier between the Indian and the Russian empires, and the skill with which he held the balance in dealing with them, combined to make him a prominent figure in contemporary Asiatic politics and will mark his reign as an epoch in the history of Afghanistan.

The amir received an annual subsidy from the British government of 18-1/2 lakhs of rupees. He was allowed to import munitions of War. In 1896 he adopted the title of Tia-ul-hlillat-ud Din (Light of the nation and religion); and his zeal for the cause of Islam induced him to publish treatises on Jehad. His eldest son Habibullah Khan, with his brother Nasrullah Khan, was born at Samarkand. His youngest son, Mahomed Omar Jan, was born in 1889 of an Afghan mother, connected by descent with the Barakzai family.

See also S. Wheeler, F.R.G.S., The Amir Abdur Rahman (London, 1895); The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.B., G.C.S.L, edited by Mir Munshi, Sultan Mahommed Khan (2 vols., London, 1900); At the Court of the Amir, by J. A. Grey (1895). (A. C. L.) ABECEDARIANS, a nickname given to certain extreme Anabaptists (q.v.), who regarded the teaching of the Holy Spirit as all that was necessary, and so despised all human learning and even the power of reading the written word.

A BECKETT, GILBERT ARBOTT (1811-1856), English writer, was born in north London on the 9th of January 1811. He belonged to a family claiming descent from the father of St Thomas Becket. His elder brother, Sir William a Beckett (1806-1869), became chief justice of Victoria (Australia). Gilbert Abbott a Beckett was educated at Westminster school, and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1841. He edited Figaro in London, and was one of the original staff of Punch and a contributor all his life. He was an active journalist on The Times and The Morning Herald, contributed a series of light articles to The Illustrated London News, conducted in 1846 The Almanack of the Month and found time to produce some fifty or sixty plays, among them dramatized versions of Dickens's shorter stories in collaboration with Mark Lemon. As poor-law commissioner he presented a valuable report to the home secretary regarding scandals in connexion with the Andover Union, and in 1849 he became a metropolitan pouce magistrate. He died at Boulogne on the 30th of August 1856 of typhus fever.

His eldest son GILBERT ARTHUR A BECKETT (1837-1891) was born at Hammersmith on the 7th of April 1837. He went up to Christ Church, Oxford, as a Westminster scholar in 1855, graduating in 1860. He was entered at Lincoln's Inn, but gave his attention chiefly to the drama, producing Diamonds and Hearts at the Haymarket in 1867, which was followed by other light comedies. His pieces include numerous burlesques and pantomimes, the libretti of Savonarola (Hamburg, 1884) and of The Canterbury Pilgrims (Drury Lane, 1884) for the music of Dr (afterwards Sir) C. V. Stanford. The Happy Land (Court Theatre, 1873), a political burlesque of W. S. Gilbert's Wicked World, was written in collaboration with F. L. Tomline. For the last ten years of his life he was on the regular staff of Punch. His health was seriously affected in 1889 by the death of his only son, and he died on the 15th of October 1891.

A younger son, ARTHUR WILLIAM A BECKETT (1844—1909), a well-known journalist and man of letters, was also on the staff of Punch from 1874 to 1902, and gave an account of his father and his own reminiscences in The A Becketts of Punch (1903). He died in London on the 14th of January 1909.

See also M. H. Spielmann, The History of Punch (1895).

ABEDNEGO, the name given in Babylon to Azariah, one of the companions of Daniel (Dan. i. 7, &c.). It is probably a corruption, perhaps deliberate, of Abednebo, "servant of Nebo,'' though G. Hoffmann thinks that the original form was Abednergo, for Abednergal, "servant of the god Nergal.'' C. H. Toy compares Barnebo, "son of Nebo''; of which he regards Barnabas as a slightly disguised form (Jewish Encyclopaedia).

ABEKEN, HEINRICH (1809-1872), German theologian and Prussian official, was born at Berlin on the 8th of August 1809. He studied theology at Berlin and in 1834 became chaplain to the Prussian embassy in Rome. In 1841 he visited England, being commissioned by King Frederick William IV. to make arrangements for the establishment of the Protestant bishopric of Jerusalem. In 1848 he received an appointment in the Prussian ministry for foreign affairs, and in 1853 was promoted to be privy councillor of legation (Geheimer Legationsrath). He was much employed by Bismarck in the writing of official despatches, and stood high in the favour of King William, whom he often accompanied on his journeys as representative of the foreign office. He was present with the king during the campaigns of 1866 and 1870-71. In 1851 he published anonymously Babylon unnd Jerusalem, a slashing criticism of the views of the Countess von Hahn-Hahn (q.v.).

See Heinrich Abeken, ein schlichtes Leben in bewegter Zeit (Berlin, 1898), by his widow. This is valuable by reason of the letters written from the Prussian headquarters.

ABEL (Hebrew for breath), the second son of Adam, slain by Cain, his elder brother (Gen. iv. 1-16). The narrative in Genesis which tells us that "the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect,'' is supplemented by the statement of the New Testament, that "by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain'' (Heb. xi. 4), and that Cain slew Abel "because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous'' (1 John iii. 12). See further under CAIN. The name has been identified with the Assyrian ablu, "son,'' but this is far from certain. It more probably means "herdsman'' (cf. the name Jabal), and a distinction is drawn between the pastoral Abel and the agriculturist Cain. If Cain is the eponym of the Kenites it is quite possible that Abel was originally a South Judaean demigod or hero; on this, see Winckler, Gesch. Israels, ii. p. 189; E. Meyer, Israelitein, p. 395. A sect of Abelitae, who seem to have lived in North Africa, is mentioned by Augustine (De Haeresibus, lxxxvi.).

