ENTAIL, a term in law which came to be used in connection with the practice of limiting the inheritance of estates to a certain restricted line of heirs. Attempts of the kind, which arise naturally out of the deeply-seated desire which men have to preserve property—especially landed estates—in their own families, are of ancient date; but the system as understood now, involving the principle of primogeniture, owes its origin to the feudal system. Sometimes the succession was limited to the male issue, but this was by no means an invariable practice; in modern times the system has been, by a succession of Acts of Parliaments (notably the Cairns Act of 1882), greatly modified, and greater powers given to the actual owner of alienating the estates to which he has succeeded, a process which is called "breaking the entail."

ENTSAGEN, the renunciation with which, according to Goethe, life, strictly speaking, begins, briefly explained by Froude as "a resolution, fixedly and clearly made, to do without pleasant things—wealth, promotion, fame, honour, and the other rewards with which the world recompenses the services it appreciates," or, still more briefly, the renunciation of the flesh symbolised in the Christian baptism by water.

ENVIRONMENT, a term of extensive use in biological science, especially employed to denote the external conditions which go to determine modifications in the development of organic life to the extent often of producing new species.

EOLUS. See AEOLUS.

EON. See AEON.

EON DE BEAUMONT, CHARLES D', the "Chevalier d'Eon," a noted French diplomatist, born at Tonnerre, Burgundy; notorious as having, while on secret missions, adopted a woman's dress for purposes of disguise; was ambassador at the English Court, but degraded and recalled by Louis XVI., and condemned to wear feminine garb till the close of his life; died in destitution, when the popular doubt as to his real sex was set at rest (1728-1810).

EOS, the goddess of the dawn, the daughter of Hyperion, and the sister of Helios and Selene. See AURORA.

EOeTVOeS, JOZSEF, Hungarian statesman and author, born at Buda; adopted law as a profession, but devoted himself to literature, and eventually politics; Minister of Public Instruction, and then of Worship and Education; published some powerful dramas and novels, notably "The Village Notary," a work pronounced equal in many respects to the best of Scott's novels; also vigorous political essays (1813-1871).

EPACT, a name given to the excess of the solar month over the lunar, amounting to 1 day 11 hours 11 minutes and 57 seconds, and of the solar year over the lunar amounting to 11 days.

EPAMINONDAS, a famous Theban statesman and soldier, defeated Sparta in the great victory of Leuctra, and during his lifetime raised Thebes to a position of dominant power; was slain in the battle of Mantinea when again successfully engaging the Spartans; blameless in his private life as he was heroic in the field, he figures as the great hero of Theban history; born about the close of the 5th century B.C.

EPEE, CHARLES MICHEL, ABBE DE L', a noted philanthropist, born at Versailles; took holy orders, but was divested of them on account of Jansenist views; devoted his life to the instruction of deaf-mutes, for whom he founded an institute, and invented a language of signs (1712-1789).

EPEIUS, the contriver of the wooden horse, by means of which the Greeks entered and took possession of Troy, and who was assisted by Athena in the building of it.

EPERNAY (18), a French town on the Marne, 20 m. NW. of Chalons; the chief emporium of the champagne district.

EPHESIANS, THE EPISTLE TO, a presumably circular letter of St. Paul to the Church at Ephesus, among other Churches in the East, written to show that the Gentile had a standing in Christ as well as the Jew, and that it was agreeable to the eternal purpose of God that the two should form one body in Him; it contains Paul's doctrine of the Church, and appears to have been written during his first imprisonment in Rome (61-63); it appears from the spirit that breathes in it and the similar thoughts and exhortations, contained to have been written at the same time as the Epistle to the Colossians.

EPHIALTES, one of the giants who revolted against Zeus and threatened to storm heaven; he appears to have been maimed by Apollo and Hercules.

EPHIALTES, a Malian Greek who led the Persians across a pass in the mountains, whereby they were able to surround and overcome Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae.

EPHOD, a richly and emblematically embroidered vestment worn by the high-priest of the Jews, and consisting of two parts, one covering the breast and supporting the breastplate, and the other covering the back, these being clasped to the shoulders by two onyx stones, with names inscribed on them, six on each, of the 12 tribes, and the whole bound round the waist with a girdle of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine-twined linen.

EPH'ORI (i. e. overseers), the name of five magistrates annually elected in ancient Sparta from among the people as a countercheck to the authority of the kings and the senate; had originally to see to the execution of justice and the education of youth; their authority, which resembled that of the tribunes in Rome, was at last destroyed in 225 B.C.

EPHRAEM SYRUS, the most famous of the Church Fathers in Syria, and called "prophet of the Syrians," also "Pillar of the Church" and "Help of the Holy Ghost," born at Nisibis, Mesopotamia; lived a hermit's life in a cave near Edessa; left exegetical writings, homilies, and poems, and so great was his piety and self-denial, that he was looked upon as a saint, and is still so reverenced in several Churches (320-370).

EPHRAIM, one of the 12 tribes of Israel, the one to which Joshua belonged, located in the centre of the land; powerful in the days of the Judges, the chief of the 10 tribes that revolted under Jeroboam after the death of Solomon, and is found often to give name to the whole body of them.

EPIC, a poem that treats of the events in the life of a nation or a race or the founder of one, agreeably to the passion inspiring it and in such form as to kindle and keep alive the heroism thereof in the generations thereafter; or a poem in celebration of the thoughts, feelings, and feats of a whole nation or race; its proper function is to disimprison the soul of the related facts and give a noble rendering of them; of compositions of this kind the "Iliad" of Homer, the "AEneid" of Virgil, and the "Divine Comedy" of Dante take the lead.

EPIC MELODY, melody in accord with the feeling of the whole race or the subject as a whole.

EPICHARIS, a Roman lady who conspired against Nero and strangled herself rather than reveal her accomplices after undergoing the cruellest tortures.

EPICHARMUS, a Greek philosopher and poet in the island of Cos; studied philosophy under Pythagoras; conceived a taste for comedy; gave himself up to that branch of the drama, and received the name of the "Father of Comedy"; lived eventually at the court of Hiero of Syracuse (540-430 B.C.).

EPICTETUS, a celebrated Stoic philosopher of the 1st century, originally a slave; lived and taught at Rome, but after the expulsion of the philosophers retired to Nicopolis, in Epirus; was lame, and lived in poverty; his conversations were collected by Arrian, and his philosophy in a short manual under the Greek name of "Enchiridion of Epictetus," written, as is alleged, in utter obliviousness of the fact that "the end of man is an action, not a thought."

EPICUREANS, a sect of philosophers who derived their name from Epicurus, and who divided the empire of philosophy with the STOICS (q. v.), at the birth of Christ; they held that the chief end of man was happiness, that the business of philosophy was to guide him in the pursuit of it, and that it was only by experience that one could learn what would lead to it and what would not; they scouted the idea of reason as regulative of thought, and conscience as regulative of conduct, and maintained that our senses were our only guides in both; in a word, they denied that God had implanted in man an absolute rational and moral principle, and maintained that he had no other clue to the goal of his being but his experience in life, while the distinction of right and wrong was only a distinction of what was found conducive to happiness and what was not; they had no faith in or fear of a divine Being above man any more than of a divine principle within man, and they scorned the idea of another world with its awards, and concerned themselves only with this, which, however, in their hands was no longer a cosmos but a chaos, out of which the quickening and ordinative spirit had fled.

EPICURUS, a Greek philosopher, born at Samos, of Athenian origin; settled at Athens in his thirty-sixth year, and founded a philosophical school there, where he taught a philosophy in opposition to that of the Stoics; philosophy he defined as "an activity which realises a happy life through ideas and arguments," summing itself up "in ethics, which are to teach us how to attain a life of felicity"; his system comprised "the three branches included in philosophy, viz., logic, physics, and ethics," but he arranges them in reverse order, logic and physics being regarded only as the handmaids of ethics; for he "limited logic to the investigation of the criterion of truth," and physics he valued as disillusioning the mind of "the superstitious fear that went to disturb happiness"; he was a man of a temperate and blameless life, and it is a foul calumny on him to charge him with summing up happiness as mere self-indulgence, though it is true he regarded "virtue as having no value in itself, but only in so far as it offered us something—an agreeable life."

EPICYCLE, an expression used in the PTOLEMAIC (q. v.) system of astronomy; the old belief that the celestial bodies moved in perfect circles round the earth was found to be inadequate to explain the varying position of the planets, a difficulty which led Ptolemy to invent his theory of epicycles, which was to the effect that each planet revolved round a centre of its own, greater or less, but that all these centres themselves moved in procession round the earth, a theory which fell to pieces before the investigations of Kepler and Newton.

EPIDAURUS, a town of ancient Greece, in Argolis, on the eastern shore of the Peloponnesus; was at one time an independent State and an active centre of trade, but was chiefly noted for its famous temple of AEsculapius, to which people flocked to be cured of their diseases, and which bore the inscription "Open only to pure souls"; ruins of a magnificent theatre are still extant here.

EPIDEMIC, a name given to contagious diseases which, arising suddenly in a community, rapidly spread through its members, often travelling from district to district, until often a whole country is affected; the theory of the transmission of disease by microbes has largely explained the spread of such scourges, but the part which atmospheric and other physical, and perhaps psychic, causes play in these disorders is still matter of debate, especially as regards epidemic mental diseases. See ENDEMIC.

EPIGONI (the Descendants), the name given to the sons of the Seven who perished before Thebes; they avenged the death of their fathers by razing Thebes to the ground; the war first and last has been made the subject of epic and tragic poems.