ABEL, SIR FREDERICK AUGUSTUS, BART. (1827-1902), English chemist, was born in London on the 17th of July 1827. After studying chemistry for six years under A. W. von Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry (established in London in 1845), he became professor of chemistry at the Royal Military Academy in 1851, and three years later was appointed chemist to the War Department and chemical referee to the government. During his tenure of this office, which lasted until 1888, he carried out a large amount of work in connexion with the chemistry of explosives. One of the most important of his investigations had to do with the manufacture of guncotton, and he developed a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be prepared with practically no danger and at the same time yielded the product in a form that increased its usefulness. This work to an important extent prepared the way for the "smokeless powders'' which came into general use towards the end of the 19th century; cordite, the particular form adopted by the British government in 1891, was invented jointly by him and Professor James Dewar. Our knowledge of the explosion of ordinary black powder was also greatly added to by him, and in conjunction with Sir Andrew Noble he carried out one of the most complete inquiries on record into its behaviour when fired. The invention of the apparatus, legalized in 1879, for the determination of the flash-point of petroleum, was another piece of work which fell to him by virtue of his official position. His first instrument, the open-test apparatus, was prescribed by the act of 1868, but, being found to possess certain defects, it was superseded in 1879 by the Abel close-test instrument (see PETROLEUM). In electricity Abel studied the construction of electrical fuses and other applications of electricity to warlike purposes, and his work on problems of steel manufacture won him in 1897 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute, of which from 1891 to 1893 he was president. He was president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (then the Society of Telegraph Engineers) in 1877. He became a member of the Royal Society in 1860, and received a royal medal in 1887. He took an important part in the work of the Inventions Exhibition (London) in 1885, and in 1887 became organizing secretary and first director of the Imperial Institute, a position he held till his death, which occurred in London on the 6th of September 1902. He was knighted in 1891, and created a baronet in 1893.

Among his books were—Handbook of Chemistry (with C. L. Bloxam), Modern History of Gunpowder (1866), Gun-cotton (1866), On Explosive Agents (1872), Researches in Explosives (1875), and Electricity applied to Explosive Purposes (1884). He also wrote several important articles in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

ABEL, KARL FRIEDRICH (1725-1787), German musician, was born in Kothen in 1725, and died on the 20th of June 1787 in London. He was a great player on the viola da gamba, and composed much music of importance in its day for that instrument. He studied under Johann Sebastian Bach at the Leipzig Thomasschule; played for ten years (1748-1758) under A. Hasse in the band formed at Dresden by the elector of Saxony; and then, going to England, became (in 1759) chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte. He gave a concert of his own compositions in London, performing on various instruments, one of which, the pentachord, was newly invented. In 1762 Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of Sebastian, came to London, and the friendship between him and Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of the famous concerts subsequently known as the Bach and Abel concerts. For ten years these were organized by Mrs Comelys, whose enterprises were then the height of fashion. In 1775 the concerts became independent of her, and were continued by Abel unsuccessfully for a year after Bach's death in 1782. At them the works of Haydn were first produced in England. After the failure of his concert undertakings Abel still remained in great request as a player on various instruments new and old, but he took to drink and thereby hastened his death. He was a man of striking presence, of whom several fine portraits, including two by Gainsborough, exist.

ABEL, NIELS HENRIK (1802-1829), Norwegian mathematician, was born at Findoe on the 25th of August 1802. In 1815 he entered the cathedral school at Christiania, and three years later he gave proof of his mathematical genius by his brilliant solutions of the original problems proposed by B. Holmboe. About this time, his father, a poor Protestant minister, died, and the family was left in straitened circumstances; but a small pension from the state allowed Abel to enter Christiania University in 1821. His first notable work was a proof of the impossibility of solving the quintic equation by radicals. This investigation was first published in 1824 and in abstruse and difficult form, and afterwards (1826) more elaborately in the first volume of Crelle's Journal. Further state aid enabled him to visit Germany and France in 1825, and having visited the astronomer Heinrich Schumacher (178-1850) at Hamburg, he spent six months in Berlin, where he became intimate with August Leopold Crelle, who was then about to publish his mathematical journal. This project was warmly encouraged by Abel, who contributed much to the success of the venture. From Berlin he passed to Freiberg, and here he made his brilliant researches in the theory of functions, elliptic, hyperelliotic and a new class known as Abelians being particularly studied. In 1826 he moved to Paris, and during a ten months' stay he met the leading mathematicians of France; but he was little appreciated, for his work was scarcely known, and his modesty restrained him from proclaiming his researches. Pecuniary embarrassments, from which he had never been free, finally compelled him to abandon his tour, and on his return to Norway he taught for some time at Christiania. In 1829 Crelle obtained a post for him at Berlin, but the offer did not reach Norway until after his death near Arendal on the 6th of April.

The early death of this talented mathematician, of whom Legendre said "quelle tete celle du jeune Norvegien!'', cut short a career of extraordinary brilliance and promise. Under Abel's guidance, the prevailing obscurities of analysis began to be cleared, new fields were entered upon and the study of functions so advanced as to provide mathematicians with numerous ramifications along which progress could be made. His works, the greater part of which originally appeared in Crelle's Journal, were edited by Holmbor and published in 1839 by the Swedish government, and a more complete edition by L. Sylow and S. Lie was published in 1881.

For further details of his mathematical investigations see the articles GROUPS, THEORY OF, and FUNCTIONS OF COMPLEX VARIABLES.

See C. A. Bjerknes, Niels Henrik Abel: Tableau de sa vie et son action scientifique (Paris, 1885); Lucas de Peslouan, Niels Henrik Abel (Paris, 1906).

ABEL (better ABELL), THOMAS (d. 1540), an English priest who was martyred during the reign of Henry VIII. The place and date of his birth are unknown. He was educated at Oxford and entered the service of Queen Catherine some time before 1528, when he was sent by her to the emperor Charles V. on a mission relating to the proposed divorce. On his return he was presented by Catherine to the living of Bradwell, in Essex, and remained to the last a staunch supporter of the unfortunate queen. In 1533, he published his Invicta Veritas (with the fictitious pressmark of Luneberge, to avoid suspicion), which contained an answer to the numerous tracts supporting Henry's ecclesiastical claims. After an imprisonment of more than six years, Abel was sentenced to death for denying the royal supremacy in the church, and was executed at Smithfield on the 30th of July 1540. There is still to be seen on the wall of his prison in the Tower the symbol of a bell with an A upon it and the name Thomas above, winch he carved during his confinement. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII.

See J. Gillow's Bibl. Dictionary of Eng. Catholics, vol. i.; Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII., vols. iv.-vii. passim.