EPIGRAM, in modern usage, is a neat, witty, and pointed utterance briefly couched in verse form, usually satiric, and reserving its sting to the last line; sometimes made the vehicle of a quaintly-turned compliment, as, for example, in Pope's couplet to Chesterfield, when asked to write something with that nobleman's pencil;—

"Accept a miracle; instead of wit, See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ."

The Latin epigrammatists, especially Martial and Catullus, were the first to give a satirical turn to the epigram, their predecessors the Greeks having employed it merely for purposes of epitaph and monumental inscriptions of a laudatory nature.

EPILEPSY, a violent nervous affection, manifesting itself usually in sudden convulsive seizures and unconsciousness, followed by temporary stoppage of the breath and rigidity of the body, popularly known as "falling sickness"; origin as yet undecided; attributed by the ancients to demoniacal possession.

EPIMENIDES, a philosopher of Crete of the 7th century B.C., of whom it is fabled that he fell asleep in a cave when a boy, and that he did not awake for 57 years, but it was to find himself endowed with all knowledge and wisdom. He was invited to Athens during a plague to purify the city, on which occasion he performed certain mysterious rites with the effect that the plague ceased. The story afforded Goethe a subject for a drama entitled "Das Epimenides Erwachen," "in which he symbolises his own aloofness from the great cause of the Fatherland, the result of want of faith in the miraculous power that resides in an enthusiastic outbreak of patriotic feeling."

EPIMETHEUS (i. e. Afterthought), the brother of Prometheus (Forethought), who in spite of the warnings of the latter opened Pandora's box, and let loose a flood of evils on the earth, which oppress it to this day.

EPINAL (21), the capital of the dep. of Vosges, in France, charmingly situated at the foot of the Vosges Mountains, on the Moselle; is elegantly built, and has ruins of an old castle, surrounded by fine gardens, a 10th-century church, and a fine library, &c.; a suspension bridge spans the Moselle; there is industry in cotton, paper, &c.

EPINAY, MADAME D', a French writer, unhappily married in her youth; became notorious for her illicit intimacy with Rousseau and Grimm; her "Memoires et Correspondence" give a lively picture of her times (1725-1783).

EPIPHANIUS, ST., one of the Fathers of the Greek Church; of Jewish descent; flourished in the 4th century; led a monastic life, and founded a monastery in Eleutheropolis; was bishop of Constantia in 367; bigoted and tyrannical, he became notorious for his ecclesiastical zeal, and for his indictments of Origen and St. Chrysostom; left writings that show great but indiscriminate learning (330-402).

EPIPHANY, as observed in the Christian Church, is a festival held on the 12th day after Christmas, in commemoration of the manifestation of Christ to the Magi of the East; but up to the close of the 4th century the festival also commemorated the incarnation of Christ as well as the divine manifestation at His baptism.

EPI'RUS, was the NW. portion of ancient Hellas, Dodona its capital, and Acheron one of its rivers; in 1466 became part of the Ottoman empire, but in 1881 a portion was ceded to Greece.

EPISCOPACY, the name given to the form of Church government in which there are superior and inferior orders among the clergy, as between that of bishop and that of a presbyter; called also Prelacy.

EPISCOPIUS, SIMON, a Dutch theologian, born at Amsterdam; the head of the Arminian party after the death of Arminius; was unjustly misrepresented, and tyrannically, even cruelly, treated by the opposite party; he was a man of great ability, enlightened views, and admirable temper, and set more store by integrity and purity of character than orthodoxy of belief (1583-1643).

EPISTOLAE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM (i. e. letters of obscure men), a celebrated collection of Latin letters which appeared in the 16th century in Germany, attacking with merciless severity the doctrines and modes of living of the scholastics and monks, credited with hastening the Reformation.

EPITAPH, an inscription placed on a tombstone in commemoration of the dead interred below. The natural feeling which prompts such inscriptions has manifested itself among all civilised peoples, and not a little of a nation's character may be read in them. The Greeks reserved epitaphs for their heroes, but amongst the Romans grew up the modern custom of marking the tombs of relatives with some simple inscription, many of their sepulchres being placed on the side of the public roads, a circumstance which explains the phrase, Siste, viator—Stay, traveller—found in old graveyards.

EPITHALAMIUM, a nuptial song, sung before the bridal chamber in honour of the newly-wedded couple, particularly among the Greeks and Romans, of whom Theocritus and Catullus have left notable examples; but the epithalamium of Edmund Spenser is probably the finest specimen extant of this poetic form.

EPPING FOREST, as it now exists in the SE. of Essex, is a remnant—5600 acres—of the famous Epping or Waltham Forest, which once extended over all Essex, and which then served as a royal hunting-ground, is now a favourite pleasure-ground and valuable field for explorations of botanical and entomological collectors.

EPSOM, a market-town in Surrey, skirting Banstead Downs, 15 m. SW. of London; formerly noted for its mineral springs, now associated with the famous Derby races.

EQUINOCTIAL POINTS are the two points at which the celestial equator intersects the ECLIPTIC (q. v.), so called because the days and nights are of equal duration when the sun is at these points.

EQUINOXES, the two annually recurring times at which the sun arrives at the EQUINOCTIAL POINTS (q. v.), viz., 21st March and 22nd September, called respectively the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes in the northern hemisphere, but vice versa in the southern; at these times the sun is directly over the equator, and day and night is then of equal length over the whole globe.

EQUITES, THE, a celebrated equestrian order in ancient Rome, supposed to have been instituted by Romulus; at first purely military, it was at length invested with the judicial functions of the Senate, and the power of farming out the public revenues; gradually lost these privileges and became defunct.

ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS, a famous scholar and man of letters, born at Rotterdam; illegitimate son of one Gerhard; conceived a disgust for monkish life during six years' residence in a monastery at Steyn; wandered through Europe and amassed stores of learning at various universities; visited Oxford in 1489, and formed a lifelong friendship with Sir Thomas More; was for some years professor of Divinity and Greek at Cambridge; edited the first Greek Testament; settled finally at Basel, whence he exercised a remarkable influence over European thought by the wit and tone of his writings, notably the "Praise of Folly," the "Colloquia" and "Adagia"; he has been regarded as the precursor of the Reformation; is said to have laid the egg which Luther hatched; aided the Reformation by his scholarship, though he kept aloof as a scholar from the popular movement of Luther (1467-1536).

ERASTIANISM, the right of the State to override and overrule the decisions of the Church that happen to involve civil penalties. See ERASTUS.

ERASTUS, an eminent physician, born at Baden, in Switzerland, whose fame rests mainly on the attitude he assumed in the theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day; he defended Zwingli's view of the Eucharist as a merely symbolical ordinance, and denied the right of the Church to inflict civil penalties, or to exercise discipline—the power of the keys—that belonging, he maintained, to the province of the civil magistrate and not to the Church (1534-1583).

ERATO (i. e. the Lovely), the muse of erotic poetry and elegy, represented with a lyre in her left hand.

ERATOSTHENES, surnamed the Philologist, a philosopher of Alexandria, born at Cyrene, 276 B.C.; becoming blind and tired of life, he starved himself to death at the age of 80; he ranks high among ancient astronomers; measured the obliquity of the ecliptic, and estimated the size of the earth (276-194 B.C.).

ERCILLA Y ZUNIGA, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid; took part in the war of the Spaniards with the Araucos in Chile, which he celebrated in an epic of no small merit called "La Araucana"; he ended his days in poverty (1553-1595).

ERDGEIST, the Spirit of the Earth, represented in Goethe's "Faust" as assiduously weaving, at the Time-Loom, night and day, in death as well as life, the earthly vesture of the Eternal, and thereby revealing the Invisible to mortal eyes.

ERDMANN, a German philosopher, born at Wolmar, professor at Halle; was of the school of Hegel, an authority on the history of philosophy (1805-1892).

EREBUS, a region of utter darkness in the depths of Hades, into which no mortal ever penetrated, the proper abode of Pluto and his Queen with their train of attendants, such as the Erinnyes, through which the spirits of the dead must pass on their way to Hades; equivalent to the valley of the shadow of death.

ERECTHEUS or ERICHTHONIUS, the mythical first king of Athens; favoured and protected from infancy by Athena, to whom accordingly he dedicated the city; he was buried in the temple of Athena, and worshipped afterwards as a god; it is fabled of him that when an infant he was committed by Athena in a chest to the care of Agraulos and Herse, under a strict charge not to pry into it; they could not restrain their curiosity, opened the chest, saw the child entwined with serpents, were seized with madness, and threw themselves down from the height of the Acropolis to perish at the foot.

ERFURT (72), a town in Saxony, on the Gera, 14 m. W. of Weimar, formerly capital of Thueringia, and has many interesting buildings, amongst the number the 14th-century Gothic cathedral with its great bell, weighing 131/2 tons, and cast in 1497; the monastery of St. Augustine (changed into an orphanage in 1819), in which Luther was a monk; the Academy of Sciences, and the library with 60,000 vols. and 1000 MSS.; various textile factories flourish.

ERGOT, a diseased state of grasses, &c., but a disease chiefly attacking rye, produced by a fungus developing on the seeds; the drug "ergot of rye" is obtained from a species of this fungus.

ERIC, the name of several of the kings of Denmark, and Sweden, and Norway, the most notorious being the son of the noble Swedish king GUSTAVUS VASA (q. v.), who aspired to the hand of Elizabeth of England and challenged his rival Leicester to a duel; afterwards sought Mary of Scotland, but eventually married a peasant girl who had nursed him out of madness brought on by dissipation; was deposed after a State trial instigated by his own brothers, and ultimately poisoned himself in prison eight years later (1533-1577).