ABELARD, PETER (1079-1142), scholastic philosopher, was born at Pallet (Palais), not far from Nantes, in 1079. He was the eldest son of a noble Breton house. The name Abaelardus (also written Abailardus, Abaielardus, and in many other ways) is said to be a corruption of Habelardus, substituted by himself for a nickname Bajolardus given to him when a student. As a boy, he showed an extraordinary quickness of apprehension, and, choosing a learned life instead of the knightly career natural to a youth of his birth, early became an adept in the art of dialectic, under which name philosophy, meaning at that time chiefly the logic of Aristotle transmitted through Latin channels, was the great subject of liberal study in the episcopal schools. Roscellinus, the famous canon of Compiegne, is mentioned by himself as his teacher; but whether he heard this champion of extreme Nominalism in early youth, when he wandered about from school to school for instruction and exercise, or some years later, after he had already begun to teach for himself, remains uncertain. His wanderings finally brought him to Paris, still under the age of twenty. There, in the great cathedral school of Notre-Dame, he sat for a while under the teaching of William of Champeaux, the disciple of St Anselm and most advanced of Realists, but, presently stepping forward, he overcame the master in discussion, and thus began a long duel that issued in the downfall of the philosophic theory of Realism, till then dominant in the early Middle Age. First, in the teeth of opposition from the metropolitan teacher, while yet only twenty-two, he proceeded to set up a school of hs own at Melun, whence, for more direct competition, he removed to Corbeil, nearer Paris. The success of his teaching was signal, though for a time he had to quit the field, the strain proving too great for his physical strength. On his return, after 1108, he found William lecturing no longer at Notre-Dame, but in a monastic retreat outside the city, and there battle was again joined between them. Forcing upon the Realist a material change of doctrine, he was once more victorious, and thenceforth he stood supreme. His discomfited rival still had power to keep him from lecturing in Paris, hut soon failed in this last effort also. From Melun, where he had resumed teaching, Abelard passed to the capital, and set up his school on the heights of St Genevieve, looking over Notre-Dame. From his success in dialectic, he next turned to theology and attended the lectures of Anselm at Laon. His triumph over the theologian was complete; the pupil was able to give lectures, without previous training or special study, which were acknowledged superior to those of the master. Abelard was now at the height of hs fame. He stepped into the chair at Notre-Dame, being also nominated canon, about the year 1115.

Few teachers ever held such sway as Abelard now did for a time. Distinguished in figure and manners, he was seen surrounded by crowds—it is said thousands of students, drawn from all countries by the fame of hs teaching, in which acuteness of thought was relieved by simplicity and grace of exposition. Enriched by the offerings of his pupils, and feasted with universal admiration, he came, as he says, to think himself the only philosopher standing in the world. But a change in his fortunes was at hand. In his devotion to science, he had hitherto lived a very regular life, varied only by the excitement of conflict: now, at the height of his fame, other passions began to stir within him. There lived at that time, within the precincts of Notre-Dame, under the care of her uncle, the canon Fulbert, a young girl named Heloise, of noble extraction, and born about 1101. Fair, but still more remarkable for her knowledge, which extended beyond Latin, it is said, to Greek and Hebrew, she awoke a feeling of love in the breast of Abelard; and with intent to win her, he sought and gained a footing in Fulbert's house as a regular inmate. Becoming also tutor to the maiden, he used the unlimited power which he thus obtained over her for the purpose of seduction, though not without cherishing a real affection which she returned in unparalleled devotion. Their relation interfering with his public work, and being, moreover, ostentatiously sung by himself, soon became known to all the world except the too-confiding Fulbert; and, when at last it could not escape even his vision, they were separated only to meet in secret. Thereupon Heloise found herself pregnant, and was carried off by her lover to Brittany, where she gave birth to a son. To appease her furious uncle, Abelard now proposed a marriage, under the condition that it should be kept secret, in order not to mar his prospects of advancement in the church; but of marriage, whether public or secret, Heloise would hear nothing. She appealed to him not to sacrifice for her the independence of his life, nor did she finally yield to the arrangement without the darkest forebodings, only too soon to be reallzed. The secret of the marriage was not kept by Fulbert; and when Heloise, true to her singular purpose, boldly denied it, life was made so unsupportable to her that she sought refuge in the convent of Argenteuil. Immediately Fulbert, believing that her husband, who aided in the flight, designed to be rid of her, coinceived a dire revenge. He and some others broke into Abelard's chamber by night, and perpetrated on him the most brutal mutilation. Thus cast down from his pinnacle of greatness into an abyss of shame and misery, there was left to the brilliant master only the life of a monk. The priesthood and ecclesiastical office were canonically closed to him. Heloise, not yet twenty, consummated her work of self-sacrifice at the call of his jealous love, and took the veil.

It was in the abbey of St Denis that Abelard, now aged forty, sought to bury himself with his woes out of sight. Finding, however, in the cloister neither calm nor solitude, and having gradually turned again to study, he yielded after a year to urgent entreaties from without and within, and went forth to reopen his school at the priory of Maisonceile (1120). His lectures, now framed in a devotional spirit, were heard again by crowds of students, and all his old influence seemed to have returned; but old enmities were revived also, against which he was no longer able as before to make head. No sooner had he put in writing his theological lectures (apparently the Introductio and Theolo giam that has come down to us), than his adversaries fell foul of his rationalistic interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma. Charging him with the heresy of Sabellius in a provincial synod held at Soissons in 1121, they procured by irregular practices a condemnation of his teaching, whereby he was made to throw his book into the flames and then was shut up in the convent of St Medard at Soissons. After the other, it was the bitterest possible experience that could befall him, nor, in the state of mental desolation into which it plunged him, could he find any comfort from being soon again set free. The life in his own monastery proved no more congenial than formerly. For this Abelard himself was partly responsible. He took a sort of malicious pleasure in irritating the monks. Quasijocando, he cited Bede to prove that Dionysius the Areopagite had been bishop of Corinth, while they relied upon the statement of the abbot Hilduin that he had been bishop of Athens. When this historical heresy led to the inevitable persecution, Abelard wrote a letter to the abbot Adam in which he preferred to the authority of Bede that of Eusebius' Historia Ecelesiastica and St Jerome, according to whom Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, was distinct from Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens and founder of the abbey, though, in deference to Bede, he suggested that the Areopagite might also have beeit bishop of Corinth. Life in the monastery was intolerable for such a troublesome spirit, and Abelard, who had once attempted to escape the persecution he had called forth by flight to a monastery at Provins, was finally allowed to withdraw. In a desert place near Nogent-sur-Seine, he built himself a cabin of stubble and reeds, and turned hermit. But there fortune came back to him with a new surprise. His retreat becoming known, students flocked from Paris, and covered the wilderness around him with their tents and huts. When he began to teach again he found consolation, and in gratitude he consecrated the new oratory they built for him by the name of the Paraclete.