ERIC THE RED, a Norwegian chief who discovered Greenland in the 10th century, and sent out expeditions to the coast of North America.

ERICSSON, JOHN, a distinguished Swedish engineer, born at Langbanshyttan; went to England in 1826 and to United States of America in 1839, where he died; invented the screw propeller of steamships; built warships for the American navy, and amongst them the famous Monitor; his numerous inventions mark a new era in naval and steamship construction (1802-1889).

ERIE, LAKE, the fourth in size among the giant lakes of North America, lies between Lakes Huron and Ontario, on the Canadian border, is 240 m. long and varies from 30 to 60 m. in breadth; is very shallow, and difficult to navigate; ice-bound from December till about April.

ERIGENA, JOHANNES SCOTUS, a rationalistic mystic, the most distinguished scholar and thinker of the 9th century, of Irish birth; taught at the court of Charles the Bald in France, and was summoned by Alfred to Oxford in 877; died abbot of Malmesbury; held that "damnation was simply the consciousness of having failed to fulfil the divine purpose"; he derived all authority from reason, and not reason from authority, maintaining that authority unfounded on reason was of no value; d. 882.

ERIN, the ancient Celtic name of Ireland, used still in poetry.

ERINNA, a Greek poetess, the friend of Sappho, died at 19; wrote epic poetry, all but a few lines of which has perished; born about 612 B.C.

ERINNYES, THE (i. e. the roused-to-anger, in Latin, the Furies), the Greek goddesses of vengeance, were the daughters of Gaia, begotten of the blood of the wounded Uranus, and at length reckoned three in number, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megara; they were conceived of as haunting the wicked on earth and scourging them in hell; they were of the court of Pluto, and the executioners of his wrath.

ERIS, the Greek goddess of strife or discord, sowing the seeds thereof among the gods to begin with, which she has since continued to do among men.

ERIVAN (15), a fortified town in Transcaucasia, situated 30 m. NE. of Mount Ararat on an elevated plateau; was ceded to Russia in 1828 by Persia.

ERLANGEN (13), a Bavarian town on the Regnitz, has a celebrated Protestant university, founded by Wilhelmina, sister of Frederick the Great, who was the Electress; was a place of refuge for the Huguenots in 1685; manufactures in gloves, mirrors, and tobacco are carried on, and brewing.

ERLAU (22), an ecclesiastical city of Hungary, on the Erlau, 89 m. NE. of Pesth; is the seat of an archbishop; has a fine cruciform cathedral, built since 1837, several monasteries, a lyceum with a large library and an observatory; is noted for its red wine.

ERL-KING, a Norse impersonation of the spirit of superstitious fear which haunts and kills us even in the guardian embrace of paternal affection.

ERMINIA, a Syrian, the heroine of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," in love with the Christian prince Tancred.

ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST, a celebrated German classicist and theologian, called the "German Cicero," born at Tennstaedt, Thueringia; professor of Philology in Leipzig, and afterwards of Theology; edited various classical works, his edition of Cicero specially noted; was the first to apply impartial textual criticism to the Bible, and to him, in consequence, we owe the application of a more correct exegesis to the biblical writings (1707-1781).

ERNST, ELECTOR OF SAXONY, founder of the Ernestine line of Saxon princes, ancestor of Prince Consort, born at Altenburg; was kidnapped along with his brother Albert in 1455, an episode famous in German history as the "Prinzenraub" (i. e. the stealing of the prince); succeeded his father in 1464; annexed Thueringia in 1482, and three years later shared his territory with his brother Albert (1441-1486).

ERNST I., Duke of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg; served in the Thirty Years' War under Gustavus Adolphus, and shared in the victory of Luetzen; was an able and wise ruler, and gained for himself the surname of "the Pious" (1601-1675).

EROS (in Latin, Cupido), the Greek god of love, the son of Aphrodite, and the youngest of the gods, though he figures in the cosmogony as one of the oldest of the gods, and as the uniting power in the life of the gods and the life of the universe, was represented at last as a wanton boy from whose wiles neither gods nor men were safe.

EROSTRATUS, an obscure Ephesian, who, to immortalise his name, set fire to the temple of Ephesus on the night, as it happened, when Alexander the Great was born; the Ephesians thought to defeat his purpose by making it death to any one who named his name, but in vain, the decree itself giving wider and wider publicity to the act.

ERPENIUS (Thomas van Erpen), Arabic scholar, born at Gorkum, in Holland; after completing his studies at Leyden and Paris, became professor of Oriental Languages there; famed for his Arabic grammar and rudiments, which served as text-books for upwards of 200 years (1585-1624).

ERSCH, JOHANN SAMUEL, a bibliographer, born at Grossglogau; after a college career at Halle devoted himself to journalism, and in 1800 became librarian of the University of Jena; subsequently filled the chair of Geography and Statistics at Halle; his "Handbook of German Literature" marks the beginning of German bibliography; began in 1818, along with Gruber, the publication of an encyclopaedia which is still unfinished (1766-1828).

ERSKINE, EBENEZER, founder of the Secession Church of Scotland, born at Chirnside, Berwickshire; minister at Portmoak for 28 years; took part in the patronage dispute, and was deposed (1733), when he formed a church at Gairney Bridge, near Kinross, the nucleus of the Secession Church (1703-1754).

ERSKINE, HENRY, a famous Scotch lawyer, second son of the Earl of Buchan, born at Edinburgh; called to the bar and became Lord Advocate; a Whig in politics; brought about useful legal reforms; noted as a brilliant wit and orator (1746-1817).

ERSKINE, JOHN, a Scottish jurist; called to the bar in 1719; became professor of Scots Law in Edinburgh University in 1837, resigned 1763; author of two important works on Scots Law, "The Institutes" and "Principles" (1695-1768).

ERSKINE, JOHN, D.D., son of the preceding; a celebrated Scotch preacher and author of various essays and pamphlets; a prominent leader on the Evangelical side in the General Assemblies; was minister of the Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and the colleague of Principal Robertson; is remembered for a retort in the pulpit and for another in the General Assembly; the former was to a remark of his colleague, Principal Robertson, "If perfect virtue were to appear on earth we would adore it." ... "Perfect virtue did appear on earth and we crucified it"; and that other in the General Assembly was "Rax (reach) me that Bible," as certain Moderates in the court began derisively to scoff at the proposal to send missions to the heathen (1721-1803).

ERSKINE, JOHN, OF DUN, a Scotch Reformer, supported Knox and Wishart; was several times Moderator of the General Assembly, and assisted in the formation of "The Second Book of Discipline" (1509-1591).

ERSKINE, RALPH, a Scotch divine, brother of EBENEZER (q. v.), with whom he co-operated in founding the Secession Church; his sermons and religious poems, called "Gospel Sonnets," were widely read; one of the first of the Scotch seceders, strange to contemplate, "a long, soft, poke-shaped face, with busy anxious black eyes, looking as if he could not help it; and then such a character and form of human existence, conscience living to the finger ends of him, in a strange, venerable, though highly questionable manner ... his formulas casing him all round like the shell of a beetle"; his fame rests chiefly on his "Gospel Sonnets," much appreciated at one time (1685-1752).

ERSKINE, THOMAS, LORD, a famous lawyer, youngest son of the Earl of Buchan, born in Edinburgh; spent his early years in the navy, and afterwards joined the army; resigned in 1775 to enter upon the study of law; called to the bar in 1778; a king's counsel in 1783; created a baron and Lord Chancellor in 1806; was engaged in all the famous trials of his time; an unrivalled orator in the law courts; his speeches rank as masterpieces of forensic eloquence (1750-1823).

ERSKINE, THOMAS, OF LINLATHEN, member of the Scottish bar, but devoted in an intensely human spirit to theological interests, "one of the gentlest, kindliest, best bred of men," says Carlyle, who was greatly attached to him; "I like him," he says, "as one would do a draught of sweet rustic mead served in cut glasses and a silver tray ... talks greatly of symbols, seems not disinclined to let the Christian religion pass for a kind of mythus, provided one can retain the spirit of it"; he wrote a book, much prized at one time, on the "Internal Evidences of Revealed Religion," also on Faith; besides being the constant friend of Carlyle, he corresponded on intimate terms with such men as Maurice and Dean Stanley (1788-1870).

ERWIN, a German architect, born at Steinbach, Baden; the builder of the western facade of the cathedral of Strasburg (1240-1318).

ERYMANTHUS, a mountain in Arcadia that was the haunt of the boar killed by Hercules.

ERYSIPELAS, known popularly as St. Anthony's Fire and Rose, a febrile disease, manifesting itself in acute inflammation of the skin, which becomes vividly scarlet and ultimately peels; confined chiefly to the head; is contagious, and recurrent.

ERYTHEMA, a medical term used loosely to designate a diseased condition of the skin; characterised by a scarlet or dark-red rash or eruption, distinct from erysipelas.

ERYTHREA (220), a colony belonging to Italy, extending from Cape Kasar 670 m. along the western shore of the Red Sea to a point in the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb; Massowah the capital.

ERYTHREAN SEA, a name of the Red Sea.

ERZERUM (60), a city in Turkish Armenia, capital of the province of the same name, 125 m. SE. of Trebizond; situated on a fertile plain 6300 ft. above sea-level; is an important entrepot for commerce between Europe and Asia; is irregularly built, but contains imposing ruins; has a fortress, and in the suburbs a number of mosques and bazaars; is famed for its iron and copper ware; fell into the hands of the Turks in 1517; figured as a military centre in many Turkish wars; was reduced by the Russians in 1878; was a scene of Armenian massacres by the Turks in 1895.