Upon the return of new dangers, or at least of fears, Abelard left the Paraclete to make trial of another refuge, accepting an invitation to preside over the abbey of St Gildas-de-Rhuys, on the far-off shore of Lower Brittany. It proved a wretched exchange. The region was inhospitable, the domain a prey to lawless exaction, the house itself savage and disorderly. Yet for nearly ten years he continued to struggle with fate before he fled from his charge, yielding in the end only under peru of violent death. The misery of those years was not, however, unrelieved; for he had been able, on the breaking up of Heloise's convent at Argenteuil, to establish her as head of a new religious house at the deserted Paraclete, and in the capacity of spiritual director he often was called to revisit the spot thus made doubly dear to him. All this time Heloise had lived amid universal esteem for her knowledge and character, uttering no word under the doom that had fallen upon her youth; hut now, at last, the occasion came for expressing all the pent-up emotions of her soul. Living on for some time apart (we do not know exactly where), after his flight from St Gildas, Abelard wrote, among other things, his famous Historia Calamitatum, and thus moved her to peu her first Letter, which remains an unsurpassed utterance of human passion and womanly devotion; the first being followed by the two other Letters, in which she finally accepted the part of resignation which, now as a brother to a sister, Abelard commended to her. He not long after was seen once more upon the field of his early triumphs lecturing on Mount St Genevieve in 1136 (when he was heard by John of Salisbury), but it was only for a brief space: no new triumph, but a last great trial, awaited him in the few years to come of his chequered life. As far back as the Paraclete days, he had counted as chief among his foes Bernard of Clairvaux, in whom was incarnated the principle of fervent and unhesitating faith, from which rational inquiry like his was sheer revolt, and now this uncompromising spirit was moving, at the instance of others, to crush the growing evil in the person of the boldest offender. After preliminary negotiations, in which Bernard was roused by Abelard's steadfastness to put forth all his strength, a council met at Sens (1141), before which Abelard, formally arraigned upon a number of heretical charges, was prepared to plead his cause. When, however, Bernard, not without foregone terror in the prospect of meeting the redoubtable dialectician, had opened the case, suddenlly Abelard appealed to Rome. The stroke availed him nothing; for Bernard, who had power, notwithstanding, to get a condemnation passed at the council, did not rest a moment till a second condemnation was procured at Rome in the following year. Meanwhile, on his way thither to urge his plea in person, Abelard had broken down at the abbey of Cluny, and there, an utterly fallen man, with spirit of the humblest, and only not bereft of his intellectual force, he lingered but a few months before the approach of death. Removed by friendly hands, for the relief of his sufferings, to the priory of St Marcel, near Chalon-sur-Saone, he died on the 21st of April 1142. First buried at St Marcel, his remains soon after were carried off in secrecy to the Paraclete, and given over to the loving care of Heloise, who in time came herself to rest beside them (1164). The bones of the pair were shifted more than once afterwards, but they were marvellously preserved even through the vicissitudes of the French Revolution, and now they lie united in the well-known tomb in the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise at Paris.

Great as was the influence exerted by Abelard on the minds of his contemporaries and the course of medieval thought, he has been little known in modern times but for his connexion with Heloise. Indeed, it was not till the 19th century, when Cousin in 1836 issued the collection entitled Ouvrages inedits d'Abelard, that his philosophical performance could be judged at first hand; of his strictly philosophical works only one, the ethical treatise Scito te ipsum, having been published earlier, namely, in 1721. Cousin's collection, besides giving extracts from the theological work Sic et Non (an assemblage of opposite opinions on doctrinal points, culled from the Fathers as a basis for discussion, the main interest in which lles in the fact that there is no attempt to reconcile the different opinions), includes the Dialectica, commentaries on logical works of Aristotle, Porphyry and Boothius, and a fragment, De Generibus et Speciebus. The last-named work, and also the psychological treatise De Inteilectibus, published apart by Cousin (in Fragmens Philosophiques, vol. ii.), are now considered upon internal evidence not to be hy Abelard himself, but only to have sprung out of his school. A genuine work, the Glossulae super Porphyrium, from which Charles de Remusat, in his classical monograph Abelard (1845), has given extracts, remains in manuscript.

The general importance of Abelard lles in his having fixed more decisively than any one before him the scholastic manner of philosophizing, with its object of giving a formally rational expression to the received ecclesiastical doctrine . However his own particular interpretations may have been condemned, they were conceived in essentially the same spirit as the general scheme of thought afterwards elaborated in the 13th century with approval from the heads of the church. Through him was prepared in the Middle Age the ascendancy of the philosophical authority of Aristotle, which became firmly established in the half-century after his death, when first the completed Organon, and gradually ail the other works of the Greek thinker, came to be known in the schools: before his time it was rather upon the authority of Plato that the prevailing Realism sought to lean. As regards his so-called Conceptualism and his attitude to the question of Universals, see SCHOLASTICISM. Outside of his dialectic, it was in ethics that Abelard showed greatest activity of philosophical thought; laying very particular stress upon the subjective intention as determining, if not the moral character, at least the moral value, of human action. His thought in this direction, wherein he anticipated something of modern speculation, is the more remarkable because his scholastic successors accomplished least in the field of morals, hardly venturing to bring the principles and rules of conduct under pure philosophical discussion, even after the great ethical inquiries of AAstotle became fully known to them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY —Abelard's own works remain the best sources for his life, especially his Historia Culamitatum, an autobiography, and the correspondence with Heloise. The literature on Abelard is extensive, but consists principally of monographs on different aspects of his philosophy. Charles de Remusat's Abelard (2 vols., 1845) remains an authority; it must be distinguished from his drama Abelard (1877), which is an attempt to give a picture of medieval life. McCabe's life of Abelard is written closely from the sources. eee also the valuable analysis by Nitsch in the article "Abalard'' There is a comprehensive bibliograohy in U. Chevalier, Repertoire des sources hist. du moyen age, s. "Abailard.'' (G. C. R.; J. T. S.*)

ABELIN, JOHANN PHILIPP, an early 16th-century German chronicler, was born, probably, at Strasburg, and died there between the years 1634 and 1637. He wrote numerous histories over the pseudonyms of Philipp Arlanibaus, Abeleus and Johann Eudwighottfaed or Gotofredus, his earliest works of importance being his history of the German wars of Gustavus Adolphus, entitled Arma Suecica (pub. 1631-1634, in 12 parts), and the Inventarium Sueciae (1632)—-both compilations from existing records. His best known work is the Theatrum Europaeum, a series of chronicles of the chief events in the history of the world down to 1619. He was himself responsible for the first two volumes. It was continued by various writers and grew to twenty-one volumes (Frankf. 1633-1738). The chief interest of the work is, however, its illustration by the beautiful copperplate engravings of Matthaus Meriah (1593-1650). Abelin also wrote a history of the antipodes, Historia Antipodum (posthumously pub. Frankf. 1655), and a history of India.

See G. Droysen, Arlanibaeus, Godofredus, Abelinus (Berlin, 1864); and notice in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic.