ERZGEBIRGE, a range of mountains lying between Saxony and Bohemia; the highest peak is the Keilberg, 4052 ft.; is rich in various metallic ores, especially silver and lead.

ERYX, an ancient town in the NW. of Sicily, at the foot of a mountain of the same name, with a temple to Venus, who was hence called Erycina.

ESAU, the eldest son of Isaac, who sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess of lentils; led a predatory life, and was the forefather of the Edomites.

ESCHATOLOGY, the department of theology which treats of the so-called last things, such as death, the intermediate state, the millennium, the return of Christ, the resurrection, the judgment, and the end of the world.

ESCHENBACH, WOLFRAM VON, a famous minnesinger, born at Eschenbach, in Bavaria, at about the close of the 12th century; was of good birth, and lived some time at the Thuringian Court; enjoyed a wide reputation in his time as a poet; of his poems the epic "Parzival" is the most celebrated, and records the history of the "Grail."

ESCHER, JOHANN HEINRICH ALFRED. Swiss statesman, born at Zurich; bred for the law, and lectured for a while in his native town; became President of the Council of Zurich; co-operated with Farrer in expelling the Jesuits; became member of the Diet; supported Federal union, and did much to promote and establish State education in Switzerland; b. 1819.

ESCHINES. See AESCHINES; as also ESCULAPIUS, ESCHYLUS, ESOP, &c., under AE.

ESCOBAR, MENDOZA ANTONIO, a Spanish Jesuit and casuist, born at Valladolid, a preacher and voluminous writer (1589-1669).

ESCURIAL, a huge granite pile, built in the form of a gridiron, 30 m. NW. from Madrid, and deemed at one time the eighth wonder of the world; was built in 1563-1584; was originally dedicated as a monastery to St. Lorenzo in recognition of the services which the Saint had rendered to Philip II. at the battle of St. Quentin, and used at length as a palace and burial-place of kings. It is a mere shadow of what it was, and is preserved from ruin by occasional grants of money to keep it in repair.

ESDRAELON, a flat and fertile valley in Galilee, called also the valley of Jezreel, which, with a maximum breadth of 9 m., extends in a NW. direction from the Jordan at Bathshean to the Bay of Acre.

ESDRAS, the name of two books of the Apocrypha, the first, written 2nd century B.C., containing the history of the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of its cultus, with a discussion on the strangest of all things, ending in assigning the palm to truth; and the second, written between 97 and 81 B.C., a forecast of the deliverance of the Jews from oppression and the establishment of the Messianic kingdom.

ESK, the name of several Scottish streams: (1) in Dumfriesshire, the Esk of young Lochinvar, has a course of 31 m. after its formation by the junction of the North and South Esks, and flows into the Solway; (2) in Edinburgh, formed by the junction of the North and South Esks, joins the Firth of Forth at Musselburgh; (3) in Forfarshire, the South Esk discharges into the North Sea at Montrose, and the North Esk also flows into the North Sea 4 m. N. of Montrose.

ESKIMO or ESQUIMAUX, an aboriginal people of the Mongolian or American Indian stock, in all not amounting to 40,000, thinly scattered along the northern seaboard of America and Asia and in many of the Arctic islands; their physique, mode of living, religion, and language are of peculiar ethnological interest; they are divided into tribes, each having its own territory, and these tribes in turn are subdivided into small communities, over each of which a chief presides; the social organisation is a simple tribal communism; Christianity has been introduced amongst the Eskimo of South Alaska and in the greater part of Labrador; in other parts the old religion still obtains, called Shamanism, a kind of fetish worship; much of their folk-lore has been gathered and printed; fishing and seal-hunting are their chief employments; they are of good physique, but deplorably unclean in their habits; their name is supposed to be an Indian derivative signifying "eaters of raw meat."

ESKIMO DOG, a dog found among the Eskimo, about the size of a pointer, hair thick, and of a dark grey or black and white; half tamed, but strong and sagacious; invaluable for sledging.

ESMOND, HENRY, the title of one of Thackeray's novels, deemed by the most competent critics his best, and the name of its hero, a chivalrous cavalier of the time of Queen Anne. "Esmond" is pronounced by Prof. Saintsbury to be "among the very summits of English prose fiction, exquisitely written in a marvellous resurrection of eighteenth-century style, touched somehow with a strange modernity and life which make it no pastiche, containing the most brilliant passages of mere incident, and, above all, enshrining such studies of character ... as not four other makers of English prose and verse can show."

ESNE, a town in Upper Egypt, on the left bank of the Nile, and 25 m. S. of Thebes; famous for the ruins of a temple.

ESOTERIC, a term used to denote teaching intended only for the initiated, and intelligible only to them.

ESPARTERO, a celebrated Spanish general and statesman, born at Granatula; supported, against the Carlist faction, the claims of Isabella to the throne of Spain; was for his services made Duke of Vittoria, and in 1841 elected regent; compelled to abdicate, he fled to England, but afterwards returned for a time to the head of affairs; an able man, but wanting in the requisite astuteness and tact for such a post (1793-1879).

ESPINASSE, CLARE FRANCOISE, a wit and beauty, born at Lyons, illegitimate child of the Countess d'Albon; went to Paris as companion to Madame du Deffand, with whom she quarrelled; set up a salon of her own, and became celebrated for her many attractions; D'Alembert was devoted to her; many of her letters to her lovers, the Marquis de Mora and M. de Guilbert in particular, have been published, and display a charming personality (1732-1776).

ESPINEL, VINCENT DE, a Spanish poet and musician, born at Ronda, Granada; first a soldier and then a priest, the friend of Lope de Vega, and author of a work which Le Sage made free use of in writing "Gil Blas"; was an expert musician; played on the guitar, and added a fifth string (1551-1634).

ESPIRITU SANTO, (1) a small and swampy maritime province of Brazil (121), lying on the N. border of Rio de Janeiro; does some trade in timber, cotton, coffee, and sugar; Victoria is the capital; (2) a town (32) in central Cuba; (3) the largest of the NEW HEBRIDES (q. v.) (20); the climate is unhealthy, but the soil fertile.

ESPRIT DES LOIS (i. e. the Spirit of Laws), the title of Montesquieu's great work, at once speculative and historical, published in 1748, characterised in "Sartor" as the work, like many others, of "a clever infant spelling letters from a hieroglyphic book the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven."

ESPY, JAMES POLLARD, a meteorologist, born in Pennsylvania; did notable work in investigating the causes of storms, and in 1841 published "The Philosophy of Storms"; was appointed to the Washington observatory, where he carried on experiments in the cooling of gases and atmospheric expansion (1785-1860).

ESQUIRE, originally meant a shield-bearer, and was bestowed upon the two attendants of a knight, who were distinguished by silver spurs, and whose especial duty it was to look after their master's armour; now used widely as a courtesy title.

ESQUIROS, HENRY ALPHONSE, poet and physician, born at Paris; his early writings, poems and romances, are socialistic in bias; member of the Legislative Assembly in 1848; retired to England after the coup d'etat; returned to France and rose to be a member of the Senate (1875); wrote three works descriptive of the social and religious life of England (1814-1876).

ESSEN (79), a town in the Rhine province of Prussia, 20 m. NE. of Duesseldorf, the seat of the famous "Krupp" steel-works.

ESSENES, a religious communistic fraternity, never very numerous, that grew up on the soil of Judea about the time of the Maccabees, and had establishments in Judea when Christ was on earth, as well as afterwards in the time of Josephus; they led an ascetic life, practised the utmost ceremonial cleanness, were rigorous in their observance of the Jewish law, and differed from the Pharisees in that they gave to the Pharisaic spirit a monastic expression; they represented Judaism in its purest essence, and in the spirit of their teaching came nearer Christianity than any other sect of the time; "Essenism," says Schuerer, "is first and mainly of Jewish formation, and in its non-Jewish features it had most affinity with the Pythagorean tendency of the Greeks."

ESSEQUIBO, an important river in British Guiana, 620 m. long, rises in the Sierra Acaray, navigable for 50 m. to small craft, flows northward into the Atlantic.

ESSEX (785), a county in the SE. of England, between Suffolk on the N. and Kent in the S., faces the German Ocean on the E.; is well watered with streams; has an undulating surface; is chiefly agricultural; brewing is an important industry, and the oyster fisheries of the Colne are noted; Chelmsford is the county town.

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, born at Netherwood, Hereford; served in the Netherlands under Leicester, his stepfather; won the capricious fancy of Elizabeth; lost favour by marrying clandestinely the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but was restored, and led a life of varying fortune, filling various important offices, till his final quarrel with the Queen and execution (1567-1601).

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF, son of preceding; commander of the Parliamentary forces against Charles I.; the title died with him, but was conferred again upon the present family in 1661 (1591-1646).

ESSLING, a village near Vienna, where the French gained a bloody victory over the Austrians in 1809, and which gave the title of prince to Massena.

ESSLINGEN (22), an old historic and important manufacturing town in Wuertemberg, on the Neckar, 9 m. SE. of Stuttgart; has a citadel and the Liebfrauen Church, which is a fine Gothic structure with a spire 246 ft.; is a noted hardware centre, and celebrated for its machinery; a good trade is done in textiles, fruit, and sparkling champagne.

ESTAING, COMTE D', a French admiral, "one of the bravest of men," fought against the English in the Indies and in America; winced as a Royalist at the outbreak of the French Revolution; his loyalty to royalty outweighed, it was thought, his loyalty to his country, and he was guillotined (1729-1794).