ABENCERRAGES, a family or faction that is said to have held a prominent position in the Moorish kingdom of Granada in the 15th century. The name appears to have been derived from the Yussuf ben-Serragh, the head of the tribe in the time of Mahommed VII., who did that sovereign good service in his struggles to retain the crown of which he was three times deprived. Nothing is known of the family with certainty; but the name is familiar from the interesting romance of Gines Perez de Hita, Guerras civiles de Granada, which celebrates the feuds of the Abencerrages and the rival family of the Zegris, and the cruel treatment to which the former were subjected. J. P. de Florian's Gonsalve de Cordoue and Chateaubriand's Le dernier des Abencerrages are imitations of Perez de Hita's work. The hall of the Abencerrages in the Alhambra takes its name from being the reputed scene of the massacre of the family.

ABENDANA, the name of two Jewish theologians. (1) JACOB (1630-i695), rabbi (Hakham) of the Spanish Jews in London from 1680. Like his brother Isaac, Jacob Abendana had a circle of Christian friends, and his reputation led to the appreciation of Jewish scholarship by modern Christian theologians. (2) ISAAC (c. 1650-1710), his brother, taught Hebrew at Cambridge and afterwards at Oxford. He compiled a Jewish Calendar and wrote Discourses on the Ecclesiastical and Civil Polity of the Jews (1706).

ABENEZRA (IBN EZRA), or, to give him his full name, ABRAHAM BEN MEIR IBN Ezra (1092 or 1093-1167), one of the most distinguished Jewish men of letters and writers of the Middle Ages. He was born at Toledo, left his native land of Spain before 1140 and led until his death a life of restless wandering, which took him to North Africa, Egypt, Italy (Rome, Lucca, Mantua,Verona), Southern France(Narbonne, Beziers), Northern France (Dreux), England (London), and back again to the South of France. At several of the above-named places he remained for some time and developed a rich literary activity. In his native land he had already gained the reputation of a distinguished poet and thinker; but, apart from his poems, his works, which were all in the Hebrew language, were written in the second period of his life. With these works, which cover in the first instance the field of Hebrew philology and Biblical exegesis, he fulfilled the great mission of making accessible to the Jews of Christian Europe the treasures of knowledge enshrined in the works written in Arabic which he had brought with him from Spain. His grammatical writings, among which Moznayim ("the Scales,'' written in 1140) and Zahot ("Correctness,'' written in 1141) are the most valuable, were the first expositions of Hebrew grammar in the Hebrew language, in which the system of Hayyuj and his school prevailed. He also translated into Hebrew the two writings of Hayyuj in which the foundations of the system were laid down. Of greater original value than the grammatical works of Ibn Ezra are his commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, of which, however, a part has been lost. His reputation as an intelligent and acute expounder of the Bible was founded on his commentary on the Pentateuch, of which the great popularity is evidenced by the numerous commentaries which were written upon it. In the editions of this commentary (ed. princ. Naples 1488) the commentary on the book of Exodus is replaced by a second, more complete commentary of Ibn Ezra, while the first and shorter commentary on Exodus was not printed until 1840. The great editions of the Hebrew Bible with rabbinical commentaries contained also commentaries of Ibn Ezra's on the following books of the Bible: Isaiah, Minor Prophets, Psalms, Job, Pentateuch, Daniel; the commentaries on Proverbs, Ezra and Nehemiah which bear his name are really those of Moses Kimhi. Ibn Ezra wrote a second commentary on Genesis as he had done on Exodus, but this was never finished. There are second commentaries also by him on the Song of Songs, Esther and Daniel. The importance of the exegesis of Ibn Ezra consists in the fact that it aims at arriving at the simple sense of the text, the so-called "Pesohat,'' on solid grammatical principles. It is in this that, although he takes a great part of his exegetical material from his predecessors, the originality of his mind is everywhere apparent, an originality which displays itself also in the witty and lively language of his commentaries. To judge by certain signs, of which Spinoza in his Tractatus Theologico Politicus makes use, Ibn Ezra belongs to the earliest pioneers of the criticism of the Pentateuch. His commentaries, and especially some of the longer excursuses, contain numerous contributions to the philosophy of religion. One writing in particular, which belongs to this province (Vosod Mera), on the division and the reasons for the Biblical commandments, he wrote in 1158 for a London friend, Joseph b. Jacob. In his philosophical thought neo-platonic ideas prevail; and astrology also had a place in his view of the world. He also wrote various works on mathematical and astronomical subjects. Ibn Ezra died on the 28th of January 1167, the place of his death being unknown.

Among the literature on Ibn Ezra may be especially mentioned: M. Friedlander, Essays on the Writings of Ibn Ezra (London, 1877); W. Bacher, Abraham Ibn Ezra als Grammatiker (Strasburg, 1882); M. Steinschneider, Abraham Ibn Ezra, in the Zeitschrift fur Mathematik und Physik, Band xxv., Supplement; D. Rosin, Die Religions philosophie Abraham Ibn Ezra's in vols. xiii. and xliii. of the Monatschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums; his Diwan was edited by T. Egers (Berlin, 1886): a collection of his poems, Reime und Gedichte, with translation and commentary, were published by D. Rosin in several annual reports of the Jewish theological Seminary at Breslau (1885—1894). (W. BA.)

ABENSBERG, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Abens, a tributary of the Danube, 18 m. S.W. of Regensburg, with which it is connected by rail. Pop. 2202. It has a small spa, and its sulphur baths are resorted to for the cure of rheumatism and gout. The town is the Castra Abusina of the Romans, and Roman remains exist in the neighbourhood. Here, on the 20th of April 1809, Napoleon gained a signal victory over the Austrians under the Archduke Louis and Genegal Hiller.

ABEOKUTA, a town of British West Africa in the Egba division of the Yoruba country, S. Nigeria Protectorate. It is situated in 7 deg. 8' N., 3 deg. 25' E., on the Ogun river, 64 m. N. of Lagos by railway, or 81 m. by water. Population, approximately 60,000. Abeokuta lies in a beautiful and fertile country, the surface of which is broken by masses of grey granite. It is spread over an extensive area, being surrounded by mud walls 18 miles in extent. Abeokuta, under the reforming zeal of its native rulers, was largely transformed during the early years of the 20th century. Law courts, government offices, prisons and a substantial bridge were built, good roads made, and a large staff of sanitary inspectors appointed. The streets are generally narrow and the houses built of mud. There are numerous markets in which a considerable trade is done in native products and articles of European manufacture. Palm-oil, timber, rubber, yams and shea-butter are the chief articles of trade. An official newspaper is published in the Yoruba and English languages. Abeokuta is the headquarters of the Yoruba branch of the Church Missionary Societyi and British and American, missionaries have met with some success in their civilizing work. In their schools about 2000 children are educated. The completion in 1899 of a railway from Lagos helped not only to develop trade but to strengthen generally the influence of the white man.

Abeokuta (a word meaning "under the rocks,''), dating from 1825, owes its origin to the incessant inroads of the slavehunters from Dahomey and Ibadan, which compelled the village populations scattered over the open country to take refuge in this rocky stronghold against the common enemy. Here they constituted themselves a free confederacy of many distinct tribal groups, each preserving the traditional customs, religious rites and even the very names of their original villages. Yet this apparently incoherent aggregate held its ground successfully against the powerful armies often sent against the place both by the king of Dahomey from the west, and by the people of Ibadan from the north-east.

The district of Egba, of which Abeokuta is the capital, has an estimated area of 3000 sq. m. and a population of some 350,000. It is officially known as the Abeokuta province of the Southern Nigeria protectorate. It contains luxuriant forests of palmtrees, which constitute the chief wealth of the people. Cotton is indigenous and is grown for export. The Egbas are enthusiastic farmers and have largely adopted European methods of cultivation. They are very tenacious of their independence, but accepted without opposition the establishment of a British protectorate, which, while putting a stop to inter-tribal warfare, slave-raiding and human sacrifices, and exercising control over the working of the laws, left to the people executive and fiscal autonomy. The administration is in the hands of a council of chiefs which exercises legislative, executive and, to some extent, judicial functions. The president of this council, or ruling chief —-chosen from among the members of the two recognized reigning families—is called the alake, a word meaning "Lord of Ake,'' Ake being the name of the principal quarter of Abeokuta, after the ancient capital of the Egbas. The alake exercises little authority apart from his councili the form of government being largely democratic. Revenue is chiefly derived from tolls or import duties. A visit of the alake to England in 1904 evoked considerable public interest. The chief was a man of great intelligence, eager to study western civilization, and an ardent agriculturist.

See the publications of the Church Missionary Society dealing mith the Voruba Mission; Col. A. B. Ellis's The Yoruba-speaking Peoples (London, 1894); and an article on Abeokuta by Sir Wm. Macgregor, sometime governor of Lagos, in the African Society's Journal, No. xii. (London, July 1904).

ABERAVON, a contributory parliamentary and municipal borough of Glamorganshire, Wales, on the right bank of the Avon, near its mouth in Swansea Bay, 11 m. E.S.E. of Swansea and 170 m. from London by rail. Pop. (1901) 7553. It has a station on the Rhondda and Swansea Bay railway and is also on the main South Wales line of the Great Western, whose station, however, is at fort Talbot, half a mile distant, on the eastern side of the Avon. The valley of the Avon, which is only some three miles long, has been from about 1840 a place of much metallurgical activity. There are tinplate and engineering works within the borough. At Cwmavon, 1 1/2 m. to the north-east, are large copper-smelting works established in 1838, acquired two years later by the governor and Company of the Copper Miners of England, but now worked by the Rio Tinto Copper Company. There are also iron, steel and tinplate works both at Cwmavon and at Port Talbot, which, when it consisted only of docks, was appropriately known as Aberavon Port.

The town derives its name from the river Avon (corrupted from Avan), which also gave its name to a medieval lordship. On the Norman conquest at Glamorgan, Caradoc, the eldest son of the defeated prince, Lestyn ab Gwrgan, continued to hold this lordship, and for the defence of thc passage of the river built here a castle whose foundations are still traceable in a field near the churchyard. His descendants (who from the 13th century onwards styled themselves De Avan or D'Avene) established, under line protection of the castle, a chartered town, which in 1372 received a further charter from Edward Le Despenser, into whose family the lordship had come on an exchange of lands. In modern times these charters were not acted upon, the town being deemed a borough by prescription, but in 1861 it was incorporated under the Municipal Corporations Act. Since 1832 it has belonged to the Swansea parliamentary district of boroughs, uniting with Kenfig, Loughor, Neath and Swansea to return one member; but in 1885 the older portion of Swansea was given a separate member.

ABERCARN, an urban district in the southern parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, 10 m. N.W. of Newport by the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 12,607. There are collieries, ironworks and tinplate works in the district; the town, which lies in the middle portion of the Ebbw valley, being situated on the south-eastern flank of the great mining region of Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire.

ABERCORN, JAMES HAMILTON, 1ST EARL OF (c. 1575-1618), was the eldest son of Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley (4th son of James, 2nd earl of Arran, and duke of Chatelherault), and of Margaret, daughter of George, 6th Lord Seton. He was made sheriff of Linlithgow in 1600, received large grants of lands in Scotland and Ireland, was created in 1603 baron of Abercorn, and on the 10th of July 1606 was rewarded for his services in the matter of the union by being made earl of Abercorn, and Baron Hamilton, Mount Castle and Kilpatrick. He married Marion, daughter of Thomas, 5th Lord Boyd, and left five sons, of whom the eldest, baron of Strabane, succeeded him as 2nd earl of Abercorn. He died on the 23rd of March 1618. The title of Abercorn, held by the head of the Hamilton family, became a marquessate in 1790, and a dukedom in 1868, the 2nd duke of Abercorn (b. 1838) being a prominent Unionist politician and chairman of the British South Africa Company.

ABERCROMRIE, JOHN (1780-1844), Scottish physician, was the son of the Rev. George Abercrombie of Aberdeen, where he was born on the 10th of October 1780. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, and after graduating as M.D. in 1803 he settled down to practise in that city, where he soon attained a leading position. From 1816 he published various papers in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, which formed the basis of his Pathological and Practical Researches on Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord, and of his Researches on the Diseases of the Intestinal Canal, Liver and other Viscera of the Abdomen, both published in 1828. He also found time for philosophical speculations, and in 1830 he published his Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers of Man and the Investigation of Truth, which was followed in 1833 by a sequel, The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. Both works, though showing little originality of thought, achieved wide popularity. He died at Edinburgh on the 14th of November 1844.