ESTE, an ancient and illustrious Italian family from which, by an offshoot founded by Welf IV., who became Duke of Bavaria in the 11th century, the Guelph Houses of Brunswick and Hanover, also called the Este-Guelphs, trace their descent. Of the Italian branch the most noted descendant was Alphonso I., a distinguished soldier and statesman and patron of art, whose second wife was the famous Lucrezia Borgia. His son, Alphonso II., is remembered for his cruel treatment of Tasso, placing him in prison for seven years as a madman who dared to make love to one of the princesses.

ESTE (6), an Italian town, 18 m. SW. of Padua, on the S. side of the Euganean Hills; has a castle and church with a leaning campanile.

ESTERHAZY, the town of a noble Austrian family of ancient date, and that gave birth to a number of illustrious men.

ESTERHAZY DE GALANTHA, the name of a powerful and famous Hungarian family holding the rank of Princes of the Empire since the 17th century. Their estates include upwards of 4000 villages, 60 market-towns, many castles and lordships, but they are heavily mortgaged.

ESTHER, THE BOOK OF, a book of the Old Testament, which takes its name from the chief figure in the story related, an orphan Jewess and ward of her cousin Mordecai, who, from her beauty, was chosen into the royal harem and raised to be consort to the king. It is read through in the Jewish synagogues at the feast of PURIM (q. v.). It is observed that the name of God does not occur once in the book, but the story implies the presence of an overruling Providence, responding to the cry of His oppressed ones for help.

ESTHONIA (393), one of the Russian Baltic provinces, has a northern foreshore on the Gulf of Finland, and on the W. abuts on the Baltic; what of the country that is free from forest and marsh is chiefly agricultural, but fishing is also an important industry; the people are a composite of Finns and immigrant Germans, with latterly Russians superimposed.

ESTIENNE, the name of a family of French painters. See STEPHENS.

EST-IL-POSSIBLE? the name given by James II. to Prince George of Denmark, the husband of Princess Anne, from his invariable exclamation on hearing how one after another had deserted the Stuart cause; he ended with deserting it himself.

ESTRADES, COUNT D', a French diplomatist (1579-1680).

ESTREMADURA (1,111), a coast province of Portugal, between Beira and Alemtejo, watered by the Tagus; richly fertile in many parts, but sparely cultivated; silk is an important industry, and an increasing; Lisbon is the chief city, and with Setubal monopolises the trade; salt, fruits, wine, and oil are exported; also name of a district in Spain between Portugal and New Castile, now divided into the provinces of Badajoz and Caceres.

ETEOCLES, a son of Oedipus, king of Thebes, agreed on the banishment of his father to govern the state alternately with his brother Polynices, but failing to keep his engagement, the latter appealed to his guardian, out of which there arose the War of the Seven against Thebes, which ended in the slaughter of the whole seven, upon which the brothers thought to end the strife in single combat, when each fell by the sword of the other.

ETERNAL CITY, ancient Rome in the esteem of its inhabitants, in accordance with the promise, as Virgil feigns, of Jupiter to Venus, the goddess-mother of the race.

ETERNITIES, THE CONFLUX OF, Carlyle's expressive phrase for Time, as in every moment of it a centre in which all the forces to and from Eternity meet and unite, so that by no past and no future can we be brought nearer to Eternity than where we at any moment of Time are; the Present Time, the youngest born of Eternity, being the child and heir of all the Past times with their good and evil, and the parent of all the Future, the import of which (see Matt. xvi. 27) it is accordingly the first and most sacred duty of every successive age, and especially the leaders of it, to know and lay to heart as the only link by which Eternity lays hold of it and it of Eternity.

ETHELBERT, a king of Kent, in whose reign Christianity was introduced by St. Augustin and a band of missionaries in 597; drew up the first Saxon law code (552-616).

ETHELDREDA, a Saxon princess, whose name, shortened into St. Audrey, was given to a certain kind of lace, whence "tawdry"; she took refuge from the married state in the monastery of St. Abb's Head, and afterwards founded a monastery in the Isle of Ely (630-679).

ETHELRED I., king of Saxon England (866-871), predecessor and brother of Alfred; his reign was a long and unsuccessful struggle with the Danes.

ETHELRED II., the Unready, a worthless king of Saxon England (979-1016), married Emma, daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandy, a step which led in the end to the claim which issued in the Norman Conquest (968-1016).

ETHER, a volatic liquid prepared from the distillation of alcohol and sulphuric acid at high temperature; is colourless, and emits a sweet, penetrating odour; is highly combustible; a useful solvent, and an important anaesthetic.

ETHER, a subtle element presumed to pervade all interstellar space, vibrations in which are assumed to account for the transmission of light and all radiant energy.

ETHEREDGE, SIR GEORGE, the originator of the kind of comedy "containing a vein of lively humour and witty dialogue which were afterwards displayed by Congreve and Farquhar"; has been called the "founder of the comedy of intrigue"; he was the author of three clever plays, entitled "Love in a Tub," "She Would if She Could," and "Sir Fopling Flutter" (1636-1694).

ETHICS, the science which treats of the distinction between right and wrong and of the moral sense by which they are discriminated.

ETHICS OF DUST, THE, "a book by Ruskin about crystallography, but it twists symbolically in the strangest way all its geology into morality, theology, Egyptian mythology, with fiery cuts at political economy, pretending not to know whether the forces and destinies and behaviour of crystals are not very like those of a man."

ETHIOPIA, a term loosely used in ancient times to indicate the territory inhabited by black or dark-coloured people; latterly applied to an undefined tract of land stretching S. of Egypt to the Gulf of Aden, which constituted the kingdom of the Ethiopians, a people of Semitic origin and speaking a Semitic language called Ge'ez, who were successively conquered by the Egyptians, Persians, and Romans; are known in the Bible; their first king is supposed to have been Menilehek, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; their literature consists mostly of translations and collections of saws and riddles; the language is no longer spoken.

ETHNOLOGY, a science which treats of the human race as grouped in tribes or nations, but limits itself to tracing the origin and distribution of races, and investigating the physical and mental peculiarities and differences exhibited by men over all parts of the globe; the chief problem of the science is to decide between the monogenous and polygenous theories of the origin of the race, and investigation inclines to favour the former view. The polygenous argument, based on the diversity of languages, has been discarded, as, if valid, necessitating about a thousand different origins, while the monogenous position is strengthened by the ascertained facts that the different racial groups are fruitful amongst themselves, and present points of mental and physical similarity which accord well with this theory. Ethnologists now divide the human race into three main groups: the Ethiopian or negro, the Mongolic or yellow, and the Caucasic or white.

ETIENNE, ST., (133), an important French town, capital of the dep. of the Loire, on the Furens, 35 m. SW. of Lyons; chief seat of the iron-works of France; also has noted ribbon factories.

ETIVE, a sea-loch in Argyllshire, Scotland, is an inland extension of the Firth of Lorne, about 20 m. in length, and varying in breadth from 2 to 1/4 m.; the mountain scenery along the shores grandly picturesque; the river which bears the same name rises in Rannoch Moor, and joins the loch after a SW. course of 15 m.; both loch and river afford salmon-fishing.

ETNA, a volcanic mountain on the E. coast of Sicily, 10,840 ft. high; a striking feature is the immense ravine, the Val del Bove, splitting the eastern side of the mountain, and about 5 m. in diameter; on the flanks are many smaller cones. Etna is celebrated for its many and destructive eruptions; was active in 1892; its observatory, built in 1880, at an elevation of 9075 ft. above sea-level, is the highest inhabited dwelling in Europe.

ETON, a town in Buckinghamshire, on the Thames, 22 m. SW. of London; celebrated for its public school, Eton College, founded in 1440 by Henry VI., which has now upwards of 1000 scholars.

ETRE SUPREME, the Supreme Being agreeably to the hollow and vacant conception of the boasted, beggarly 18th-century Enlightenment of Revolutionary France.

ETRURIA, the ancient Roman name of a region in Italy, W. of the Apennines from the Tiber to the Macra in the N.; inhabited by the Etruscans, a primitive people of Italy; at one time united in a confederation of twelve States; gradually absorbed by the growing Roman power, and who were famous for their artistic work in iron and bronze. Many of the Etruscan cities contain interesting remains of their early civilised state; but their entire literature, supposed to have been extensive, has perished, and their language is only known through monumental inscriptions. Their religion was polytheistic, but embraced a belief in a future life. There is abundant evidence that they had attained to a high degree of civilisation; the status of women was high, the wife ranking with the husband; their buildings still extant attest their skill as engineers and builders; vases, mirrors, and coins of fine workmanship have been found in their tombs, and jewellery which is scarcely rivalled; while the tombs themselves are remarkable for their furnishings of chairs, ornaments, decorations, &c., showing that they regarded these sanctuaries more as dwellings of departed spirits than as sepulchres of the dead.

ETTMUeLLER, ERNST MORITZ LUDWIG, a German philologist, born at Gerfsdorf, Saxony, professor of German literature in Zurich in 1863; did notable work in connection with Anglo-Saxon and in Middle German dialects (1802-1877).

ETTRICK, a Scottish river that rises in Selkirkshire and joins the Tweed, 3 m. below Selkirk; the Yarrow is its chief tributary; a forest of the same name once spread over all Selkirkshire and into the adjoining counties; the district is associated with some of the finest ballad and pastoral poetry of Scotland.

ETTRICK SHEPHERD, JAMES HOGG (q. v.).

ETTY, WILLIAM, a celebrated painter, born at York; rose from being a printer's apprentice to the position of a Royal Academician; considered by Ruskin to have wasted his great powers as a colourist on inadequate and hackneyed subjects (1787-1849).

EUBOEA (82), the largest of the Grecian Isles, skirts the mainland on the SE., to which it is connected by a bridge spanning the Talanta Channel, 40 yards broad; it is about 100 m. in length; has fine quarries of marble, and mines of iron and copper are found in the mountains; Chalcis is the chief town.

EUCLID OF ALEXANDRIA, a famous geometrican, whose book of "Elements," revised and improved, still holds its place as an English school-book, although superseded as such in America and the Continent; founded a school of Mathematics in Alexandria; flourished about 300 B.C.

EUCLID OF MEGARA, a Greek philosopher, a disciple of Socrates, was influenced by the ELEATICS (q. v.); founded the Megaric school of Philosophy, whose chief tenet is that the "good," or that which is one with itself, alone is the only real existence.

EUDAEMONISM, the doctrine that the production of happiness is the aim and measure of virtue.

EUDOCIA, the ill-fated daughter of an Athenian Sophist, wife of Theodosius II., embraced Christianity, her name Athenais previously; was banished by her husband on an ill-founded charge of infidelity, and spent the closing years of her life in Jerusalem, where she became a convert to the views of EUTYCHES (q. v.) (394-400).

EUDOXUS OF CNIDUS, a Grecian astronomer, was a pupil of Plato, and afterwards studied in Egypt; said to have introduced a 3651/2 day year into Greece; flourished in the 4th century B.C.

EUGENE, FRANCOIS, PRINCE OF SAVOY, a renowned general, born at Paris, and related by his mother to Cardinal Mazarin; he renounced his native land, and entered the service of the Austrian Emperor Leopold; first gained distinction against the Turks, whose power in Hungary he crushed in the great victory of Pieterwardein (1697); co-operated with Marlborough in the war of the Spanish Succession, and shared the glories of his great victories, and again opposed the French in the cause of Poland (1663-1736).

EUGENIE, EX-EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH, born at Granada, second daughter of Count Manuel Fernandez of Montigos and Marie Manuela Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, Dumfriesshire; married to Napoleon III. in 1853; had to leave France in 1870, and has since January 1873 lived as his widow at Chiselhurst, Kent; b. 1826.

EUGENIUS, the name of four Popes. E., St., I., Pope from 654 to 658 (festival, August 27); E. II., Pope from 824 to 827; E. III., Pope from 1145 to 1153; E. IV., Pope from 1431 to 1447.

EUGENIUS IV., Pope, born at Venice; his pontificate was marked by a schism created by proceedings in the Council of Basel towards the reform of the Church and the limitation of the papal authority, the issue of which was that he excommunicated the Council and the Council deposed him; he had an unhappy time of it, and in his old age regretted he had ever left his monastery to assume the papal crown.

EUGUBINE TABLES, seven bronze tablets discovered in 1441 near Eugubium, in Italy, containing inscriptions which supply a key to the original tongues of Italy prior to Latin.

EUHEMERISM, the theory that the gods of antiquity are merely deified men, so called from Euhemeros, the Greek who first propounded the theory, and who lived 316 B.C.

EULENSPIEGEL (i. e. Owl-glass), the hero of a popular German tale, which relates no end of pranks, fortunes, and misfortunes of a wandering mechanic born in a village in Brunswick; buried in 1350 at Moelln, in Lauenburg, where they still show his tombstone sculptured with an owl and a glass.

EULER, LEONHARD, a celebrated mathematician, born at Basel; professor in St. Petersburg successively of Physics and Mathematics; came to reside in Berlin in 1741 at the express invitation of Frederick the Great; returned to St. Petersburg in 1746, where he died; besides many works issued in his lifetime, he left 200 MSS., which were published after his death (1707-1783).

EUMENIDES (i. e. the Well-meaning), a name given to the ERINNYES (q. v.) or Furies, from a wholesome and prudent dread of calling them by their true name.

EUMOLPUS, the founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries, alleged to have been a priest of Demeter or Ceres.

EUNOMIANS, an ultra-Arian sect of the 4th century, which soon dwindled away after breaking from the orthodox Church; called after EUNOMIUS (q. v.).

EUNOMIUS, an Arian divine, born in Cappadocia; head of a sect who maintained that the Father alone was God, that the Son was generated from Him, and the Spirit from the Son; was bishop of Cyzicum, a post he by-and-by resigned; d. 394.

EUPATORIA (13), a Russian town on the Crimean coast, in the government of Taurida, 40 m. NW. of Simferopol; has a fine Tartar mosque, and does a large export trade in hides and cereals; during the Crimean War was an important military centre of the Allies.

EUPHEMISM, is in speech or writing the avoiding of an unpleasant or indelicate word or expression by the use of one which is less direct, and which calls up a less disagreeable image in the mind. Thus for "he died" is substituted "he fell asleep," or "he is gathered to his fathers"; thus the Greeks called the "Furies" the "Eumenides," "the benign goddesses," just as country people used to call elves and fairies "the good folk neighbours."

EUPHRATES, a river in West Asia, formed by the junction of two Armenian streams; flows SE. to Kurnah, where it is joined by the Tigris. The combined waters—named the Shat-el-Arab—flow into the Persian Gulf; is 1700 m. long, and navigable for 1100 m.

EUPHROSYNE, the cheerful one, or life in the exuberance of joy, one of the three Graces. See GRACES.

EUPHUISM, an affected bombastic style of language, so called from "Euphues," a work of Sir John Lyly's written in that style.

EURE (349), a dep. of France, in Normandy, so called from the river Eure which traverses it.

EURE-ET-LOIR (285), a dep. of France lying directly S. of the preceding; chief rivers the Eure in the N. and the Loir in the S.

EUREKA (i. e. I have found it), the exclamation of Archimedes on discovering how to test the purity of the gold in the crown of HIERO (q. v.); he discovered it, tradition says, when taking a bath.

EURIPIDES, a famous Greek tragic dramatist, born at Salamis, of wealthy parents; first trained as an athlete, and then devoted himself to painting, and eventually to poetry; he brought out his first play at the age of 25, and is reported to have written 80 plays, of which only 18 are extant, besides fragment of others; of these plays the "Alcestes," "Bacchae," "Iphigenia at Aulis," "Electra," and "Medea" may be mentioned; he won the tragic prize five times; tinged with pessimism, he is nevertheless less severe than his great predecessors Sophocles and AEschylus, surpassing them in tenderness and artistic expression, but falling short of them in strength and loftiness of dramatic conception; Sophocles, it is said, represented men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they are; he has been called the Sophist of tragic poets (480-406 B.C.).

EUROPA, a maiden, daughter of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, whom Zeus, disguised as a white bull, carried off to Crete, where she became by him the mother of MINOS, RHADAMANTHUS, and SARPEDON (q. v.).

EUROPE (361,000), the most important, although the second smallest, of the five great land divisions of the globe; is, from a geographical point of view, a peninsula of Asia; the Caspian Sea, Ural River and mountains, form its Asiatic boundary, while on the other three sides it is washed by the Mediterranean on the S., Atlantic on the W., and Arctic Ocean on the N.; its coast-line is so highly developed that to every 190 sq. m. of surface there is 1 m. of coast; this advantage, combined with the varied adaptability of its land, rivers, and inland seas, and its central position, has made it the centre of civilisation and the theatre of the main events of the world's history. Its greatest length is 3370 m. from Cape St. Vincent to the Urals, and its greatest breadth 2400 m. from Cape Matapan to Nordkyn, while its area is about 3,800,000 sq. m.; it is singularly free from wild animals, has a fruitful soil richly cultivated, and possesses in supreme abundance the more useful metals. Its peoples belong to the two great ethnological divisions, the Caucasian and Mongolian groups; to the former belong the Germanic, Romanic, Slavonic, and Celtic races, and to the latter the Finns, Magyars, and Turks. Christianity is professed throughout, except amongst the Jews, of whom there are about six millions, and in Turkey, where Mohammedanism claims about seven millions; of Catholics there are about 155 millions, of Protestants 85, and of the Greek Church 80. Amongst the 18 countries the form of government most prevailing is the hereditary monarchy, resting more and more on a wide representation of the people.

EUROTAS, the classic name of the Iri, a river of Greece, which flows past Sparta and discharges into the Gulf of Laconia, 30 m. long.

EURUS, the god of the withering east wind.

EURYDICE. See ORPHEUS.

EURYSTHEUS, the king of Mycenae, at whose command, as subject to him by fate, Hercules was required to perform his 12 labours, on the achievement of which depended his admission to the rank of an immortal.

EUSEBIUS PAMPHILI, a distinguished early Christian writer, born in Palestine, bishop of Caesarea in 313; headed the moderate Arians at the Council of Nice, who shrank from disputing about a subject so sacred as the nature of the Trinity; wrote a history of the world to A.D. 328; his "Ecclesiastical History" is the first record of the Christian Church up to 324; also wrote a Life of Constantine, who held him in high favour; many extracts of ancient writers no longer extant are found in the works of Eusebius (about 264-340).

EUSTACHIO, BARTOLOMMEO, an Italian physician of the 16th century; settled at Rome, made several anatomical discoveries, among others those of the tube from the middle ear to the mouth, and a valve on the wall of the right auricle of the heart, both called Eustachian after him.

EUSTATHIUS, archbishop of Thessalonica, a Greek commentator of Homer, born in Constantinople; a man of wide classical learning, and his work on Homer of value for the extracts of writings that no longer exist; d. 1198.

EUTERPE, the Muse of lyric poetry, represented in ancient works of art with a flute in her hand.

EUTROPIUS, FLAVIUS, a Roman historian, secretary to the Emperor Constantine; wrote an epitome of Roman history, which from its simplicity and accuracy still retains its position as a school-book; d. about 370.