ABERCROMBY, DAVID, a 17th-century Scottish physician who was sufficiently noteworthy a generation after the probable date of his death to have his Nova Medicinae Praxis reprinted at Paris in 1740. During his lifetime his Tuta ac efficax luis venereae saepe absque mercurio ac semper absque salivatione mercuriali curando methodus (1684) was translated into French, Dutch and German. Two other works by him were De Pulsus Variatione (London, 1685), and Ars explorandi medicas facultates plantarum ex solo sapore (London, 1685—1688); His Opuscula were collected in 1687. These professional writings gave him a place and memorial in A. von Haller's Bibliotheca Medicinae Pract. (4 vols. 8vo, 1779, tom. iii. p. 619); but he claims notice rather by his remarkable controversial books in theology and philosophy than by his medical writings. Bred up at Douai as a Jesuit, he abjured popery, and published Protestancy proved Safer than Popery' (London, 1686). But the most noticeable of his productions is A Discourse of Wit (London, 1685), which contains some of the most characteristic and most definitely-put metaphysical opinions of the Scottish philosophy of common sense. It was followed by Academia Scientiarum (1687), and by A Moral Treatise of the Power. of Interest (1690), dedicated to Robert Boyle. A Short Account of Scots Divines, by him, was printed at Edinburgh in 1833, edited by James Maidment. The exact date of his death is unknown, but according to Haller he was alive early in the 18th century.

ABERCROMBY, PATRICK (1656-c.1716), Scottish physician and antiquarian, was the third son of Alexander Abercromby of Fetterneir in Aberdeenshire, and brother of Francis Abercromby, who was created Lord Glasford by James II. He was born at Forfar in 1656 apparently of a Roman Catholic family. Intending to become a doctor of medicine he entered the university of St Andrews, where he took his degree of M.D. in 1685, but apparently he spent most of his youthful years abroad. It has been stated that he attended the university of Paris. The Discourse of Wit (1685), sometimes assigned to him, belongs to Dr David Abercromby (q.v.). On his return to Scotland, he is found practising as a physician in Edinburgh, where, besides his professional duties, he gave himself with characteristic zeal to the study of antiquities. He was appointed physician to James II. in 1685, but the revolution deprived him of the post. Living during the agitations for the union of England and Scotland, he took part in the war of pamphlets inaugurated and sustained by prominent men on both sides of the Border, and he crossed swords with no less redoubtable a foe than Daniel Defoe in his Advantages of the Act of Security compared with those of the intended Union (Edinburgh, 1707), and A Vindication of the Same against Mr De Foe (ibid.). A minor literary work of Abercromby's was a translation of Jean de Beaugue's Histoire de la guerre d'Ecosse (1556) which appeared in 1707. But the work with which his name is permanently associated is his Martial Atchievements of the Scots Nation, issued in two large folios, vol. i. 1711, vol. ii. 1716. In the title-page and preface to vol. i. he disclaims the ambition of being an historian, but in vol. ii., in title-page and preface alike, he is no longer a simple biographer, but an historian. Even though, read in the light of later researches, much of the first volume must necessarily be relegated to the region of the mythical, none the less was the historian a laborious and accomplished reader and investigator of all available authorities, as well manuscript as printed; while the roll of names of those who aided him includes every man of note in Scotland at the time, from Sir Thomas Craig and Sir George Mackenzie to Alexander Nisbet and Thomas Ruddiman. The date of Abercromby's death is uncertain. It has been variously assigned to 1715, 1716, 1720, and 1726, and it is usually added that he left a widow in great poverty. The Memoirs of the Abercrombys, commonly attributed to him, do not appear to have been published.

See Robert Chambers, Eminent Scotsmen, s.v.; William Anderson, Scottish Nation, s.v.; Alexander Chalmers, Biog. Dict., s.v.; George Chalmers, Life of Ruddiman; William Lee, Defoe.

ABERCROMBY, SIR RALPH (1734-1801), British lieutenant-general, was the eldest son of George Abercromby of Tillibody, Clackmannanshire, and was born in October 1734. Educated at Rugby and Edinburgh University, in 1754 he was sent to Leipzig to study civil law, with a view to his proceeding to the Scotch bar. On returning from the continent he expressed a strong preference for the military profession, and a cornet's commission was accordingly obtained for him (March 1756) in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. He served with his regiment in the Seven Years' war, and the opportunity thus afforded him of studying the methods of the great Frederick moulded his military character and formed his tactical ideas. He rose through the intermediate grades to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the regiment (1773) and brevet colonel in 1780, and in 1781 he became colonel of the King's Irish infantry. When that regiment was disbanded in 1783 he retired upon half-pay. That up to this time he had scarcely been engaged in active service was owing mainly to his disapproval of the policy of the government, and especially to his sympathies with the American colonists in their struggles for independence; and his retirement is no doubt to be ascribed to similar feelings. On leaving the army he for a time took up political life as member of Parliament for Clackmannanshire. This, however, proved uncongenial, and, retiring in favour of his brother, he settled at Edinburgh and devoted himself to the education of his children. But on France declaring war against England in 1793, he hastened to resume his professional duties; and, being esteemed one of the ablest and most intrepid officers in the whole British forces, he was appointed to the command of a brigade under the duke of York, for service in Holland. He commanded the advanced guard in the action at Le Cateau, and was wounded at Nijmwegen. The duty fell to him of protecting the British army in its disastrous retreat out of Holland, in the winter of 1794-1795. In 1795 he received the honour of a knighthood of the Bath, in acknowledgment of his services. The same year he was appointed to succeed Sir Charles Grey, as commander-in-chief of the British forces in the West Indies. In 1796 Grenada was suddenly attacked and taken by a detachment of the army under his orders. He afterwards obtained possession of the settlements of Demerara and Essequibo, in South America, and of the islands of St Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad. He returned in 1797 to Europe, and, in reward for his important services, was appointed colonel of the regiment of Scots Greys, entrusted with the governments of the Isle of Wight, Fort-George and Fort-Augustus, and raised to the rank of lieutenant-general. He held, in 1797-1798, the chief command of the forces in Ireland. There he laboured to maintain the discipline of the army, to suppress the rising rebellion, and to protect the people from military oppression, with a care worthy alike of a great general and an enlightened and beneficent statesman. When he was appointed to the command in Ireland, an invasion of that country by the French was confidently anticipated by the English government. He used his utmost efforts to restore the discipline of an army that was utterly disorganized; and, as a first step, he anxiously endeavoured to protect the people by re-establishing the supremacy of the civil power, and not allowing the military to be called out, except when it was indispensably necessary for the enforcement of the law and the maintenance of order. Finding that he received no adequate support from the head of the Irish government, and that all his efforts were opposed and thwarted by those who presided in the councils of Ireland, he resigned the command. His departure from Ireland was deeply lamented by the reflecting portion of the people, and was speedily followed by those disastrous results which he had anticipated, and which he so ardently desired and had so wisely endeavoured to prevent. After holding for a short period the office of commander-in-chief in Scotland, Sir Ralph, when the enterprise against Holland was resolved upon in 1799, was again called to command under the duke of York. The campaign of 1799 ended in disaster, but friend and foe alike confessed that the most decisive victory could not have more conspicuously proved the talents of this distinguished officer. His country applauded the choice when, in 1801, he was sent with an army to dispossess the French of Egypt. His experience in Holland and the West Indies particularly fitted him for this new command, as was proved by his carrying his army in health, in spirits and with the requisite supplies, in spite of very great difficulties, to the destined scene of action. The debarkation of the troops at Aboukir, in the face of strenuous opposition, is justly ranked among the most daring and brilliant exploits of the English army. A battle in the neighbourhood of Alexandria (March 21, 1801) was the sequel of this successful landing, and it was Abercromby's fate to fall in the moment of victory. He was struck by a spent ball, which could not be extracted, and died seven days after the battle. His old friend and commander the duke of York paid a just tribute to the great soldier's memory in general orders: "His steady observance of discipline, his ever-watchful attention to the health and wants of his troops, the persevering and unconquerable spirit which marked his military career, the splendour of his actions in the field and the heroism of his death, are worthy the imitation of all who desire, like him, a life of heroism and a death of glory.'' By a vote of the House of Commons, a monument was erected in his honour in St Paul's cathedral. His widow was created Baroness Abercromby of Tullibody and Aboukir Bay, and a pension of L. 2000 a year was settled on her and her two successors in the title.