EUTYCHES, a Byzantine heresiarch, who, in combating NESTORIANISM (q. v.), fell into the opposite extreme, and maintained that in the incarnation the human nature of Christ was absorbed in the divine, a doctrine which was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in 448 (378-454).

EUTYCHIANISM. See SUPRA.

EUXINE, a Greek name for the BLACK SEA (q. v.).

EVANDER, an Arcadian, who is said to have come from Greece with a colony to Latium and settled in it 60 years before the Trojan war, and with whom AEneas formed an alliance when he landed in Italy; he is credited with having introduced the civilising arts of Greece.

EVANGELICAL, a term applied to all those forms of Christianity which regard the atonement of Christ, or His sacrifice on the Cross for sin, as the ground and central principle of the Christian faith.

EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, an alliance of Christians of all countries and denominations holding what are called evangelical principles, and founded in 1845.

EVANGELICAL UNION, a religious body in Scotland which originated in 1843 under the leadership of James Morison of Kilmarnock, and professed a creed which allowed them greater freedom as preachers of the gospel of Christ. See MORISONIANISM.

EVANGELINE, the heroine of a poem by Longfellow of the same name, founded on an incident connected with the expulsion of the natives of Acadia from their homes by order of George II.

EVANGELIST, a name given in the early Church to one whose office it was to persuade the ignorant and unbelieving into the fold of the Church.

EVANS, SIR DE LACY, an English general, born at Moeg, Ireland; served in the Peninsular war; was present at Quatre-Bras and Waterloo; commanded the British Legion sent to assist Queen Isabella in Spain, and the second division of the army in the Crimea and the East; was for many years a member of Parliament (1787-1870).

EVANS, MARY ANN, the real name of GEORGE ELIOT (q. v.).

EVELYN, JOHN, an English writer, born at Wotton, Surrey; travelled in France and Italy during the Civil War, where he devoted much time to gardening and the study of trees; was author of a celebrated work, entitled "Sylva; or, A Discourse of Forest Trees," &c.; did much to improve horticulture and introduce exotics into this country; his "Memoirs," written as a diary, are full of interest, "is justly famous for the fulness, variety, and fidelity of its records" (1620-1706).

EVEREST, MOUNT, the highest mountain in the world; is one of the Himalayan peaks in Nepal, India; is 29,002 ft. above sea-level.

EVERETT, ALEXANDER HILL, an American diplomatist and author, born at Boston; was U.S. ambassador at The Hague and Madrid, and commissioner to China; wrote on a variety of subjects, including both politics and belles-lettres, and a collection of critical and miscellaneous essays (1792-1847).

EVERETT, EDWARD, American scholar, statesman, and orator, brother of the preceding; was a Unitarian preacher of great eloquence; distinguished as a Greek scholar and professor; for a time editor of the North American Review; was a member of Congress, and unsuccessful candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the Republic; his reputation rests on his "orations," which are on all subjects, and show great vigour and versatility of genius (1794-1865).

EVERLASTING NO, THE, Carlyle's name for the spirit of unbelief in God, especially as it manifested itself in his own, or rather Teufelsdroeckh's, warfare against it; the spirit, which, as embodied in the MEPHISTOPHELES (q. v.) of Goethe, is for ever denying,—der stets verneint—the reality of the divine in the thoughts, the character, and the life of humanity, and has a malicious pleasure in scoffing at everything high and noble as hollow and void. See SARTOR RESARTUS.

EVERLASTING YEA, THE, Carlyle's name for the spirit of faith in God in an express attitude of clear, resolute, steady, and uncompromising antagonism to the Everlasting No, an the principle that there is no such thing as faith in God except in such antagonism, no faith except in such antagonism against the spirit opposed to God.

EVERSLEY, a village in Hampshire, 13 m. NE. of Basingstoke; the burial-place of Charles Kingsley, who for 35 years was rector of the parish.

EVERSLEY, CHARLES SHAW LEFEVRE, VISCOUNT, politician; graduated at Cambridge; called to the bar; entered Parliament, and in 1839 became Speaker of the House of Commons, a post he held with great acceptance for 18 years; retired, and was created a peer (1794-1888).

EVIL EYE, a superstitious belief that certain people have the power of exercising a baneful influence on others, and even animals, by the glance of the eyes. The superstition is of ancient date, and is met with among almost all races, as it is among illiterate people and savages still. It was customary to wear amulets toward the evil off.

EVOLUTION, the theory that the several species of plants and animals on the globe were not created in their present form, but have all been evolved by modifications of structure from cruder forms under or coincident with change of environment, an idea which is being applied to everything organic in the spiritual as well as the natural world. See DARWINIAN THEORY.

EV'ORA, a city of Portugal, beautifully situated in a fertile plain 80 m. E. of Lisbon, once a strong place, and the seat of an archbishop; it abounds in Roman antiquities.

EVREMOND, SAINT, a lively and witty Frenchman; got into trouble in France from the unbridled indulgence of his wit, and fled to England, where he became a great favourite at the court of Charles II., and enjoyed himself to the top of his bent; his letters are written in a most graceful style (1613-1703).

EVREUX (14), capital of the dep. of Eure, on the Iton, 67 m. NW. of Paris; is an elegant town; has a fine 11th-century cathedral, an episcopal palace with an old clock tower; interesting ruins have been excavated in the old town; is the seat of a bishop; paper, cotton, and linen are manufactured, and a trade is carried on in cereals, timber, and liqueurs.

EWALD, GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST VON, a distinguished Orientalist and biblical scholar, born at Goettingen, and professor both there and at Tuebingen; his works were numerous, and the principal were "The Poetic Books of the Old Testament," "The Prophets," and "The History of the People of Israel"; he was a student and interpreter of the concrete, and belonged to no party (1803-1875).

EWALD, JOHANNES, a Danish dramatist and lyrist, born at Copenhagen; served as a soldier in the German and Austrian armies; studied theology at Copenhagen; disappointed in love, he devoted himself to poetical composition; ranks as the founder of Danish tragedy, and is the author of some of the finest lyrics in the language (1743-1781).

EWIGE JUDE, the Everlasting Jew, the German name for the Wandering Jew.

EXCALIBUR, the magic sword of King Arthur, which only he could unsheathe and wield. When he was about to die he requested a knight to throw it into a lake close by, who with some reluctance threw it, when a hand reached out to seize it, flourished it round three times, and then drew it under the water for good.

EXCOMMUNICATION, an ecclesiastical punishment inflicted upon heretics and offenders against the Church laws and violators of the moral code; was formulated in the Christian Church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. It varied in severity according to the degree of transgression, but in its severest application involved exclusion from the Eucharist, Christian burial, and the rights and privileges of the Church; formerly it had the support of the civil authority, but is now a purely spiritual penalty.

EXELMANS, REMY JOSEPH ISODORE, COMTE, a distinguished French marshal, born at Bar-le-Duc; entered the army at 16; won distinction in the Naples campaign, and for his services at Eylau in 1807 was made a Brigadier-General; was taken prisoner in Spain while serving under Murat, and sent to England, where he was kept prisoner three years; liberated, took part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, for his conduct in which he was appointed a General of Division; after Napoleon's fall lived in exile till 1830; received honours from Louis Philippe, and was created a Marshal of France by Louis Napoleon in 1851 (1775-1852).

EXETER (50), the capital of Devonshire, on the Exe, 75 m. SW. of Bristol, a quaint old town; contains a celebrated cathedral founded in 1112.

EXETER HALL, a hall in the Strand, London; head-quarters of the Y.M.C.A.; erected in 1831 for holding religious and philanthropic meetings.

EXMOOR, an elevated stretch of vale and moorland in the SW. of Somerset, NE. of Devonshire; has an area of over 100 sq. m., 25 of which are covered with forest.

EXMOUTH (8), a noted seaside resort on the Devonshire coast, at the mouth of the Exe, 11 m. SE. of Exeter; has a fine beach and promenade.

EXODUS (i. e. the Going out), the book of the Old Testament which records the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, and the institution of the moral and ceremonial laws for the nation; consists partly of history and partly of legislation.

"EXODUS FROM HOUNDSDITCH," the contemplated title of a work which Carlyle would fain have written, but found it impossible in his time. "Out of Houndsditch indeed!" he exclaims. "Ah, were we but out, and had our own along with us" (our inheritance from the past, he means). "But they that have come hitherto have come in a state of brutal nakedness, scandalous mutilation" (having cast their inheritance from the past away), "and impartial bystanders say sorrowfully, 'Return rather; it is better even to return!'" Houndsditch was a Jew's quarter, and old clothesmarket in London, and was to Carlyle the symbol of the alarming traffic at the time in spiritualities fallen extinct. Had he given a list of these, as he has already in part done, without labelling them so, he would only, he believed, have given offence both to the old-rag worshippers and those that had cast the rags off, and were all, unwittingly to themselves, going about naked; considerate he in this of preserving what of worth was in the past.

EXOGENS, the name for the order of plants whose stem is formed by successive accretions to the outside of the wood under the bark.

EXORCISM, conjuration by God or Christ or some holy name, of some evil spirit to come out of a person; it was performed on a heathen as an idolater, and eventually on a child as born in sin prior to baptism.

EXOTERIC, a term applied to teaching which the uninitiated may be expected to comprehend, and which is openly professed, as in a public confession of faith.

EXTERNALITY, the name for what is ab extra as apart from what is ab intra in determining the substance as well as form of things, and which in the Hegelian philosophy is regarded as working conjointly with the latter.