A memoir of the later years of his life (1793-1801) by his third son, James (who was Speaker of the House of Commons, 1835-1839, and became Lord Dunfermline), was published in 1861. For a shorter account of Sir Ralph Abercromby see Wilkinson, Twelve British Soldiers (London, 1899).

ABERDARE, HENRY AUSTIN BRUCE, 1ST BARON (1815-1895), English statesman, was born at Duffryn, Aberdare, Glamorganshire, on the 16th of April 1815, the son of John Bruce, a Glamorganshire landowner. John Bruce's original family name was Knight, but on coming of age in 1805 he assumed the name of Bruce, his mother, through whom he inherited the Duffryn estate, having been the daughter of William Bruce, high sheriff of Glamorganshire. Henry Austin Bruce was educated at Swansea grammar school, and in 1837 was called to the bar. Shortly after he had begun to practise, the discovery of coal beneath the Duffryn and other Aberdare Valley estates brought the family great wealth. From 1847 to 1852 he was stipendiary magistrate for Merthyr Tydvil and Aberdare, resigning the position in the latter year, when he entered parliament as Liberal member for Merthyr Tydvil. In 1862 he became under-secretary for the home department, and in 1869, after losing his seat at Merthyr Tydvil, but being re-elected for Renfrewshire, he was made home secretary by W. E. Gladstone. His tenure of this office was conspicuous for a reform of the licensing laws, and he was responsible for the Licensing Act of 1872, which constituted the magistrates the licensing authority, increased the penalties for misconduct in public-houses and shortened the number of hours for the sale of drink. In 1873 he relinquished the home secretaryship, at Gladstone's request, to become lord president of the council, and was almost simultaneously raised to the peerage as Baron Aberdare. The defeat of the Liberal government in the following year terminated Lord Aberdare's official political life, and he subsequently devoted himself to social, educational and economic questions. In 1876 he was elected F.R.S.; from 1878 to 1892 he was president of the Royal Historical Society; and in 1881 he became president of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1882 he began a connexion with West Africa which lasted the rest of his life, by accepting the chairmanship of the National African Company, formed by Sir George Taubman Goldie, which in 1886 received a charter under the title of the Royal Niger Company and in 1899 was taken over by the British government, its territories being constituted the protectorate of Nigeria. West African affairs, however, by no means exhausted Lord Aberdare's energies, and it was principally through his efforts that a charter was in 1894 obtained for the university of Wales at Cardiff. Lord Aberdare, who in 1885 was made a G.C.B., presided over several Royal Commissions at different times. He died in London on the 25th of February 1895. His second wite was the daughter of Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular war, whose Life he edited.

ABERDARE, a market town of Glamorganshire, Wales, situated (as the name implies) at the confluence of the Dar and Cynon, the latter being a tributary of the Tain. Pop. of urban district (1901), 43,365. It is 4 m. S.W. of Merthyr Tydvil, 24 from Cardiff and 160 from London by rail. It has a station on the Pontypool and Swansea section of the Great Western railway, and is also served by the Llwydcoed and Abernant stations which are on a branch line to Merthyr. The Tain Vale line (opened 1846) has a terminus in the town. The Glamorgan canal has also a branch (made in 1811) running from Abercynon to Aberdare. From being, at the beginning of the 19th century, a mere village in an agricultural district, the place grew rapidly in population owing to the abundance of its coal and iron ore, and the population of the whole parish (which was only 1486 in 1801) increased tenfold during the first half of the century. Ironworks were established at Llwydcoed and Abernant in 1799 and 1800 respectively, followed by others at Gadlys and Aberaman in 1827 and 1847. These have not been worked since about 1875, and the only metal industries remaining in the town are an iron foundry or two and a small tinplate works at Gadlys (established in 1868). Previous to 1836, most of the coal worked in the parish was consumed locally, chiefly in the ironworks, but in that year the working of steam coal for export was begun, pits were sunk in rapid succession, and the coal trade, which at least since 1875 has been the chief support of the town, soon reached huge dimensions. There are also several brickworks and breweries. During the latter half Of the 19th century, considerable public improvements were effected in the town, making it, despite its neighbouring collieries, an agreeable place of residence. Its institutions included a post-graduate theological college (opened in connexion with the Church of England in 1892, until 1907, when it was removed to Llandaff). There is a public park of fifty acres with two small lakes. Aberdare, with the ecclesiastical parishes of St Fagan's (Trecynon) and Aberaman carved out of the ancient parish, has some twelve Anglican churches, one Roman Catholic church (built in 1866 in Monk Street near the site of a cell attached to Penrhys Abbey) and over fifty Noncoformist chapels. The services in the majority of the chapels are in Welsh. The whole parish falls within the parliamentary borough of Merthyr Tydvil. The urban district includes what were once the separate villages of Aberaman, Abernant, Cwmbach, Cwmaman, Cwmdare, Llwydcoed and Trecynon. There are several cairns and the remains of a circular British encampment on the mountain between Aberdare and Merthyr. Hirwaun moor, 4 m. to the N.W. of Aberdare, was according to tradition the scene of a battle at which Rhys ap Jewdwr, prince of Dyfed, was defeated by the ailied forces of the Norman Robert Fitzhamon and Iestyn ab Gwrgan, the last prince of Glamorgan.