EXTREME UNCTION, one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church; an anointing of consecrated or holy oil administered by a priest in the form of a cross to a sick person upon the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, and face at the point of death, which is presumed to impart grace and strength against the last struggle.

EYCK, JAN VAN, a famous Flemish painter, born at Mass-Eyck; was instructed by his eldest brother Hubert (1370-1426), with whom he laboured at Bruges and Ghent; reputed to have been the first to employ oil colours (1389-1440).

EYLAU, a small town, 23 m. S. of Koenigsberg, the scene of a great battle between Napoleon and the Russian and Prussian allies in February 8, 1807; the fight was interrupted by darkness, under cover of which the allies retreated, having had the worst of it.

EYRE, EDWARD JOHN, explorer and colonial governor, born in Yorkshire; emigrated to Australia in 1832; successfully explored the interior of SW. Australia in 1841; governor of New Zealand in 1846, of St. Vincent in 1852, and of Jamaica in 1862; recalled in 1865, and prosecuted for harsh treatment of the natives, but was acquitted; his defence was championed by Carlyle, Ruskin, and Kingsley, while J. S. Mill supported the prosecution; b. 1815.

EYRE, JANE, the heroine of a novel of Charlotte Bronte's so called, a governess who, in her struggles with adverse fortune, wins the admiration and melts the heart of a man who had lived wholly for the world.

EZEKIEL, a Hebrew prophet, born in Jerusalem; a man of priestly descent, who was carried captive to Babylon 599 B.C., and was banished to Tel-abib, on the banks of the Chebar, 201 m. from the city, where, with his family about him, he became the prophet of the captivity, and the rallying centre of the Dispersion. Here he foretold the destruction of Jerusalem as a judgment on the nation, and comforted them with the promise of a new Jerusalem and a new Temple on their repentance, man by man, and their return to the Lord. His prophecies arrange themselves in three groups—those denouncing judgment on Jerusalem, those denouncing judgment on the heathen, and those announcing the future glory of the nation.

EZRA, a Jewish scribe of priestly rank, and full of zeal for the law of the Lord and the restoration of Israel; author of a book of the Old Testament, which records two successive returns of the people from captivity, and embraces a period of 79 years, from 576 to 457 B.C., being a continuation of the book of Chronicles, its purpose being to relate the progress of the restored theocracy in Judah and Jerusalem, particularly as regards the restoration of the Temple and the re-institution of the priesthood.



F

FABER, FREDERICK WILLIAM, a Catholic divine and hymn-writer, born at Calverley, Yorkshire; at Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize in 1836; for three years was rector of Elton, but under the influence of Newman joined the Church of Rome (1845), and after founding a brotherhood of converts at Birmingham in 1849, took under his charge a London branch of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri; wrote several meritorious theological works, but his fame chiefly rests on his fine hymns, the "Pilgrims of the Night" one of the most famous (1814-1863).

FABER, GEORGE STANLEY, an Anglican divine, born in Holland; a voluminous writer on theological subjects and prophecy (1773-1854).

FABIAN, ST., Pope from 236 to 251; martyred along with St. Sebastian during the persecution of Decius.

FABIAN SOCIETY, a middle-class socialist propaganda, founded in 1883, which "aims at the reorganisation of society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership, and vesting of them in the community for the general benefit"; has lectureships, and issues "Essays" and "Tracts"; it watches and seizes its opportunities to achieve Socialist results, and hence the name. See FABIUS QUINTUS (1).

FABII, a family of ancient Rome of 307 members, all of whom perished in combat with the Veii, 477 B.C., all save one boy left behind in Rome, from whom descended subsequent generations of the name.

FABIUS PICTOR, the oldest annalist of Rome; his annals of great value; 216 B.C.

FABIUS QUINTUS, (Maximus Verrucosus), a renowned Roman general, five times consul, twice censor and dictator in 221 B.C.; famous for his cautious generalship against Hannibal in the Second Punic War, harassing to the enemy, which won him the surname of "Cunctator" or delayer; d. 203 B.C.

FABIUS QUINTUS (Rullianus), a noted Roman general, five times consul and twice dictator; waged successful war against the Samnites in 323 B.C.

FABIUS, THE AMERICAN, General Washington, so called from his Fabian tactics. See FABIUS QUINTUS (1).

FABLE OF THE BEES, a work by Mandeville, a fable showing how vice makes some people happy and virtue miserable, conceived as bees.

FABLIAUX, a species of metrical tales of a light and satirical nature in vogue widely in France during the 12th and 13th centuries; many of the stories were of Oriental origin, but were infused with the French spirit of the times; La Fontaine, Boccaccio, and Chaucer drew freely on them; they are marked by all the vivacity and perspicuity, if also lubricity, of their modern successors in the French novel and comic drama.

FABRE, JEAN, a French Protestant, celebrated for his filial piety; he took the place of his father in the galleys, who had been condemned to toil in them on account of his religious opinions (1727-1797).

FABRE D'EGLANTINE, a French dramatic poet, born at Carcassonne; wrote comedies; was a member of the Convention and of the Committee of Public Safety, of the extreme party of the Revolution; falling under suspicion, was guillotined along with Danton (1752-1794).

FABRICIUS, CAIUS, a Roman of the old school, distinguished for the simplicity of his manners and his incorruptible integrity; his name has become the synonym for a poor man who in public life deals honourably and does not enrich himself; was consul 282 B.C.

FABRICIUS or FABRIZIO, GIROLAMO, a famous Italian anatomist, born at Aquapendente; became professor at Padua in 1565, where he gained a world-wide reputation as a teacher; Harvey declares that he got his first idea of the circulation of the blood from attending his lectures (1537-1619).

FABRONI, ANGELO, a learned Italian, born in Tuscany; wrote the Lives of the illustrious literati of Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries, and earned for himself the name of the "Plutarch" of his country (1732-1803).

FACCIOLATI, JACOPO, lexicographer, born at Torreglia; became a professor of Theology and Logic at Padua; chiefly interested in classical literature; he, in collaboration with an old pupil, Egidio Forcellini (1688-1768), began the compilation of a new Latin dictionary, which was completed and published two years after his death by his colleague; this work has been the basis of all subsequent lexicons of the Latin language (1682-1769).

FACIAL ANGLE, an angle formed by drawing two lines, one horizontally from the nostril to the ear, and the other perpendicularly from the advancing part of the upper jawbone to the most prominent part of the forehead, an angle by which the degree of intelligence and sagacity in the several members of the animal kingdom is by some measured.

FAERIE QUEENE, the name of an allegorical poem by Edmund Spenser, in which 12 knights were, in twelve books, to represent as many virtues, described as issuing forth from the castle of Gloriana, queen of England, against certain impersonations of the vices and errors of the world. Such was the plan of the poem, but only six of the books were finished, and these contain the adventures of only six of the knights, representing severally Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy.

FAED, JOHN, a Scottish artist, son of a millwright, born at Barley Mill, Kirkcudbright; was elected an A.R.S.A. in 1847, and R.S.A. in 1851; his paintings are chiefly of humble Scottish life, the "Cottar's Saturday Night" among others; b. 1820.

FAED, THOMAS, brother of the preceding, born at Barley Mill; distinguished himself in his art studies at Edinburgh; went to London, where his pictures of Scottish life won him a foremost place among those of his contemporaries; was elected R.A. in 1864 and honorary member of the Vienna Royal Academy; b. 1826.

FAENZA (14), an old Italian cathedral town, 31 m. SE. of Bologna; noted for its manufacture of majolica ware, known from the name of the town as "faience."

FAGEL, GASPAR, a Dutch statesman, distinguished for his integrity and the firmness with which he repelled the attempts of Louis XIV. against his country, and for his zeal in supporting the claims of the Prince of Orange to the English throne (1629-1688).

FAGOT VOTE, a vote created by the partitioning of a property into as many tenements as will entitle the holders to vote.

FAHRENHEIT, GABRIEL DANIEL, a celebrated physicist, born at Danzig; spent much of his life in England, but finally settled in Holland; devoted himself to physical research; is famed for his improvement of the thermometer by substituting quicksilver for spirits of wine and inventing a new scale, the freezing-point being 32 deg. above zero and the boiling 212 deg. (1686-1736).

FAINEANT, LE NOIR, Richard Coeur-de-Lion in "Ivanhoe."

FAINEANTS (i. e. the Do-nothings), the name given to the kings of France of the Merovingian line from 670 to 752, from Thierry III. to Childeric III., who were subject to their ministers, the mayors of the palace, who discharged all their functions.

FAIR CITY, Perth, from the beauty of its surroundings.

FAIR MAID OF KENT, the Countess of Salisbury, eventually wife of the Black Prince, so called from her beauty.

FAIR MAID OF NORWAY, daughter of Eric II. of Norway, and granddaughter of Alexander III. of Scotland; died on her way from Norway to succeed her grandfather on the throne of Scotland, an event which gave rise to the famous struggle for the crown by rival competitors.

FAIR MAID OF PERTH, a beauty of the name of Kate Glover, the heroine of Scott's novel of the name.

FAIR ROSAMOND, the mistress of Henry II.; kept in a secret bower at Woodstock, in the heart of a labyrinth which only he could thread.

FAIRBAIRN, ANDREW M., able and thoughtful theologian, born in Edinburgh where he also graduated (1839); received the charge of the Evangelical Church at Bathgate, and subsequently studied in Berlin. In 1878 became Principal of the Airedale Congregational College at Bradford; was Muir Lecturer on Comparative Religions in Edinburgh University in 1881-83, and five years later was elected Principal of Mansfield College at Oxford; author of "The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," and several other scholarly works; b. 1838.